Human Social Behavior Research Articles

Dynamic Interplay between Social Brain Development and Nutrient Intake in Young Children.

Myelination of the brain structures underlying social behavior in humans is a dynamic process that parallels the emergence of social-emotional development and social skills in early life. Of the many genetic and environmental factors regulating the myelination processes, nutrition is considered as a critical and modifiable early-life factor for establishing healthy social brain networks. However, the impact of nutrition on the longitudinal development of social brain myelination remains to be fully understood. This study examined the interplay between childhood nutrient intake and social brain development across the first 5 years of life. Myelin-sensitive neuroimaging and food-intake data were analyzed in 293 children, 0.5 to 5 years of age, and explored for dynamic patterns of nutrient-social brain myelin associations. We found three data-driven age windows with specific nutrient correlation patterns, 63 individual nutrient-myelin correlations, and six nutrient combinations with a statistically significant predictive value for social brain myelination. These results provide novel insights into the impact of specific nutrient intakes on early brain development, in particular social brain regions, and suggest a critical age-sensitive opportunity to impact these brain regions for potential longer-term improvements in socio-emotional development and related executive-function and critical-thinking skills.

Oxytocin as a treatment for high-risk psychosis or early stages of psychosis: a mini review.

Individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P) present as help-seeking individuals with social deficits as well as cognitive and functional impairment and have a 23-36% risk of transition to first-episode psychosis. The therapeutic role of intranasal oxytocin (ΟΤ) in psychiatric disorders has been widely studied during the last decades, concerning its effects on social behavior in humans. A literature search was conducted via Pubmed and Scopus, using the search terms "oxytocin" and "psychosis." Six studies were included in the current review. There were differences in terms of demographics, intervention type, and outcome measures. ΟΤ may affect the social cognition skills of people at prodromal and early stages of psychosis, but its effect on clinical symptoms is ambiguous. Because of the high level of heterogeneity of existing studies, more original studies are needed to examine and clarify whether OT improves high-risk and early psychosis populations.

Large‐scale human celebrations increase global light pollution

Abstract Culturally dependent human social behaviours involving artificial light usage can potentially affect light pollution patterns and thereby impact the night‐time ecology in populated areas, although to date this has not been examined globally. By analysing continuous (monthly), highly resolved, spatially explicit data on global night lights (Visible and Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite–Day/Night Band‐VIIRS‐DNB; 2014–2019) with circular statistical techniques, we evaluated whether macro‐cultural activities involving social aggregations and the use of artificial lights shape annual lighting patterns globally. Scheduled routines associated with cultural‐specific festivities appear to be important drivers of observed seasonal patterns in urban night‐time lights. For instance, the display of Christmas lights between Christmas and Epiphany Day celebrations (December–January) coincides with the annual peak in urban night‐time light intensity in Christian countries. Analogously, night celebrations during the Holy Month of Ramadam (from May to July) or the month‐long period of Karthika Masam (from October to November) fits with annual night light peaks in Muslim and Hindu countries. Annual peaks of urban light intensity in China and Vietnam also match with Chinese and Vietnamese (Tê't) New Year celebrations (January–February). In contrast, predominantly Buddhist countries, which do not have such prominent and prolonged celebrations involving artificial lights, show a relatively uniform distribution of night light peaks throughout the annual cycle. Social behaviour and sociocultural contexts help explain how people modify the global nightscape and contribute to light pollution globally. Understanding the cultural contexts responsible for peaks in artificial light usage is an important first step if humans are to mitigate any deleterious effects associated with global increases in night‐time light pollution. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Ecological and Evolutionary Insights About Emerging Infectious Diseases from the COVID-19 Pandemic

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic challenged the workings of human society, but in doing so, it advanced our understanding of the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases. Fluctuating transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) demonstrated the highly dynamic nature of human social behavior, often without government intervention. Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the first two years following spillover resulted primarily in increased transmissibility, while in the third year, the globally dominant virus variants had all evolved substantial immune evasion. The combination of viral evolution and the buildup of host immunity through vaccination and infection greatly decreased the realized virulence of SARS-CoV-2 due to the age dependence of disease severity. The COVID-19 pandemic was exacerbated by presymptomatic, asymptomatic, and highly heterogeneous transmission, as well as highly variable disease severity and the broad host range of SARS-CoV-2. Insights and tools developed during the COVID-19 pandemic could provide a stronger scientific basis for preventing, mitigating, and controlling future pandemics.

