Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is marked by intense fear of social situations and negative evaluation. This study investigated neural effects of SAD-specific imagery scripts and their relationships with Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation (BFNE).

Thirty-six SAD and 32 healthy controls underwent four five-minute fMRI runs: anxiety-provoking imagery, rest, relaxing imagery, and rest. The order of imageries was counterbalanced. Functional connectivity analysis and connectome-based predictive modeling with respect to BFNE were performed using six seed regions, including the bilateral amygdala, left hypothalamus, bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), left ventromedial PFC (VMPFC), and left posterior cingulate cortex (PCC).

Group × task interaction effects were found in connectivity of left amygdala-right cerebellum, left PCC-bilateral superior frontal gyrus, and left PCC-right posterior middle temporal gyrus, and group × engagement effects were discovered in left hypothalamus-bilateral DMPFC and left VMPFC-right DMPFC couplings. Group × task × engagement interactions highlighted aberrant functional connections of right amygdala-left VMPFC, DMPFC-left DLPFC, and left VMPFC-bilateral supplementary motor area in SAD. Patterns of connectivity predicted the BFNE scores in various segments of imagery conditions.

Patient's medication, physiological measures were not considered. Noisy nature of fMRI could have interfered participants from focusing.

Our results revealed disrupted functional connections associated with emotion dysregulation and overly self-referent thinking in SAD. Markedly, patients showed maladaptive responses related to relaxation-inducing blocks, challenging the expected relaxation response. Overall findings emphasized inappropriate engagements of various processes in relaxing circumstances that do not overtly involve social anxiety to be associated with symptomatology.

Homeostasis is a fundamental concept in biology and ensures the stability of life by maintaining the constancy of physiological processes. Recent years have witnessed a surge in research interest in these physiological processes, with a growing focus on understanding the mechanisms underlying social homeostasis. This shift in focus underscores our increasing understanding of the importance of social interactions and their impact on individual well-being. In this review, we explore the interconnected research across 3 primary categories: understanding the neural mechanisms influencing set points, defining contemporary factors that can disrupt social homeostasis, and identifying the potential contributions of social homeostatic failure in the development of psychiatric diseases. We also delve into the role of the prefrontal cortex and its circuitry in regulating social behavior, decision-making processes, and the manifestation of neuropsychiatric disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Finally, we examine the influence of more recent factors such as growing social media exposure and the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, highlighting their disruptive effects. We also identify gaps in current literature through the analysis of research trends and propose future research directions to advance our understanding of social homeostasis, with implications for mental health interventions.

Behavioral studies indicate that adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are associated with altered empathic responding, but the neural mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. Given the significance of empathy in contexts marred by historical conflict and systemic inequality, work on these mechanisms is particularly important in such contexts. The current study extends previous work by (1) examining associations of different dimensions of ACE with volumetric change in empathy-related circuitry, (2) distinguishing between trait and state empathy, and (3) including perceived discrimination as an additional psychosocial stressor. Thirty-nine healthy South African adults from the general population (Mage = 40.6 years) underwent 3 T MRI. FreeSurfer v6.0 was used to extract predefined volumes subserving empathy. Results showed that childhood abuse and perceived discrimination were associated with reduced state empathic concern, whereas childhood neglect was associated with reduced trait cognitive empathy. Childhood abuse was furthermore associated with volumetric increases in frontolimbic (hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)) and neocortical (superior frontal and temporal) regions subserving affective and cognitive empathy, and uniquely mediated the relationship between ACC volume and perceived discrimination. The association of ACE with altered empathic responding may thus be underpinned by specific circuitry reflective of adversity type, with childhood abuse contributing to heightened responsivity to socioemotional cues.

Older adults are at higher risk of losing a loved one, with approximately 10 % developing prolonged grief disorder (PGD) after loss. PGD is characterized by distressing and impairing symptoms, reduced life quality, and increased suicide risk. While attentional processes may contribute to PGD pathophysiology, the rostral (rACC) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) appear to play different yet complementary roles in attention in the bereavement context. However, the respective contributions of the connectivity of these two regions in PGD symptom severity have never been evaluated. This study investigated the associations between PGD symptom severity and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the rACC and dACC.

Resting-state fMRI scans were collected from N = 81 older adults who experienced loss >1 year prior, along with the inventory of complicated grief (ICG). Seed-based voxel-wise rsFC analysis was performed to investigate associations between ICG total scores and rsFC for the rACC and dACC.

Higher ICG scores were associated with increased rsFC between the rACC and left frontal areas and right rACC, and between the dACC and clusters in the posterior cingulate and parietal cortex. Individuals with probable PGD (ICG ≥ 30) exhibited greater increases in dACC-parietal cortex rsFC than those without (ICG < 30).

PGD symptom severity in bereaved older adults was associated with disruptions in rsFC patterns within and between brain regions related to impaired emotion regulation, memory processing, and attentional biases in grief, with stronger changes in individuals with probable PGD. These brain regions might serve as targets for future treatment development efforts.

Functional constipation (FCon) is a prevalent common functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs) frequently linked to mental and psychological disorders. Although previous studies have demonstrated alterations in brain structure and function in FCon, there remains a lack of investigation into the network-level structural inter-relationships (e.g., structural covariance) within key regions such as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). This study aimed to investigate whether gray matter volume (GMV) covariance in OFC subregions is selectively disrupted in FCon patients. A cohort of 87 patients with FCon and 87 healthy controls (HC) underwent high-resolution structural MRI scans. The GMV covariance was analyzed using voxel-based morphometry, and the covariance patterns between OFC subregions and other brain regions were examined using a general linear model. FCon patients demonstrated selective alterations in GMV covariance, notably within the lateral and medial OFC subregions, which showed altered covariance with brain regions associated with sensory, motor, and cognitive control functions, including the olfactory cortex, supplementary motor area, insula, and superior frontal gyrus. Our findings indicate that FCon patients show specific GMV covariance alterations in the OFC subregions, suggesting that these structural changes may be associated with disrupted brain-gut interactions and gastrointestinal dysfunction in patients with functional constipation, though the complex and bidirectional nature of gut-brain communication warrants further investigation.

