Social Affective Neuroscience Research Articles

Brain Networks Supporting Social Cognition in Dementia

This review examines the literature during the past 5 years (2015–2020) as it describes the contribution of three key intrinsically connected networks (ICN) to the social cognition changes that occur in various dementia syndromes. The salience network (SN) is selectively vulnerable in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), and underpins changes in socioemotional sensitivity, attention, and engagement, with specific symptoms resulting from altered connectivity with the insula, amygdala, and medial pulvinar of the thalamus. Personalized hedonic evaluations of social and emotional experiences and concepts are made via the anterior temporofrontal semantic appraisal network (SAN), selectively vulnerable in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). Recent research supports this network’s role in engendering empathic accuracy by providing precision to socioemotional concepts via hedonic tuning. The default mode network (DMN), focally affected in Alzheimer’s disease syndrome (AD), supports social cognition by providing context from learned experiences to generate more accurate inferences about others’ thoughts, emotions, and intentions. The focal breakdown of these normal canonical intrinsically connected brain networks during neurodegeneration sheds light on disease processes as well as on important mechanisms involved in healthy socioemotional functioning, thus contributing important insights to the larger field of social affective neuroscience.

Physical activity as a model for health neuroscience

Health neuroscience is a new interdisciplinary field that combines theories and techniques from health psychology and cognitive and social-affective neuroscience in order to understand how the brain affects and is affected by health behaviors. Physical activity (PA) research can serve as a useful model for various ways in which the brain can be incorporated into health neuroscience studies to better understand variability in the adoption and maintenance of, as well as benefits gained from, health behaviors. Here, we summarize evidence linking PA to brain and cognitive performance from studies conceptualizing the brain as either an outcome or mediator of cognitive change. We then discuss an emerging body of studies using a brain as a predictor approach. We discuss how studies using this approach complement existing PA studies and provide insight into a major source of variability in the outcomes of PA interventions, above and beyond the variability accounted for by known biological and demographic moderators. A more complete understanding of the bidirectional relationships between brain and behaviors, such as PA, could provide valuable insight into how to tailor interventions to optimally affect individuals, identify key barriers, and inform the development of novel policies to promote public health.

Cross Cultural Validation and Extension of the Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms (CAINS) in the Chinese Context: Evidence from a Spectrum Perspective.

The Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms (CAINS) was designed in accordance with the recent theory and research in social affective neuroscience and to address the psychometric and conceptual limitations of other instruments assessing negative symptoms. The present study aimed to provide a large-scale validation of the CAINS in China and examine its applicability and validity evidence across the schizophrenia spectrum. Using confirmatory factor analysis, our results replicated the original findings in the US development samples that the CAINS possesses a stable 2-factor structure, namely "motivation/pleasure" and "expression". We also found significant correlations between the CAINS and other negative symptom measures. The CAINS demonstrated good discriminant validity in differentiating negative symptoms in people with schizophrenia, nonpsychotic first-degree relatives and people with social anhedonia. People with schizophrenia exhibited significantly higher CAINS subscale scores than first-degree relatives and healthy controls. In addition, first-degree relatives had higher "motivation/pleasure" scores than healthy controls. The "motivation/pleasure" subscale scores of individuals with social anhedonia were also significantly higher than healthy controls.

Embodied Brains, Social Minds, Cultural Meaning

Social-affective neuroscience is revealing that human brain development is inherently social—our very nature is organized by nurture. To explore the implications for human development and education, we present a series of interdisciplinary studies documenting individual and cultural variability in the neurobiological correlates of emotional feelings. From these studies, we derive educational research hypotheses and a theoretical framework that facilitates integrating sociocultural and neurobiological levels of analysis. Our overarching aim is to begin to conceptualize a role for neurobiological evidence in educational studies of sociality, emotion, culture, and identity. Overcoming the historical distance between educational and neuroscientific research on social-affective development would enable a more complete science of human experience and enhance appreciation of cultural learning, benefiting both fields.

Steady-state visual evoked potentials as a research tool in social affective neuroscience.