Emotional Climate Recognition in Conversations using Peers' Speech-based Bispectral Features and Affect Dynamics.

Emotion recognition in conversations using artificial intelligence (AI) has recently gained a lot of attention, as it can provide additional emotion cues that can be correlated with human social behavior. An extension towards an AI-based emotional climate (EC) recognition, i.e., the recognition of the joint emotional atmosphere dynamically created and perceived by the peers throughout a conversation, is proposed here. In our approach, namely MLBispeC (Machine Learning Based Bispectral Classification), the peers' speech signals during their conversation are subjected to time-windowed bispectral analysis, allowing for feature extraction related to dynamic harmonics nonlinear interactions. In addition, peers' affect dynamics, derived from their same time-windowed emotion labeling, are combined to form an extended feature vector, inputted into two well-known machine learning classifiers (Support Vector Machine, K-Nearest Neighbor). MLBispeC was evaluated on the Interactive Emotional Dyadic Motion Capture (IEMOCAP) open access dataset, which contains 2D emotions, i.e., Arousal (A) and valence (V) that are divided into (low/high) classes. The experimental results have shown that MLBispeC outperforms previous state-of-the-art techniques, achieving an accuracy of 0.826A/0.754V, sensitivity of 0.864A/0.774V, and area under the curve (AUC) of 0.821A/0.799V. This demonstrates the effectiveness of MLBispeC to objectively recognize peers' EC during their conversation, allowing for insights into their emotional and social interactions.Clinical relevance-Unobtrusive, objective and dynamic recognition of the EC built during peers' conversation can scaffold effective assessment of patients with physiological, psychological, and mental diseases, at various age ranges (children, adults, and older adults).

Alcohol consumption and risky sexual behaviors among fishers in Elmina in Ghana

BackgroundAlcohol consumption is part of human social behavior and constitutes a routine part of social life in many countries. Prior studies have found over-indulgence of fishers in alcohol in fishing communities. The study uses the Alcohol Myopia Theory (AMT) to analyze and explain the phenomena of fishers engaging in sex after alcohol consumption, and condom use with sexual partner(s) after alcohol consumption. The study investigated alcohol consumption, predictors of alcohol consumption, and the reasons for drinking alcohol among fishers. It also examined fishers’ engagement in sex after alcohol consumption, the use of condoms with sexual partners after drinking alcohol, and predictors of the use of condoms with sexual partners after drinking alcohol.MethodsA cross-sectional convergent parallel mixed-method design was used to study 385 fishers in Elmina. Also, two focus group discussions were conducted among male and female fishers. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data, while the qualitative data was analyzed thematically.ResultsGenerally, 59.2% of participants indulged in alcohol consumption. Most male participants (70.6%) indulged in alcohol consumption than female participants (48.5%). Also, 48.5% of participants indulged in binge alcohol consumption, while 38.1% indulged in moderate alcohol consumption. The predictors of alcohol consumption were sex, religion, and type of fishing occupation. Participants identified consuming alcohol to kill loneliness and boredom, to forget family and work-related issues, and to have fun as reasons why fishers consume alcohol. Sixty-four percent of participants have ever engaged in sexual intercourse after consuming alcohol in the past 12 months. However, 70% of participants did not use a condom the last time they had sex after drinking alcohol. Only ethnicity of participants predicted their use of a condom the last time they had sex after drinking alcohol. The primary reasons for the non-use of condoms were do not like using condoms (37.9%), forgetting to use a condom (33.0%), and had sex with a trusted regular partner (15.5%).ConclusionsThis study demonstrated that alcohol consumption was prevalent among fishers, especially among male fishers, which contributes to risky sexual behaviors among them as espoused by the AMT. It is recommended that fishers are targeted for alcohol use and risky sexual behavior programs and interventions since alcohol use is prevalent among them and most of them also engage in unprotected sexual intercourse after consuming alcohol.

Ценностно-интенциональные механизмы и стратегии социально-психологической адаптации юношей к условиям военно-образовательной среды