Emotions are essential in everyday human functioning, yet accurately perceiving them is a complex task. Emotional cues originating from multiple sensory modalities need to be efficiently integrated to form holistic percepts. This process, known as emotional multisensory integration (eMSI), involves the recruitment of multiple brain regions and has been shown to enhance emotion perception. The present scoping review provides an updated and exhaustive overview of the current literature on brain regions underlying eMSI. In total, 12 relevant studies were identified for inclusion across four academic databases. Most included studies employed audio-visual paradigms, examined the integration of happy and angry emotional cues, and utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify brain regions involved in eMSI. Findings support that brain regions underlying both multisensory (e.g., thalamus, posterior superior temporal sulcus/gyrus) and emotional integration (e.g., fusiform gyrus, medial temporal gyrus) interact to enhance eMSI, leading to improved emotion detection. A need for additional research was also identified due to a lack of diverse populations, sensory combinations, and emotions investigated, as well as methodological issues identified across included studies. Future research should aim to expand its focus to address these underexplored areas, thereby advancing our understanding of eMSI.

Navigating social environments is a fundamental challenge for the brain. It has been established that the brain solves this problem, in part, by representing social information in an agent-centric manner; knowledge about others' abilities or attitudes is tagged to individuals such as 'oneself' or the 'other'1-6. This intuitive approach has informed the understanding of key nodes in the social parts of the brain, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)7-9. However, the patterns or combinations in which individuals might interact with one another is as important as the identities of the individuals. Here, in four studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging, behavioural experiments and a social group decision-making task, we show that the dmPFC and ACC represent the combinatorial possibilities for social interaction afforded by a given situation, and that they do so in a compressed format resembling the basis functions used in spatial, visual and motor domains10-12. The basis functions align with social interaction types, as opposed to individual identities. Our results indicate that there are deep analogies between abstract neural coding schemes in the visual and motor domain and the construction of our sense of social identity.

This study presents an interaction-centric framework for analytically investigating brain-to-brain dynamics during eye contact, advancing beyond the traditional spectator model. The foundation of the interactor approach is to delineate the interaction. To achieve this, simultaneous brain activity engaged in eye contact was captured using hyperscanning fMRI. The BOLD responses were first divided into eye-to-eye reciprocal interaction and eye-to-face non-reciprocal communication based on the experimental design; then the reciprocal interaction response was further differentiated into sensory-based (exogenous) and mind-based (endogenous) components to characterize agentic interaction. The proposed interactor approach not only determines interaction from dyadic brain states but also computes emergent interactive brain states arising from the interaction. To achieve these, reciprocal interactive fMRI responses were quantified into an interaction matrix, from which interaction-induced communication channels were identified using Correspondence Analysis, and information flow within those channels was measured with Mutual Information. The advantage of the interactor approach is its ability to reveal emergent dyadic brain states that a spectator approach cannot fully unravel. When applied to parent-child eye contact, this method confirmed existing developmental findings, clarified previous inconsistencies, and uncovered new insights into how reciprocal social engagement shapes brain function.

Empathy can be elicited by physiological pain, as well as in social contexts. Although physiological and different social contexts induce a strong subjective experience of empathy, the general and context-specific neural representations remain elusive. Here, it is combined fMRI with multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to establish neurofunctional models for social pain triggered by observing social exclusion and separation naturistic stimuli. The findings revealed that both social contexts engaged the empathy and social function networks. Notably, the intensity of pain empathy elicited by these two social stimuli does not significantly differentiate the neural representations of social exclusion and separation, suggesting context-specific neural representations underlying these experiences. Furthermore, this study established a model that traces the progression from physiological pain to social pain empathy. In conclusion, this study revealed the neural pathological foundations and interconnectedness of empathy induced by social and physiological stimuli and provide robust neuromarkers to precisely evaluate empathy across physiological and social domains.

Laughter can convey social intent ranging from acceptance (friendly inclusive laughter) to rejection (malign taunting laughter). We investigated perception of auditory and visual laughter in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) versus healthy controls (HC). 48 MDD patients and 52 HC rated 60 laughter recordings presented auditorily or visually regarding the expressed social intent during an fMRI experiment at 3T. Depression severity was assessed based on questionnaires. MDD patients rated the perceived social intent of the laughter significantly more negative than HC across both modalities. The individual magnitude of this negativity bias of social intent attribution significantly correlated with both depression severity as well as activation in anteromedial prefrontal cortex (AMPFC) during perception of auditory laughter. MDD patients also exhibited a significantly reduced activation in AMPFC and depression severity partially mediated effects on rating of auditory laughter as evidenced by mediation analysis. Our results demonstrate altered perception of social intent expressed by laughter in MDD. Neuroimaging data point to the AMPFC for mediation of this effect as its activity was correlated with both depression severity and a negative attribution bias during perception of auditory laughter. Furthermore, at group level activity in this area was reduced in MDD patients.

