The neural bases of tactile vitality forms and their modulation by social context.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Rizzolatti G
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8079712 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:In the last decade clear evidence has accumulated that elephants are capable of vocal production learning. Examples of vocal imitation are documented in African (Loxodonta africana) and Asian (Elephas maximus) elephants, but little is known about the function of vocal learning within the natural communication systems of either species. We are also just starting to identify the neural basis of elephant vocalizations. The African elephant diencephalon and brainstem possess specializations related to aspects of neural information processing in the motor system (affecting the timing and learning of trunk movements) and the auditory and vocalization system. Comparative interdisciplinary (from behavioral to neuroanatomical) studies are strongly warranted to increase our understanding of both vocal learning and vocal behavior in elephants.
| S-EPMC4181794 | biostudies-other
Project description:Tactile shape recognition requires the perception of object surface angles. We investigate how neural representations of object angles are constructed from sensory input and how they reorganize across learning. Head-fixed mice learned to discriminate object angles by active exploration with one whisker. Calcium imaging of layers 2-4 of the barrel cortex revealed maps of object-angle tuning before and after learning. Three-dimensional whisker tracking demonstrated that the sensory input components that best discriminate angles (vertical bending and slide distance) also have the greatest influence on object-angle tuning. Despite the high turnover in active ensemble membership across learning, the population distribution of object-angle tuning preferences remained stable. Angle tuning sharpened, but only in neurons that preferred trained angles. This was correlated with a selective increase in the influence of the most task-relevant sensory component on object-angle tuning. These results show how discrimination training enhances stimulus selectivity in the primary somatosensory cortex while maintaining perceptual stability.
| S-EPMC8443268 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Our ability to understand others' communicative intentions in speech is key to successful social interaction. Indeed, misunderstanding an 'excuse me' as apology, while meant as criticism, may have important consequences. Recent behavioural studies have provided evidence that prosody, that is, vocal tone, is an important indicator for speakers' intentions. Using a novel audio-morphing paradigm, the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the neurocognitive mechanisms that allow listeners to 'read' speakers' intents from vocal prosodic patterns. Participants categorized prosodic expressions that gradually varied in their acoustics between criticism, doubt, and suggestion. Categorizing typical exemplars of the three intentions induced activations along the ventral auditory stream, complemented by amygdala and mentalizing system. These findings likely depict the stepwise conversion of external perceptual information into abstract prosodic categories and internal social semantic concepts, including the speaker's mental state. Ambiguous tokens, in turn, involved cingulo-opercular areas known to assist decision-making in case of conflicting cues. Auditory and decision-making processes were flexibly coupled with the amygdala, depending on prosodic typicality, indicating enhanced categorization efficiency of overtly relevant, meaningful prosodic signals. Altogether, the results point to a model in which auditory prosodic categorization and socio-inferential conceptualization cooperate to translate perceived vocal tone into a coherent representation of the speaker's intent.
| S-EPMC6022564 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Behavioral research has demonstrated an advantage for females compared with males in social information processing. However, little is known about sex-related differences in brain activation during understanding of self and others. In the current functional magnetic resonance imaging study, this was assessed in late adolescents (aged 18-19) and young adults (aged 23-25) when making appraisals of self and other as well as reflected self-appraisals. Across all groups and for all appraisal conditions, activation was observed in the medial prefrontal cortex, medial posterior parietal cortex, left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left posterior parietal cortex. Males activated the medial posterior parietal cortex and bilateral temporoparietal junction more than females. The precuneus showed stronger activation in males compared with females specifically during appraisals of others. No differences between late adolescents and young adults were found. These results indicate that sex differences exist in the neural bases of social understanding.
| S-EPMC3989134 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Schizophrenia and autism both feature significant impairments in social cognition and social functioning, but the specificity and mechanisms of these deficits remain unknown. Recent research suggests that social cognitive deficits in both disorders may arise from dysfunctions in the neural systems that underlie social cognition. We explored the neural activation of discrete brain regions implicated in social cognitive and face processing in schizophrenia subgroups and autism spectrum disorders during complex social judgments of faces. Twelve individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), 12 paranoid individuals with schizophrenia (P-SCZ), 12 non-paranoid individuals with schizophrenia (NP-SCZ), and 12 non-clinical healthy controls participated in this cross sectional study. Neural activation, as indexed by blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast, was measured in a priori regions of interest while individuals rated faces for trustworthiness. All groups showed significant activation of a social cognitive network including the amygdala, fusiform face area (FFA), superior temporal sulcus (STS), and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) while completing a task of complex social cognition (i.e. trustworthiness judgments). ASD and P-SCZ individuals showed significantly reduced neural activation in the right amygdala, FFA, and left VLPFC as compared to controls and in the left VLPFC as compared to NP-SCZ individuals during this task. These findings lend support to models hypothesizing well-defined neural substrates of social cognition and suggest a specific neural mechanism that may underlie social cognitive impairments in both autism and paranoid schizophrenia.
| S-EPMC2740744 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Decoding others' intentions is a crucial aspect of social cognition. Neuroimaging studies suggest that inferring immediate goals engages the neural system for action understanding (i.e. mirror system), while the decoding of long-term intentions requires the system subserving the attribution of mental states (i.e. mentalizing). A controversial issue, stimulated by recent inconsistent results, concerns whether the two systems are concurrently vs. exclusively involved in intention understanding. This issue is particularly relevant in the case of social interactions, whose processing has been mostly, but not uncontroversially, associated with the mentalizing system. We tested the alternative hypothesis that the relative contribution of the two systems in intention understanding may also depend on the shared goal of interacting agents. To this purpose, 27 participants observed social interactions differing in their cooperative vs. affective shared goal during functional-Magnetic-Resonance-Imaging. The processing of both types of interactions activated the right temporo-parietal junction involved in mentalizing on action goals. Additionally, whole-brain and regions-of-interest analyses showed that the action understanding system (inferior prefrontal-parietal cortex) was more strongly activated by cooperative interactions, while the mentalizing-proper system (medial prefrontal cortex) was more strongly engaged by affective interactions. These differences were modulated by individual differences in empathizing. Both systems can thus be involved in understanding social intentions, with a relative weighting depending on the specific shared goal of the interaction.