<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Objective. </strong>The paper is devoted to the study of the value-intentional mechanisms and strategies of socio-psychological adaptation of young men to the conditions of the military educational environment.<br><strong>Background. </strong>The system of values and orientation of the individual is considered as a central element of the process of socio-psychological adaptation. The significance of value-motivational factors in determining certain types of human social behavior (creativity, aggressive and pro-environmental actions, political activity, etc.) has been shown in several studies. At the same time, specific value-intentional determinants, and mechanisms of socio-psychological adaptation to various conditions of the professional and educational environment remain practically unexplored. The task of the present study was to identify informative value-intentional mechanisms of adaptation to the conditions of the military educational environment. <br><strong>Study design. </strong>The process of socio-psychological adaptation of young men to the conditions of a military institute was used as an experimental model. The respondents' value system was assessed in the longitudinal study for three times: upon admission (Stage 1), one month later (Stage 2), and one year after admission (Stage 3) to the institute. The effectiveness of the process of socio-psychological adaptation was determined at the 2nd and 3rd stages of the study. <br><strong>Participants. </strong>120 young men took part in all stages of the study. The respondents were in the same social conditions of the educational military-professional environment during the entire period of the study: their regime of educational activities and leisure, as well as the nature of professional and interpersonal relationships were similar. <br><strong>Measurements. </strong>The S. Schwartz survey was used for the studying of the value system of the individual (“Schwartz Value Survey” (SVS) and “Portrait Value Questionnaire” (PVQ). The multi-level personality survey “Adaptiveness” (A.G. Maklakov, S.V. Chermyanin), methods “Neuro-psychic Adaptation” (I.N. Gurvich) and “Self-assessment of the Psycho-emotional State” SUPOS-8 (O. Mikshek, modified by V.A. Kulganov) were used for assessing of the adaptation efficiency. Statistical data processing was carried out using the SPSS 22.0 program: a statistical analysis of differences was carried out according to the Wilcoxon's <em>T</em>-test and Mann-Whitney <em>U</em>-test; correlation, factorial, regression types of analysis were applied. <br><strong>Results. </strong>It has been established that young men with high and low efficiency of adaptation to the conditions of the military educational environment implement, respectively, group-centric, and egocentric value-intentional strategies of socio-psychological adaptation. Each of these strategies is represented by different value-intentional mechanisms. <br><strong>Conclusions. </strong>The egocentric value-intentional strategy of socio-psychological adaptation among respondents with its low efficiency is implemented by the following mechanisms: an increase in the importance of egocentric motives to the detriment of group-centric ones; restructuring of the value hierarchy at both levels of value representation with increased intentions for sensual pleasures, independence and social dominance; the formation of the value opposition "security-independence" with the equal magnitude of competing motives in it; the emergence of a mismatch between the value-normative and motivational-behavioral levels of value representation. The main mechanisms of the group-centric value-intentional strategy of socio-psychological adaptation among respondents with its high efficiency are: maintaining the stability of the hierarchy of the value system with dominance at all stages of adaptation of attitudes towards safe-friendly and conformal relationships in a social group; restoration by the end of the adaptation process of consistency between the value-normative and motivational-behavioral levels of value representation; the formation of a dynamically stable value opposition "achievement-kindness" with the equal magnitude of the motives involved in it.</p>

Llamas use social information from conspecifics and humans to solve a spatial detour task.

Learning by observing others (i.e. social learning) is an important mechanism to reduce the costs of individual learning. Social learning can occur between conspecifics but also heterospecifics. Domestication processes might have changed the animals' sensitivity to human social cues and recent research indicates that domesticated species are particularly good in learning socially from humans. Llamas (Lama glama) are an interesting model species for that purpose. Llamas were bred as pack animals, which requires close contact and cooperative behaviour towards humans. We investigated whether llamas learn socially from trained conspecifics and humans in a spatial detour task. Subjects were required to detour metal hurdles arranged in a V-shape to reach a food reward. Llamas were more successful in solving the task after both a human and a conspecific demonstrated the task compared to a control condition with no demonstrator. Individual differences in behaviour (i.e. food motivation and distraction) further affected the success rate. Animals did not necessarily use the same route as the demonstrators, thus, indicating that they adopted a more general detour behaviour. These results suggest that llamas can extract information from conspecific and heterospecific demonstrations; hence, broadening our knowledge of domesticated species that are sensitive to human social behaviour.

Does Your Smartphone “Know” Your Social Life? A Methodological Comparison of Day Reconstruction, Experience Sampling, and Mobile Sensing

Mobile sensing is a promising method that allows researchers to directly observe human social behavior in daily life using people’s mobile phones. To date, limited knowledge exists on how well mobile sensing can assess the quantity and quality of social interactions. We therefore examined the agreement among experience sampling, day reconstruction, and mobile sensing in the assessment of multiple aspects of daily social interactions (i.e., face-to-face interactions, calls, and text messages) and the possible unique access to social interactions that each method has. Over 2 days, 320 smartphone users (51% female, age range = 18–80, M = 39.53 years) answered up to 20 experience-sampling questionnaires about their social behavior and reconstructed their days in a daily diary. Meanwhile, face-to-face and smartphone-mediated social interactions were assessed with mobile sensing. The results showed some agreement between measurements of face-to-face interactions and high agreement between measurements of smartphone-mediated interactions. Still, a large number of social interactions were captured by only one of the methods, and the quality of social interactions is still difficult to capture with mobile sensing. We discuss limitations and the unique benefits of day reconstruction, experience sampling, and mobile sensing for assessing social behavior in daily life.