Social dominance hierarchy is considered an influential factor on cognitive performance. The spatial working memory (SWM) is inversely related to dominance status after the formation of social hierarchy. However, their neural underpinings are poorly understood. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and ventral hippocampus (vHPC) play pivotal roles in social hierarchy and SWM. To investigate the associations between social hierarchy and SWM and their neural circuit (mPFC-vHPC), we used twenty one natal male Wistar rats after weaning (3 rats per cage, 7 cages in total). In the 9th postnatal week, the tube test was started to determine the relative social rank in each cage (dominant, middle-ranked, subordinate). One month after living in the hierarchy, we implanted electrodes in mPFC and vHPC. One week following recovery, the SWM test was performed using T-maze with two difficulty levels (30s and 5min delays between trials) while recording the local field potentials. The percentage of correct responses showed no significant difference among three different social groups. However, subordinates demonstrated significantly lower latency in reaching the goal arm, while middle-ranked rats exhibited the longest latency in 30s delay. Electrophysiological data revealed significantly higher theta correlation and coherence of the mPFC-vHPC circuit in subordinates. Although theta rhythm synchronization was reduced in all social ranks by increasing task difficulty, the subordinates maintained better task performance and less reduction of theta coherence. These findings underscore the association between social hierarchy and working memory performance within the mPFC-vHPC circuit, highlighting the influence of social rank on implicated circuit.

Artificial intelligence (AI) driven chatbots provide instant feedback to support learning. Yet, the impacts of different feedback types on behavior and brain activation remain underexplored. We investigated how metacognitive, affective, and neutral feedback from an educational chatbot affected learning outcomes and brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Students receiving metacognitive feedback showed higher transfer scores, greater metacognitive sensitivity, and increased brain activation in the frontopolar area and middle temporal gyrus compared to other feedback types. Such activation correlated with metacognitive sensitivity. Students receiving affective feedback showed better retention scores than those receiving neutral feedback, along with higher activation in the supramarginal gyrus. Students receiving neutral feedback exhibited higher activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex than other feedback types. The machine learning model identified key brain regions that predicted transfer scores. These findings underscore the potential of diverse feedback types in enhancing learning via human-chatbot interaction, and provide neurophysiological signatures.

Substance use disorder (SUD) has been linked with social impairments. The social cognitive dysfunctions can further increase the risk of the development of SUD or relapse. Therefore, understanding the neural mechanism of substance exposure-associated social impairments is beneficial for the development of novel prevention or treatment strategies for SUD. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a key brain region involved in both social cognition and drug addiction. Specifically, the prelimbic part of PFC (PrL) regulates social interaction and heroin-seeking behavior. Therefore, in this study, we explored how PFC excitatory neurons respond to social stimuli after prolonged abstinence from heroin self-administration (SA). Using fiber photometry calcium imaging, we monitored calcium-dependent fluorescent signals in PrL CaMKII-expressing neurons during drug seeking and social interaction tests following 14 days of abstinence from heroin SA. We found that GCaMP6f signals in PrL CaMKII-expressing neurons were increased when heroin-associated cues were presented during drug-seeking tests in both male and female mice after prolonged heroin abstinence, although the baseline neuronal activity in home cage is lower in the heroin group. Conversely, the calcium signals in PrL CaMKII-expressing neurons during social investigation were decreased after heroin abstinence in both sexes, along with reduced total social interaction time. In addition, drug-seeking behavior is partially negatively correlated with social investigation time. These findings provide direct evidence showing that opioid exposure impairs the PFC functional response to social stimuli, which may potentially increase the risk for opioid relapse.

Neurologic impairment is common in patients with acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. While patients with severe COVID have a higher prevalence of neurologic symptoms, as many as one in five patients with mild COVID may also be affected, exhibiting impaired memory as well as other cognitive dysfunctions.

To characterize the effect of COVID on the brain, the current study recruited a group of adults with post-COVID cognitive complaints but with mild, non-hospitalized cases. They were then evaluated through formal neuropsychological testing and underwent functional MRI of the brain. The participants in our study performed nearly as expected for cognitively intact individuals. Additionally, we characterized the functional connectivity of the default mode network (DMN), which is known for cognitive functions including memory as well as the attention functions involved in normal aging and degenerative diseases.

Along with the retention of functional connectivity in the DMN, our results found the DMN to be associated with neurocognitive performance through region-of-interest and whole-brain analyses. The connectivity between key nodes of the DMN was positively correlated with cognitive scores (r = 0.51, p = 0.02), with higher performers exhibiting higher DMN connectivity.

Our findings provide neuroimaging evidence of the functional connectivity of brain networks among individuals experiencing cognitive deficits beyond the recovery of mild COVID. These imaging outcomes indicate expected functional trends in the brain, furthering understanding and guidance of the DMN and neurocognitive deficits in patients recovering from COVID.