| S-EPMC3407127 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Social anxiety disorder is thought to involve emotional hyperreactivity, cognitive distortions, and ineffective emotion regulation. While the neural bases of emotional reactivity to social stimuli have been described, the neural bases of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation during social and physical threat, and their relationship to social anxiety symptom severity, have yet to be investigated.To investigate behavioral and neural correlates of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation in patients and controls during processing of social and physical threat stimuli.Participants were trained to implement cognitive-linguistic regulation of emotional reactivity induced by social (harsh facial expressions) and physical (violent scenes) threat while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and providing behavioral ratings of negative emotion experience.Academic psychology department.Fifteen adults with social anxiety disorder and 17 demographically matched healthy controls.Blood oxygen level-dependent signal and negative emotion ratings.Behaviorally, patients reported greater negative emotion than controls during social and physical threat but showed equivalent reduction in negative emotion following cognitive regulation. Neurally, viewing social threat resulted in greater emotion-related neural responses in patients than controls, with social anxiety symptom severity related to activity in a network of emotion- and attention-processing regions in patients only. Viewing physical threat produced no between-group differences. Regulation during social threat resulted in greater cognitive and attention regulation-related brain activation in controls compared with patients. Regulation during physical threat produced greater cognitive control-related response (ie, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) in patients compared with controls.Compared with controls, patients demonstrated exaggerated negative emotion reactivity and reduced cognitive regulation-related neural activation, specifically for social threat stimuli. These findings help to elucidate potential neural mechanisms of emotion regulation that might serve as biomarkers for interventions for social anxiety disorder.
| S-EPMC4142809 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The option to choose between several courses of action is often associated with the feeling of being in control. Yet, in certain situations, one may prefer to decline such agency and instead leave the choice to others. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we provide evidence that the neural processes involved in decision-making are modulated not only by who controls our choice options (agency), but also by whether we have a say in who is in control (context). The fMRI results are noteworthy in that they reveal specific contributions of the anterior frontomedian cortex (viz. BA 10) and the rostral cingulate zone (RCZ) in decision-making processes. The RCZ is engaged when conditions clearly present us with the most choice options. BA 10 is engaged in particular when the choice is completely ours, as well as when it is completely up to others to choose for us which in turn gives rise to an attribution of control to oneself or someone else, respectively. After all, it does not only matter whether we have any options to choose from, but also who decides on that.
| S-EPMC2290971 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Critical to evolutionary fitness, animals regulate social behaviors by integrating signals from both their external environments and internal states. Here, we find that population density modulates the courtship behavior of male Drosophila melanogaster in an age-dependent manner. In a competitive mating assay, males reared in a social environment have a marked advantage in courting females when pitted against males reared in isolation. Group housing promotes courtship in mature (7-day) but not immature (2-day) males; this behavioral plasticity requires the Or47b pheromone receptor. Using single-sensillum recordings, we find that group housing increases the response of Or47b olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) only in mature males. The effect of group housing on olfactory response and behavior can be mimicked by chronically exposing single-housed males to an Or47b ligand. At the molecular level, group housing elevates Ca2+ levels in Or47b ORNs, likely leading to CaMKI-mediated activation of the histone-acetyl transferase CBP. This signaling event in turn enhances the efficacy of juvenile hormone, an age-related regulator of reproductive maturation in flies. Furthermore, the male-specific Fruitless isoform (FruM) is required for the sensory plasticity, suggesting that FruM functions as a downstream genomic coincidence detector in Or47b ORNs-integrating reproductive maturity, signaled by juvenile hormone, and population density, signaled by CBP. In all, we identify a neural substrate and activity-dependent mechanism by which social context can directly influence pheromone sensitivity, thereby modulating social behavior according to animals' life-history stage.
| S-EPMC6911769 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Humans are motivated to interact with each other, but the neural bases of social motivation have been predominantly examined in non-interactive contexts. Understanding real-world social motivation is of special importance during middle childhood (ages 8-12), a period when social skills improve, social networks grow, and social brain networks specialize. To assess interactive social motivation, the current study used a novel fMRI paradigm in which children believed they were chatting with a peer. The design targeted two phases of interaction: (1) Initiation, in which children engaged in a social bid via sharing a like or hobby, and (2) Reply, in which children received either an engaged ("Me too") or non-engaged ("I'm away") reply from the peer. On control trials, children were told that their answers were not shared and that they would receive either engaged ("Matched") or non-engaged ("Disconnected") replies from the computer. Results indicated that during Initiation and Reply, key components of reward circuitry (e.g., ventral striatum) were more active for the peer than the computer trials. In addition, during Reply, social cognitive regions were more activated by the peer, and this social cognitive specialization increased with age. Finally, the effect of engagement type on reward circuitry activation was larger for social than non-social trials, indicating developmental sensitivity to social contingency. These findings demonstrate that both reward and social cognitive brain systems support real-time social interaction in middle childhood. An interactive approach to understanding social reward has implications for clinical disorders, where social motivation is more affected in real-world contexts.
| S-EPMC7060940 | biostudies-literature