Elevated levels of FMRP-target MAP1B impair human and mouse neuronal development and mouse social behaviors via autophagy pathway

Fragile X messenger ribonucleoprotein 1 protein (FMRP) binds many mRNA targets in the brain. The contribution of these targets to fragile X syndrome (FXS) and related autism spectrum disorder (ASD) remains unclear. Here, we show that FMRP deficiency leads to elevated microtubule-associated protein 1B (MAP1B) in developing human and non-human primate cortical neurons. Targeted MAP1B gene activation in healthy human neurons or MAP1B gene triplication in ASD patient-derived neurons inhibit morphological and physiological maturation. Activation of Map1b in adult male mouse prefrontal cortex excitatory neurons impairs social behaviors. We show that elevated MAP1B sequesters components of autophagy and reduces autophagosome formation. Both MAP1B knockdown and autophagy activation rescue deficits of both ASD and FXS patients’ neurons and FMRP-deficient neurons in ex vivo human brain tissue. Our study demonstrates conserved FMRP regulation of MAP1B in primate neurons and establishes a causal link between MAP1B elevation and deficits of FXS and ASD.

Farmers' land‐use decision‐making: A dynamical modelling approach that integrates qualitative knowledge about social norms into a quantitative model

Abstract The concept of the homo oeconomicus is often used to model human behaviour in economic contexts. However, other factors like tradition or the preference to comply with social norms can play a role in decision‐making processes. To emphasize the need for incorporating non‐pecuniary values in economic models, we use data for participation in several agri‐environment schemes (AES) in Europe and show that dynamical patterns can not be simulated by models using the homo oeconomicus concept. The presented data show gradually increasing participation levels in AES even if payment levels are constant. Furthermore, low participation levels are sometimes observed despite appropriate incentive schemes. We propose and investigate a dynamic mathematical model to implement social norms in farmers' land‐use decision‐making in the face of AES. This socio‐economic model can help to explain the variety of observed behavioural patterns. It can generate multistable dynamics regarding the level of AES participation in the long‐term. We further assume that informative campaigns can modify farmers' perception of norms. Campaigns can have a stabilizing effect if strong enough. The attempt of this work is to gain a better understanding of how the integration of social human behaviour in economic models affects simulation patterns. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Sociobiology Approach in Educational Sociology and Animal Ecology Courses: Learn Social Behavior and Character Building from the Nature

Sociobiology is a science that studies the biological basis of social behavior of animals and humans. The field of sociobiology is closely related to moral education which is important and crucial in the learning process at all levels of education. This research is aimed: (1) to implement the sociobiology approach in educational sociology and animal ecology courses; and (2) to describe the social behavior values that acquired by the students after participating in learning with a sociobiology approach. This research is a descriptive qualitative research. The participants involved in this study consisted of 30 undergraduate students from the Department of Sociology and 25 undergraduate students from the Biology Education Study Program of University of Palangka Raya. Data were collected using questionnaires which were distributed to participants/students during lectures. The social behavior values that acquired by the students are beyond expectations. They are able to have a social perspective on the given animal behavior videos. The values of social behavior obtained by students include: sharing happiness; taking care of each other; tolerance; adaptation; team work; solidarity; friendship; independence; and leadership.

Communication Analysis and Privacy in CAI Based on Data Mining and Federated Learning

Due to the fact that client data do not need to leave the local area, a distributed machine learning framework can aggregate training from several clients while preserving data privacy. In this essay, the development of CAI both domestically and internationally is reviewed and summarized, and the current state of CAI is examined. Communication analysis has so far been a key academic and theoretical area in federated learning, and some theoretical contributions have become the crucial theoretical foundations for understanding, defending, and guiding various human social behaviors. The major objective of knowledge distillation based on model responses is to provide students the ability to rapidly replicate the teacher’s model’s output. The experimental results demonstrate that the optimized Smith Regan model adopts the “Smith Logan” teaching design model, selects the courseware structure and record preservation as the teaching content in the fundamental CAI courseware design, and optimizes the teaching design from the perspectives of learning environment analysis, learner characteristics analysis, etc. Based on this, the model’s accuracy and robustness are increased by 7.34%.