This study aims to determine if the six different types of communication (Directive, Imaginative, Reflective, Persuasive, Harmonizing, Promoting), as presented in the Process Communication Model, correlate with a respective neural pathway. Participants were 30 medical students with no past medical history. They underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while watching videos typical of each communication type. By comparing each of the six experimental conditions with all the other ones, common activations were detected in the core memory network. Assertive communication styles (Directive, Imaginative) generated activations in conflict detection and resolution related areas, with a predominance in the frontal lobe. Emotive communication (Harmonizing, Promoting) highlighted activations associated with the interpretation of social and emotional cues, with a temporo-occipital predominance. There were no significant activations for the Reflective and Persuasive channel, the two channels that were most coherent with the subjects' base patterns and communication. This study indicated that out of the six communication types that were analyzed, four have a specific and congruous underlying cerebral process. This shows that neural response patterns vary across different communication styles, reflecting differences in cognitive and emotional processing.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by repetitive behaviors, social deficits, and cognitive impairments. Maternal use of valproic acid (VPA) during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of ASD in offspring. The prevailing pathophysiological hypothesis for ASD involves excitation/inhibition (E/I) imbalances and serotonergic dysfunction. Here, we investigated the association between glutamatergic-serotonergic neuronal interactions and ASD-like behaviors in mice exposed to prenatal VPA. Prenatal VPA exposure induced excessive repetitive self-grooming behavior and impaired social behavior and object recognition memory in young adult period. Prenatal VPA mice showed hyper-glutamatergic function (increase in basal extracellular glutamate levels and CaMKII phosphorylation) and hypo-serotonergic function (decrease in 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid and stimulation-induced serotonin [5-HT] release, but an increase in 5-HT transporter expression) in the prefrontal cortex. Treatment with a low-affinity NMDA receptor antagonist (memantine), a selective 5-HT reuptake inhibitor (fluoxetine), and a 5-HT1A receptor agonist (tandospirone) attenuated both the increase in CaMKII phosphorylation and ASD-like behavior of prenatal VPA mice. Opto-genetic activation of the serotonergic neuronal system attenuated impairments in social behavior and object recognition memory in prenatal VPA mice. WAY-100635-a 5-HT1A receptor antagonist-antagonized the effect of fluoxetine on impaired social behavior and object recognition memory. These results suggest that E/I imbalance and ASD-like behavior are associated with hypo-serotonergic receptor signaling through 5-HT1A receptors in prenatal VPA mice.

Mounting evidence suggests the human hippocampal formation (HF) maps how different people's attributes relate to each other. Yet, it's unclear if hippocampal map-like knowledge representations of other people are shaped by self-knowledge. Here, we test if a prominent heuristic involving an implicit reliance on self-knowledge when rating others, egocentric anchoring-and-adjustment, is present in the HF when relational information about different social entities is retrieved. Participants first provided likelihood ratings of partaking in everyday activities for themselves, fictitious individuals, and familiar social groups. During a neuroimaging task that doesn't require using self-knowledge, participants then learned a stranger's preference for an activity relative to one of the fictitious individuals and inferred how the stranger's preference related to the groups' preferences. Isolating the neural representation of egocentric anchoring when retrieving relational social knowledge, the HF and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) represented group entities' preferences relative to the self. Furthermore, the HF selectively represented group identity over other learned entities, confirming the HF was primarily engaged by social comparisons in the more ample map-like reference frame. Taken together, these results imply that self-knowledge implicitly influences how the HF learns about others.

Research in developmental psychology suggests that self-concept formation and mentalizing capacities, along with their neural foundations, show significant developmental change during adolescence. Perspective-taking tendencies are also believed to increase in adolescence, supporting the refinement of prosocial behavior and the demands of increasingly complex social relationships. To explore the development of, and relationship between, these processes in adolescence, early adolescent girls (N = 172) completed a measure of perspective-taking tendencies and a self-evaluation fMRI task at two waves, approximately 18 months apart (mean ages = 11.62 and 13.20, respectively). In line with our hypothesis, perspective-taking tendencies were positively associated with age. Greater perspective-taking tendencies were also associated with a more prosocial, and less antisocial, self-concept. In addition, dmPFC activity increased with age, but this did not survive correction for multiple comparisons across all mentalizing regions. Post hoc analyses also showed that an increase in perspective-taking tendencies across waves was significantly associated with activity in parts of the precuneus at wave 2. Finally, while we did not observe cross-variable coupling, our Bivariate Latent Change Score model showed that lower perspective-taking tendencies at wave 1 were associated with greater latent change in this variable (and the same was true for mean activity in mentalizing brain regions).

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability worldwide, with available treatments often showing limited efficacy. Recent research suggests that targeting specific subtypes of depression and understanding the underlying brain mechanisms can improve treatment outcomes. This study investigates the potential of the potassium KCNQ (Kv7) channel opener ezogabine to modulate the resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) of the brain's reward circuitry and alleviate depressive symptoms, including anhedonia, a core feature of MDD.

A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial in individuals with MDD ages 18 to 65 years compared daily dosing with ezogabine (n= 19) with placebo (n = 21) for 5 weeks. Functional magnetic resonance imaging assessed RSFC of the brain's key reward regions (ventral caudate, nucleus accumbens) at baseline and posttreatment. Clinical symptoms were measured using the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS), Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), and other clinical symptom scales.

Ezogabine significantly reduced RSFC between the reward seeds and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)/precuneus compared with placebo, which was associated with a reduction in depression severity. Improvements in anhedonia (SHAPS) and depressive symptoms (MADRS) with ezogabine compared with placebo were also associated with decreased connectivity between the reward seeds and mid/posterior cingulate regions (midcingulate cortex, PCC, precuneus).

The findings suggest that ezogabine's antidepressant effects are mediated through modulation of striatal-mid/posterior cingulate connectivity, indicating a potential therapeutic mechanism for KCNQ-targeted drugs for MDD and anhedonia. Future studies should validate these results in larger trials.