Like many other primates, humans place a high premium on social information transmission and processing. One important aspect of this information concerns the emotional state of other individuals, conveyed by distinct visual cues such as facial expressions, overt actions, or by cues extracted from the situational context. A rich body of theoretical and empirical work has demonstrated that these socioemotional cues are processed by the human visual system in a prioritized fashion, in the service of optimizing social behavior. Furthermore, socioemotional perception is highly dependent on situational contexts and previous experience. Here, we review current issues in this area of research and discuss the utility of the steady-state visual evoked potential (ssVEP) technique for addressing key empirical questions. Methodological advantages and caveats are discussed with particular regard to quantifying time-varying competition among multiple perceptual objects, trial-by-trial analysis of visual cortical activation, functional connectivity, and the control of low-level stimulus features. Studies on facial expression and emotional scene processing are summarized, with an emphasis on viewing faces and other social cues in emotional contexts, or when competing with each other. Further, because the ssVEP technique can be readily accommodated to studying the viewing of complex scenes with multiple elements, it enables researchers to advance theoretical models of socioemotional perception, based on complex, quasinaturalistic viewing situations.

The In-Out dispositional affective style questionnaire (IN-OUT DASQ): an exploratory factorial analysis

The issue of individual differences has always been an important area of research in psychology and, more recently, neuroimaging. A major source of interindividual variability stems from differences in basic affective dispositions. In order to make a contribution to this field of research, we have developed a new type of assessment – the In-Out dispositional affective style questionnaire (IN-OUT DASQ) – to measure the proneness between two different ways of feeling situated: a predominantly body-bound one in the case of the inward tendency and an externally anchored one in the case of the outward tendency (Arciero and Bondolfi, 2009). The IN-OUT DASQ contains two scales of seven items each, Self-centric engagement (SCE) and Other-centric engagement (OCE), as a disposition index for inwardness and outwardness respectively. The exploratory factor analysis in sample 1 (n = 292) confirmed a two-factor solution. Confirmatory factor analysis in sample 2 (n = 300) showed the good fit of this two-factor model. Next, we examined construct validity also investigating the correlations between the IN-OUT DASQ, the Big Five Questionnaire and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule in sample 3 (n = 153). The SCE and OCE scales had robust internal consistency and reliability, though the capacity to discriminate higher inward and outward participants was stronger in SCE. Although further validation research is required, the present study suggests the IN-OUT DASQ has the potential to be a measurement tool for detecting individual differences in social behavior and social affective neuroscience.

Innovative approaches to the study of social phenotypes in neurodevelopmental disorders: an introduction to the research topic

The field of social-affective neuroscience is growing exponentially, fueled by the availability and widespread use of non-invasive neuroimaging techniques, by advances in molecular genetics and by increasing sophistication in the behavioral characterization of social-affective functioning in both typical and atypical human development. In this context there has been a surge of interest in studying neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) as possible windows into the neurogenetic basis of the “social mind”. While holding great promise for advancing our understanding of genotype-phenotype relationships, research on neurogenetic disorders has encountered considerable challenges, ranging from the rarity of many NDDs with known genetic etiology and the considerable heterogeneity in phenotypic expressions within syndromes, to the difficulty of designing studies able to take in account the critical role played by developmental and epigenetic processes in shaping phenotypic outcomes. The articles collected in this e-book illustrate several ways in which researchers who study people with NDDs have attempted to overcome these limitations.

Sensitivity to posed and genuine displays of happiness and sadness: A fMRI study

The ability to distinguish posed from genuine facial displays of emotion and to act accordingly is a fundamental social skill. To investigate the neural correlates underpinning this sensitivity, we compared changes in brain activity associated with judging posed and genuine facial displays of happiness and sadness using fMRI. Photographs of displays were presented to 7 right-handed females who judged whether the person was feeling the target emotion and made yes/no responses. Results showed activity increases during the observation of genuine compared to posed happy displays in the left medial superior frontal gyrus (BA 9) and the middle cingulate cortex bilaterally (BAs 24 and 31). The same comparison for sad displays showed increased activity in the left medial superior frontal gyrus (BA 8), and in the right middle and triangular inferior frontal gyri (both BA 46). Participants who exhibited higher sensitivity to sad displays showed larger activity difference in the left medial superior frontal gyrus (BA 8). The present study provides evidence of differential neural activity when judging posed versus genuine facial displays of emotions. Further research is required to elucidate how this might impact social affective neuroscience and in what ways genuine facial displays can enhance our understanding of emotion perception.