Enumerating happiness index during COVID-19 lockdowns using artificial intelligence techniques

Happiness index is an all-inclusive methodology to assess well-being and happiness aspects of human resilience and sustainability. Pandemic like COVID-19 has brought deep level changes to human lifestyle and social behaviours. The world has been reshaped and life has more than likely changed permanently. This has led to calls for mental health, yet there is a dire need to introspect the mental state of health and behavioural changes. Happiness index is calculated based on factors such as GDP, freedom to make choice, health life expectancy and social support. These factors are analysed using datasets from social media with machine learning algorithms to map human response to the pandemic. This research focuses on use of artificial intelligence on the impact of lockdowns due to COVID-19 on the global happiness index.

Disentangling the rhythms of human activity in the built environment for airborne transmission risk: An analysis of large-scale mobility data.

Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, substantial public attention has focused on the role of seasonality in impacting transmission. Misconceptions have relied on seasonal mediation of respiratory diseases driven solely by environmental variables. However, seasonality is expected to be driven by host social behavior, particularly in highly susceptible populations. A key gap in understanding the role of social behavior in respiratory disease seasonality is our incomplete understanding of the seasonality of indoor human activity. We leverage a novel data stream on human mobility to characterize activity in indoor versus outdoor environments in the United States. We use an observational mobile app-based location dataset encompassing over 5 million locations nationally. We classify locations as primarily indoor (e.g. stores, offices) or outdoor (e.g. playgrounds, farmers markets), disentangling location-specific visits into indoor and outdoor, to arrive at a fine-scale measure of indoor to outdoor human activity across time and space. We find the proportion of indoor to outdoor activity during a baseline year is seasonal, peaking in winter months. The measure displays a latitudinal gradient with stronger seasonality at northern latitudes and an additional summer peak in southern latitudes. We statistically fit this baseline indoor-outdoor activity measure to inform the incorporation of this complex empirical pattern into infectious disease dynamic models. However, we find that the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic caused these patterns to shift significantly from baseline and the empirical patterns are necessary to predict spatiotemporal heterogeneity in disease dynamics. Our work empirically characterizes, for the first time, the seasonality of human social behavior at a large scale with a high spatiotemporal resolutio and provides a parsimonious parameterization of seasonal behavior that can be included in infectious disease dynamics models. We provide critical evidence and methods necessary to inform the public health of seasonal and pandemic respiratory pathogens and improve our understanding of the relationship between the physical environment and infection risk in the context of global change. Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01GM123007.

MYTHICAL BASIS AND POETIC MEANING OF MOTIFS IN ABAY’S POEM «MASGUT»

In the article Abay’s poem «Masgut» is considered in the mythopoetic aspect. The meaning of gifting an apple as the main mythical motif of this poem is analyzed in detail. The motifs associated with the apple in world mythology and Kazakh folklore were collected and compared in the study. Thus, the meaning of the motif in Abay’s poem is taken into account. One of the mythical motifs of the poem «Masgut» is to see harbinger in a dream. The poet attaches importance to the symbols in the core of knowledge, taking the motifs of ancient times as a basis, and takes these symbolic details as an object in representing his artistic purpose. Among the most popular motifs associated with apples, we can mention the fruit of paradise as special apples that grow in the Garden of the Hesperides and the island of Avalon. The scientists emphasize the dual nature of the apple, saying that the word «apple» is given as «fruit» in many motifs. The apple, which is seen as a symbol of love and knowledge, youth and beauty, on the other hand, is a symbol of enmity, misfortune, temptation, evil and other unpleasant and bad deeds. In Abay’s poem apples are given in three colors, and the red apple chosen by the main character has its own characteristics. Another motif in the poem is dreaming. The dream foretells an upcoming event. In Abay’s artistic knowledge these motifs are important because they describe eternal human ideals, humanism, and social behavior with the subtext. The conclusion in the article is made in this context.

Social conformity is associated with inter-trial electroencephalogram variability.