This narrative review aims to identify and summarize existing research to better understand the pathophysiological and neuroanatomical bases of social cognition deficits in people with epilepsy. The neuroanatomical basis of social cognition was primarily examined in healthy subjects. In healthy individuals, social cognition is supported by a complex network of interconnected brain regions. Facial emotion recognition relies on a distributed set of structures, including the occipitotemporal neocortex, the temporoparietal and prefrontal areas, and the putamen with a pivotal role of the amygdala. Theory of mind primarily involves the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction, while empathy engages the anterior insular and cingulate cortices. In people with epilepsy, most functional neuroimaging studies have focused on facial emotion recognition, primarily in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. Nevertheless, across various domains of social cognition, abnormal activations and disrupted connectivity within social cognition networks are consistently observed, regardless of the focus location. Aberrant connectivity has also been noted in the few studies involving patients with generalized epilepsy. In focal epilepsy, the amygdala remains a central region for facial emotion recognition, irrespective of whether the epilepsy is localized to the temporal or frontal lobes. For theory of mind studies, regions typically identified in healthy individuals, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, exhibit either hyperactivation or reduced activation in people with focal epilepsy, complicating interpretation. In the domain of empathy, a study involving patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy reported decreased activation in core regions commonly identified in healthy individuals, particularly the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula. The limited data available in the literature suggest that key regions shared between social cognition and epilepsy networks consistently contribute to these disruptions and may serve as potential targets for future neuromodulation interventions.

Human social functioning is thought to rely on the action observation network (AON) and the mentalizing system (MS). It is debated whether AON and MS are functionally separate or if they interact. To this end, we combined resting-state connectivity with task-based fMRI to characterize the functional connectome within and between these systems. In detail, we computed resting-state connectivity within and between the AON and MS using single subject-defined regions of interest (ROIs). Our results showed a positive coupling between ROIs within each system and negative coupling between the two systems, supporting the existence of two independent networks at rest. Still, two regions (pSTS, aIFG) showed hybrid coupling, connecting with regions of both systems, suggesting that they might mediate cross-network communication. This characterization of the interplay between MS and AON in the healthy brain might provide the starting point to further investigate aberrant "connectivity" fingerprints associated with neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by impairments in social cognition.

Nowadays, there is a broad range of methods for detecting and evaluating executive dysfunction ranging from clinical interview to neuropsychological evaluation. Nevertheless, a critical issue of these assessments is the lack of correspondence of the neuropsychological test's results with real-world functioning. This paper proposes serious games as a new framework to improve the neuropsychological assessment of real-world functioning. We briefly discuss the contribution and limitations of current methods of evaluation of executive dysfunction (paper-and-pencil tests, naturalistic observation methods, and Information and Communications Technologies) to inform on daily life functioning. Then, we analyze what are the limitations of these methods to predict real-world performance: (1) A lack of appropriate instruments to investigate the complexity of real-world functioning, (2) the vast majority of neuropsychological tests assess well-structured tasks, and (3) measurement of behaviors are based on simplistic data collection and statistical analysis. This work shows how serious games offer an opportunity to develop more efficient tools to detect executive dysfunction in everyday life contexts. Serious games provide meaningful narrative stories and virtual or real environments that immerse the user in natural and social environments with social interactions. In those highly interactive game environments, the player needs to adapt his/her behavioral performance to novel and ill-structured tasks which are suited for collecting user interaction evidence. Serious games offer a novel opportunity to develop better tools to improve diagnosis of the executive dysfunction in everyday life contexts. However, more research is still needed to implement serious games in everyday clinical practice.

Positive emotions determine individual well-being and sustainable social relationships. Here, we examined the neural processes mediating upregulation of positive social emotions using functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy female volunteers. We identified brain regions engaged in upregulation of positive social emotions and applied a parametric empirical Bayes approach to isolate modulated network connectivity patterns and assess how these effects relate to individual measures of social perception. Our findings indicate that upregulation of positive social emotions shapes the functional interplay between affective valuation and cognitive control functions. We revealed a selective increase of bilateral posterior ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) activity and attenuation of activity in right anterior vlPFC under control influences from more superior prefrontal regions. We also found that individual perception of sociality modulates connectivity between affective and social networks. This study expands our understanding of neural circuits required to balance positive emotions in social situations and their rehabilitative potential.

Perceived social support is recognized as a critical protective factor against the development of mental health disorders. Anxiety disorders are the most common group of mental health disorders and have a substantial impact on individuals' well-being. Despite extensive research on anxiety and perceived social support, a significant gap exists in our understanding of the neural mechanisms linking these two phenomena. While several brain regions, including the amygdala, hippocampus, and insula, have been implicated in anxiety regulation and social support processing, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) emerges as a particularly intriguing structure due to its central role in emotional regulation and social processing.Here, we hypothesize that the mPFC serves as a potential neural substrate mediating the relationship between anxiety and perceived social support. To support our hypothesis, we conducted a literature search in the PubMed database using a systematic Boolean search strategy. In total, 43 articles met our inclusion criteria. The reviewed studies suggest that the mPFC may play an essential role in regulating the effect of perceived social support on anxiety levels. The evidence indicates that individuals with higher levels of perceived social support may exhibit enhanced regulatory control over anxiety-related processes, with the mPFC mediating this effect.Understanding the neural mechanisms that underpin the relationship between anxiety and social support is crucial for devising targeted interventions. Further investigation into mPFC's role as a candidate structure in this domain could provide invaluable insights and aid in the development of new therapeutic strategies for the management of anxiety.

Psychopathy is traditionally linked to higher-level cognitive processes, but its impact on low-level cognitive functions has remained largely unexplored. This study investigates the relationship between the fundamental cognitive function of physical distance estimation and our social predisposition towards others, as captured by psychopathic traits, grouped into the three facets of Fearless Dominance, Self-Centered Impulsivity and Coldheartedness. Using an innovative experimental design, participants estimated the distance of an approaching avatar agent. We demonstrate that social processing, as reflected in the scale of Psychopathy in the general population, significantly distorts egocentric space perception. Strikingly, this distortion is absent with non-anthropomorphic agents. The study also reveals that agent emotional expressions do not affect distance estimation, when they are task-irrelevant, suggesting a disocciation between the effect of psychopathic traits on social processing and emotion processing. These results uncover a direct top-down effect of psychopathic traits on basic spatial cognition, in the presence of others. These new insights into the basic cognitive mechanisms underlying social interactions have broader implications for any field involving interpersonal spatial behaviour.

Recent developments in the field of social cognition have led to a renewed interest in basic and social emotion recognition in early stages of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and FrontoTemporal Dementia (FTD). Despite the growing attention to this issue, only few studies have attempted to investigate emotion recognition using both visual and vocal stimuli. In addition, recent studies have presented conflicting findings regarding the extent of impairment in patients in the early stages of these diseases. The present study aims to investigate emotion understanding (both basic and social emotions), using different tasks with visual and auditory stimuli, to identify supramodal deficits in AD and FTD to provide a reliable tool to better outline their behavioral and emotional profile and useful instruments for their management.

Eighteen patients with AD and 15 patients with FTD were included in the study. Healthy control (HCs) subjects were recruited to obtain normative data for basic emotion recognition tests and social emotion recognition tasks. To evaluate basic emotion recognition, the Facial Emotion Recognition Battery (FERB) and the Emotional Prosody Recognition Battery (EPRB) were administered. To evaluate social emotion recognition, the Faux Pas (FP), Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME), and Reading the Mind in the Voice (RMV) tests were employed.

FTD patients performed significantly worse than HCs in most of the subtests of the basic emotion recognition batteries, where, instead, AD patients were significantly impaired only when required to match emotional facial expression in different individuals (subtask of the FERB). Moreover, FTD patients scored significantly lower in RME and RMV tests compared both to AD patients and to HCs. In addition, ADs were selectively impaired in RMV as respect to HCs.

FTD patients showed deficits in emotion recognition, affecting both basic and social emotions, whether conveyed through facial expressions or prosody. This result may explain the well-known social behavioral difficulties observed in FTD patients from the early stages of the disease. The fewer and specific deficits in AD patients with comparable MMSE scores may be attributed to the mild degree of impairment, as these deficits may appear later in the progression of AD.

Several recent studies, enabled by advances in neuroimaging methods and large-scale datasets, have identified areas in human ventral visual cortex that respond more strongly to food images than to images of many other categories, adding to our knowledge about the broad network of regions that are responsive to food. This finding raises important questions about the evolutionary and developmental origins of a possible food-selective neural population, as well as larger questions about the origins of category-selective neural populations more generally. Here, we propose a framework for how visual properties of food (particularly color) and nonvisual signals associated with multimodal reward processing, social cognition, and physical interactions with food may, in combination, contribute to the emergence of food selectivity. We discuss recent research that sheds light on each of these factors, alongside a broader account of category selectivity that incorporates both visual feature statistics and behavioral relevance.

Emotion recognition is fundamental for effective social interactions among conspecifics. Impairments in affective state processing underlie several neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, although the neurobiological substrate of these deficits remains unknown. We investigated the impact of early NMDA receptor hypofunction on socio-affective behaviors. Male mice lacking NMDA receptors in GABAergic interneurons of cerebral and hippocampal cortices from an early postnatal age (interNMDAr-KO mutants) were evaluated in affective state discrimination, social preference and social novelty preference, hierarchy and dominance, aggression and territoriality, and long-term social interaction. We show that interNMDAr-KO mice failed to discriminate conspecifics based on their affective states, unlike control littermates, while exhibiting an intact preference for social stimuli over inanimate objects. This discrimination deficit was observed regardless of whether affective valences were manipulated positively or negatively, via a palatable reward or social defeat, respectively. Additionally, interNMDAr-KO mice failed to establish a normal social hierarchy, consistently assuming subordinate roles against control littermates, and presented an abnormal response to conspecifics in the resident-intruder test. Finally, mice lacking NMDA receptors in GABAergic interneurons exhibited social withdrawal following exposure to unfamiliar conspecifics in a custom setting designed to monitor social behavior over extended time periods. This deficit was reversed by subchronic clozapine treatment. Our study thoroughly assessed the impact of a pathophysiological manipulation relevant to schizophrenia on social behavior in mice. Overall, this study provides evidence demonstrating that altered NMDAr-dependent development of cortical and hippocampal interneurons impairs affective state discrimination and leads to deficits in social functioning and long-term sociality.

It is now well established that vascular aging is a significant predictor of cognitive decline in older age. But what remains less clear is the role that vascular health plays in social cognitive aging. Therefore, we aimed to provide the first test of the relationship between arterial stiffness and theory of mind (ToM) in late adulthood. In a sample of 50 healthy older adults (Age: M = 70.08, SD = 3.93), we measured arterial stiffness via carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity and social cognition using two well validated measures of ToM (RMET, TASIT). The results revealed that arterial stiffness was a significant predictor of ToM performance when indexed via the RMET and the TASIT, accounting for 11% and 9% of unique variance in scores, respectively. These findings add to the broader literature showing that arterial stiffness is a key predictor of cognitive aging and show that this relationship extends to the domain of social cognition.

While functional neuroimaging studies have reported on the neural correlates of severe antisocial behaviors, such as delinquency, little is known about whole brain resting state functional connectivity (FC) of incarcerated adolescents (IA). The aim of the present study is to identify potential differences in resting state connectivity between a group of male IA, compared to community adolescents (CA). The second objective is to investigate the relations among FC and psychological factors associated with delinquent behaviors, namely psychopathic traits (callous unemotional traits, interpersonal problems, and impulsivity), socio-cognitive (empathy and reflective functioning RF) impairments and psychological problems (externalizing, internalizing, attention and thought problems).