Human society encompasses diverse social influences, and people experience events differently and may behave differently under such influence, including in forming an impression of others. However, little is known about the underlying neural relevance of individual differences in following others' opinions or social norms. In the present study, we designed a series of tasks centered on social influence to investigate the underlying relevance between an individual's degree of social conformity and their neural variability. We found that individual differences under the social influence are associated with the amount of inter-trial electroencephalogram (EEG) variability over multiple stages in a conformity task (making face judgments and receiving social influence). This association was robust in the alpha band over the frontal and occipital electrodes for negative social influence. We also found that inter-trial EEG variability is a very stable, participant-driven internal state measurement and could be interpreted as mindset instability. Overall, these findings support the hypothesis that higher inter-trial EEG variability may be related to higher mindset instability, which makes participants more vulnerable to exposed external social influence. The present study provides a novel approach that considers the stability of one's endogenous neural signal during tasks and links it to human social behaviors.

Evidence for large land snail cooking and consumption at Border Cave c. 170–70 ka ago. Implications for the evolution of human diet and social behaviour

Fragments of land snail (Achatinidae) shell were found at Border Cave in varying proportions in all archaeological members, with the exception of the oldest members 5 WA and 6 BS (>227,000 years ago). They were recovered in relatively high frequencies in Members 4 WA, 4 BS, 1 RGBS and 3 WA. The shell fragments present a range of colours from lustrous beige to brown and matt grey. The colour variability can occur when shell is heated. This possibility was explored here through experimental heating of giant land snail shell fragments (Achatinidae, Metachatina kraussi - brown lipped agate snail) in a muffle furnace from 200 to 550 °C for different lengths of time. Colour change, weight loss, and shattering of the heated samples were recorded. Transformation of aragonite into calcite and the occurrence of organic material was investigated by means of Infrared and Raman spectroscopy. Scanning electron microscopy was also used on selected specimens to help identify heat-induced transformation as opposed to taphonomic alteration. The identification on archaeological fragments of features produced by experimentally heating shells at high temperatures or for long periods has led us, after discarding alternative hypotheses, to conclude that large African land snails were systematically brought to the site by humans, roasted and consumed, starting from 170,000 years ago and, more intensively between 160,000 and 70,000 years ago. Border Cave is at present the earliest known site at which this subsistence strategy is recorded. Previous research has shown that charred whole rhizomes and fragments of edible Hypoxis angustifolia were also brought to Border Cave to be roasted and shared at the site. Thus, evidence from both the rhizomes and snails in Border Cave supports an interpretation of members of the group provisioning others at a home base, which gives us a glimpse into the complex social life of early Homo sapiens.

Cross-Cultural Pragmatics and Conceptual Metaphor Theory: The Translation of Idiomatic Expressions

Pragmatics is a field of linguistics that observes the use of language as a social human behaviour and examines how linguistic features and contextual influences interact in translation studies. Cross-cultural pragmatics emphasizes the necessity of examining discourses on the basis of cultural context. Interpreting the translated text at the cross-cultural pragmatics level and examining cognitive processes are common areas of translation studies and pragmatics. For this reason, it is known that this field brings a new perspective to translation studies in terms of contextual meaning creation, reception, interpretation and analysis. Translation and interpretation of idiomatic expressions is one of the most problematic areas for the translator since s/he has to work as a bilateral negotiator on the basis of cross-cultural influences in both the source language and the target language. At this point, the Conceptual Metaphor Theory that guides the translator enables us to see language and translation studies as a field of social practice by analysing the similarities and differences between cultures. In this context, the main purpose of this study is to examine the problems experienced during the translation of idiomatic expressions and to focus on the similarities and differences between metaphorical conceptualizations of both languages (English and Turkish) on the basis of cross-cultural pragmatics. Thus, some translation examples taken from an authentic source are presented in order to show how metaphor is handled in translation. In these examples, how translators handle metaphorical expressions is discussed on the basis of conceptual metaphor theory in terms of similarities and differences between languages.

On the relationship between the social brain, social connectedness, and wellbeing.

The emergence of social neuroscience in the past two decades has offered a useful neurocognitive framework for understanding human social behavior. Of importance, social neuroscience research aimed to provide mechanistic explanations for the established link between wellbeing and social behavioral phenomena-particularly those reflective of social connectedness. Here, we provide an overview of the relevant literature focusing on recent work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In general, fMRI research demonstrated that aspects of social connectedness that are known to either positively (e.g., social acceptance) or negatively (e.g., social isolation) impact wellbeing also modulated the activity of subcortical reward system accordingly. Similar modulatory influence was found for the activity of other brain regions such as the medial prefrontal cortex, which are typically regarded as components of the "social brain" that support a wide range of functions related to social cognition and behavior. Elucidating such individual differences in brain activity may shed light onto the neural underpinnings of the link between social connectedness and wellbeing.