31 male IA and 30 male CA participated in 8 minutes resting state functional MRI. Network Based Statistics (NBS) was used to compare FC among 142 brain regions between the two groups. Correlation and regressions analysis were performed to explore the associations between FC and the self-reported psychopathic traits, empathy, RF, and psychological problems.

Compared to the CA, the IA group presented significantly increased resting state FC in a distributed subnetwork including medial prefrontal, posterior and dorsal cingulate, temporal, and occipital regions. Both within the IA group and across the whole sample, increased mean connectivity of the subnetwork correlated with lower RF (RF uncertainty). Across the whole sample, the mean connectivity was associated with higher scores of externalizing problems and impulsivity dimension of psychopathy.

While extending the characterization of whole brain resting state FC in IA, our results also provide insights into the neurofunctional mechanisms linking low reflective functioning abilities to externalizing behavior during adolescence.

Witnessing rejection against one's group can have similar impacts on psychological distress and aggression as experiencing rejection personally. In this study, we investigated the neural activity patterns of group rejection and whether they resemble those of personal-level rejection. We first identified the neural correlates of social rejection (exclusion based on negative attention) compared with ostracism (exclusion based on lack of social connection) and then compared group-level to personal-level rejection. We employed a novel social exclusion task, "RateME," to induce group and personal rejection and Cyberball to evoke ostracism during fMRI scans. Our results showed that personal rejection increased activity in regions associated with autobiographical memory and self-identity, such as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the lingual gyrus, whereas ostracism engaged areas related to social pain and salience, including the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula. Additionally, group and personal-level rejection elicited similar neural activity patterns, regardless of participants' fusion with the rejected groups. Therefore, group membership seems sufficient for group rejection to trigger self-referential processing pathways similar to those activated by personal rejection. Our findings highlight the overlapping neural mechanisms underlying personal and group-level grievances, which may explain the detrimental effects of group rejection on aggression, extremism, and intergroup conflict.

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are characterized by social cognitive impairments, and recent research has identified alterations of the social brain. However, it is unknown whether familial high risk (FHR) of these disorders is associated with neurobiological alterations already present in childhood.

As part of the Danish High Risk and Resilience Study-VIA 11, we examined children at FHR of schizophrenia (n = 121, 50% female) or bipolar disorder (n = 75, 47% female) and population-based control children (PBCs) (n = 128, 48% female). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and dynamic causal modeling, we investigated brain activation and effective connectivity during the social cognition paradigm from the Human Connectome Project.

We found similar activation of the mentalizing network across groups, including visual area V5, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS). Nonetheless, both FHR groups showed aberrant brain connectivity in the form of increased feedforward connectivity from left V5 to pSTS compared with PBCs. Children at FHR of schizophrenia had reduced intrinsic connectivity in bilateral V5 compared with PBCs, whereas children at FHR of bipolar disorder showed increased reciprocal connectivity between the left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the pSTS, increased intrinsic connectivity in the right pSTS, and reduced feedforward connectivity from the right pSTS to the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex compared with PBCs.

Our results provide first-time evidence of aberrant brain connectivity in the mentalizing network of children at FHR of schizophrenia or FHR of bipolar disorder. Longitudinal research is warranted to clarify whether aberrant brain connectivity during mentalizing constitutes an endophenotype associated with the development of a mental disorder later in life.

Technology pervades every aspect of our lives, making it crucial to investigate how the human mind deals with it. Here we examine the cognitive and neural foundations of technological cognition. In the first fMRI experiment, participants viewed videos depicting the use of mechanical tools (e.g., a screwdriver) and digital tools (e.g., a smartphone) compared to simple object movements. Results revealed a key dissociation: mechanical tools extensively activated the dorsal and ventro-dorsal visual streams, which are motor- and action-oriented brain systems. Conversely, digital tools largely engaged the ventral visual stream, associated with conceptual and social cognition. A second behavioral experiment showed a pronounced tendency to anthropomorphize digital tools. A third experiment involving a priming task confirmed that digital tools activate the social brain. The discovery of two different neurocognitive systems for mechanical versus digital technology offers new insights into human-technology interaction and its implications for the evolution of the human mind.

Adolescence is a period of profound biopsychosocial development, with pubertally-driven neural reorganization as social demands increase in peer contexts. The explosive increase in social media access has fundamentally changed peer interactions among youth, creating an urgent need to understand its impact on neurobiological development and mental health. Extant literature indicates that using social media promotes social comparison and feedback seeking (SCFS) behaviors in youth, which portend increased risk for mental health disorders, but little is known about its impact on neurobiological development. We assessed social media behaviors, mental health symptoms, and spontaneous cortical activity using magnetoencephalography (MEG) in 80 typically developing youth (8-16 years) and tested how self-reported pubertal stage moderates their relationship. More mature adolescents who engaged in more SCFS showed weaker fusiform/parahippocampal alpha and medial prefrontal beta activity, and increased symptoms of anxiety and attention problems. Engaging in SCFS on social media during adolescence may thus relate to developmental differences in brain regions that undergo considerable development during puberty. These results are consistent with works indicating altered neurodevelopmental trajectories within association cortices surrounding the onset of many mental health disorders. Importantly, later pubertal stages may be most sensitive to the detrimental effects of social media use.

To explore the efficacy of theta burst stimulation (TBS) on the negative symptoms in patients with chronic schizophrenia, and to investigate the alterations of local brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

100 patients with chronic schizophrenia were enrolled and divided into the real group (50 subjects) and sham group (50 subjects). The real group was given real stimulation of TBS for 4 weeks, and the sham group was sham-stimulated with the same site. The Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS) and the Scale for Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) were used to assess the clinical symptoms. fNIRS was used to detect the amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) of cortical hemoglobin before and after TBS. Repeated analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the changes in clinical features between the two groups. Correlation analysis was used to explore the associations between altered ALFF and clinical features.

Repeated ANOVA revealed that the interaction effect of group∗time showed significant influence on the scores of PANSS-total, PANSS-negative, and SANS in the two groups of patients. Test of within-subjects effects showed that significant reductions in scores of PANSS-total, PANSS-negative, and SANS were found between the real group and sham group after TBS, as well as in the real group before and after TBS. fNIRS revealed that the normalized ALFF (zALFF) of deoxyhemoglobin in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was decreased in the real group after TBS. Furthermore, the zALFF of oxyhemoglobin was increased in the right and left frontal pole regions, and decreased in the right superior temporal gyrus in the real group compared to the sham group after TBS. Correlation analysis showed that the alterations of zALFF in frontal regions after treatment were associated with the improvement of negative symptoms in chronic schizophrenia patients.

Short-term TBS is effective in the improvement of negative symptoms of chronic schizophrenia. fNIRS could reveal the changes in brain activity after TBS treatment, providing an effective technique for exploring the efficacy of TBS in schizophrenia.

Conduct disorder (CD) is a psychiatric diagnosis characterized by a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others or major age-appropriate social norms or rules are violated. This article presents information on CD with an emphasis on a new multispecifier personality model that could offer a valuable new perspective on CD by refining the way we specify CD. The multispecifier model may have the potential to clarify the considerable confusion that has occurred over past decades and improve our understanding of prevalence, etiology, course, and treatment of youth with conduct problems. In this paper, we present a new structure for CD designed to inspire new lines of research that may be needed to help the field more fully capitalize on this innovation. With additional research, it is hoped that the new multispecifier model will eventually buy clinicians additional information that cannot be gleaned from current diagnostic criteria and will help clinicians and researchers further uncover the factors that promote or protect against the development of CD. This paper delineates the areas of research that will be needed to fully realize the potential of a multispecifier model and ultimately to improve clinical care for children and adolescents with CD.

Pediatric anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are associated with elevated threat sensitivity and impaired emotion regulation, accompanied by dysfunction in the neural circuits involved in these processes. Despite established treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, many children do not achieve remission, underscoring the importance of understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of these disorders. This review synthesizes current research on the neural predictors of treatment response and the neurofunctional changes associated with treatment in pediatric anxiety and PTSD during threat and reward processing. Several key findings emerged. First, enhanced threat/safety discrimination in the amygdala predicted better outcomes of pediatric anxiety and PTSD treatments. Second, differences in pretreatment activation within the lateral prefrontal and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices predicted treatment response, likely reflecting baseline executive control differences. Third, post-CBT decreases in activation in default mode, visuo-attentional, and sensorimotor areas may support treatment-related increases in task engagement. Finally, functional connectivity between the amygdala and other limbic, prefrontal, and default mode network nodes predicts treatment response in anxiety and PTSD, highlighting its potential as a biomarker for therapeutic efficacy. Understanding these neurofunctional markers could lead to more targeted interventions, optimizing treatment planning and potentially leading to the development of "pretreatment" strategies to enhance the efficacy of existing treatments. This review highlights the necessity for future research to establish more direct links between neuroimaging findings and clinical outcomes to facilitate the translation of these findings into clinical practice.

Animacy perception, the ability to discern living from non-living entities, is crucial for survival and social interaction, as it includes recognizing abstract concepts such as movement, purpose, and intentions. This process involves interpreting cues that may suggest the intentions or actions of others. It engages the temporal cortex (TC), particularly the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the adjacent region of the inferior temporal cortex (ITC), as well as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). However, it remains unclear how animacy is dynamically encoded over time in these brain areas and whether its processing is distributed or localized. In this study, we addressed these questions by employing a symbolic categorization task involving animate and inanimate objects using natural movie stimuli. Simultaneously, electrocorticography were conducted in both the TC and dmPFC. Time-frequency analysis revealed region-specific frequency representations throughout the observation of the movies. Spatial searchlight decoding analysis demonstrated that animacy processing is represented in a distributed manner. Regions encoding animacy information were found to be dispersed across the fundus and lip of the STS, as well as in the ITC. Next, we examined whether these dispersed regions form functional networks. Independent component analysis revealed that the spatial distribution of the component with the most significant animacy information corresponded with the dispersed regions identified by the spatial decoding analysis. Furthermore, Granger causality analysis indicated that these regions exhibit frequency-specific directional functional connectivity, with a general trend of causal influence from the ITC to STS across multiple frequency bands. Notably, a prominent feedback flow in the alpha band from the ITC to both the ventral bank and fundus of the STS was identified. These findings suggest a distributed and functionally interconnected neural substrate for animacy processing across the STS and ITC.

Language is acquired and processed in complex and dynamic naturalistic contexts, involving the simultaneous processing of connected speech, faces, bodies, objects, etc. How words and their associated concepts are encoded in the brain during real-world processing is still unknown. Here, the representational structure of concrete and abstract concepts was investigated during movie watching to address the extent to which brain responses dynamically change depending on visual context. First, across contexts, concrete and abstract concepts are shown to encode different experience-based information in separable sets of brain regions. However, these differences are reduced when multimodal context is considered. Specifically, the response profile of abstract words becomes more concrete-like when these are processed in visual scenes highly related to their meaning. Conversely, when the visual context is unrelated to a given concrete word, the activation pattern resembles more that of abstract conceptual processing. These results suggest that while concepts generally encode habitual experiences, the underlying neurobiological organisation is not fixed but depends dynamically on available contextual information.