Social Neuroscience[JOURNAL]
Sun
200 papers
Influence of daily experiences on ERP correlates of face perception of ones' romantic partner.
Nelson CM, Xia M, Hudac CM
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Aug · PMID 41342659 · Publisher ↗
Romantic partners rely on key information from their partner's face to facilitate optimal social connections. Evidence suggests that the brain differentially responds to a partner's face as evidenced by event-related pot...
Romantic partners rely on key information from their partner's face to facilitate optimal social connections. Evidence suggests that the brain differentially responds to a partner's face as evidenced by event-related potentials (ERPs). Yet, little is known about how ERP responses are modulated by day-to-day biological or psychological shifts. In this study, we examined whether daily experiences related to feeling loved by ones' partner influenced brain responses. Twenty-eight adult romantic partners (20-40 years old) completed twice-daily surveys prior to completing a passive ERP face perception task. Amplitudes were larger to partner's face relative to celebrity (peak N250, mean P3) or stranger faces (mean P3). Greater mean level of feeling loved by partner was related to more negative N250 amplitudes and more positive P3 amplitudes across all conditions (partner, celebrity, and stranger faces). Persons with less variability in feeling loved by partner had more negative N250 amplitudes in response to their partner's face. These results suggest that daily experiences modulate neural markers of familiarity (N250, P3) and that less stability in feeling loved may influence facial identity retrieval for individuals giving the love.
Directed causal networks for leading and following in hyperscanning EEG.
Silfwerbrand L, Koike Y, Gingnell M
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Aug · PMID 41136880 · Publisher ↗
This explorative hyperscanning EEG whole-brain study describes activation networks within and between brains representing leading and following behavior. The directed information flow was analyzed for singles and pairs o...
This explorative hyperscanning EEG whole-brain study describes activation networks within and between brains representing leading and following behavior. The directed information flow was analyzed for singles and pairs of brains simultaneously activated using the graph-based algorithm of PCMCI. This algorithm was previously tested for frontal activations in singles and pairs of brains, returning significant directed statistical dependencies. The participants led and followed each other using a minimal model based on rhythmic tapping. This whole-brain study resulted in directed causal connections representing neuronal networks for the social activities studied. The brain regions exhibiting the highest number of connections were chosen for further analysis from the extensive network of connections. This resulted in four networks representing within-brain and between-brains, respectively, for leading and following. Network commonalities aligned with previous research of leading and following reflecting cognition, working memory and social cognition, visual attention, and motoric engagement. Follower networks exhibited socially adaptive activations. The between-brain networks appear to involve more brain regions, possibly reflecting the more complex situation involving another person. The PCMCI could prove to be a suitable tool for identifying whole-brain networks of directed causality that represent leading and following, both within and between brains, using hyperscanning EEG data.
Neuroscientific protocols for the assessment and management of physiological responses to digital technostress.
Angioletti L, Fronda G
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Jun · PMID 41077590 · Publisher ↗
The digitalization process and the constant and prolonged use of digital technologies can lead to the development of digital stress, defined with the term technostress. This type of stress is related to the relationship...
The digitalization process and the constant and prolonged use of digital technologies can lead to the development of digital stress, defined with the term technostress. This type of stress is related to the relationship between individuals and digital technologies and can lead to some related drifts, such as techno-anxiety and techno-addiction, concerning states of anxiety, apprehension, fear, or addiction toward digital technologies. Thus, it is crucial to avoid and lessen the potential development of technostress, particularly in the current historical age that has expanded the number of smart workers in constant touch with various digital technologies. This contribution highlights the potential applications of multi-integrated neuroscientific protocols to assess how technology can influence interpersonal dynamics and relational mechanisms, through the lenses of neuroassessment procedures; and to promote better emotional regulation and stress reduction through neuroempowerment protocols aimed at the reduction of technostress at the physiological level.
Why is the hyperscanning paradigm important for comparing the social brain across "digital" and "real-life" conditions? Introduction to special issue.
Balconi M
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Jun · PMID 40953915 · Publisher ↗
The explosion of digital media has emerged quickly from the convergence of technological advances, pandemic urgency, and cultural changes that have now taken hold in the daily life of people around the world. With cell p...
The explosion of digital media has emerged quickly from the convergence of technological advances, pandemic urgency, and cultural changes that have now taken hold in the daily life of people around the world. With cell phone, tablet and laptop devices as well as broad internet service available to an estimated two-thirds of the world's population, the landscape of social interaction continues to change. "Social media" for personal, educational, business, health and other purposes is being used daily. With this shift, the field of social neuroscience has begun to consider both . The hyperscanning technique lends itself well to this challenge and is beginning to be applied to study of varied social constructs as well as clinical samples. This special issue has assembled a set of papers specifically focused on hyperscanning as an informative approach to investigating digital vs. in-person interactions. Papers present conceptual, methodological, and primary data findings. Authors address issues of interpersonal stress regulation, shared and distinctive bodily and physiological characteristics of digital vs. in-person experiences, the effects of prior social interaction on emotional contagion, and the possible influence of BMI on neural synchrony during motor coordination.
The enhancement effect of social interaction on emotional contagion: an EEG-Based hyperscanning study.
Wang H, Gao X, Xu C … +1 more , Chen W
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Jun · PMID 40767038 · Publisher ↗
Emotional contagion refers to the tendency for individuals to replicate the emotional states of others primarily, within the context of social interactions. Prior research has focused on the real-time emotional contagion...
Emotional contagion refers to the tendency for individuals to replicate the emotional states of others primarily, within the context of social interactions. Prior research has focused on the real-time emotional contagion during interpersonal communication. However, this study proposes that social interaction experiences, particularly those involving cooperation, might also play a role in promoting emotional contagion. To investigate this issue, the present study divided participants into the interactive group and the control group and conducted EEG-based hyperscanning to explore the impact of interpersonal interaction experience on emotional contagion. Behavioral results indicated that individuals reported a greater psychological closeness to their partners after experiencing interaction. Additionally, the interactive group showed stronger emotional congruence between observers and senders. EEG results further demonstrated that inter-brain synchrony in the emotional contagion phase among the observer and sender of the interactive group was significantly higher than that of the control group and was significantly correlated with the observer's emotional state. This research suggests that social interaction experience may affect emotional contagion by altering the interpersonal dynamics. The present study adds to the understanding of how social interactions can shape emotional experiences and emphasizes that interpersonal experiences might be a key factor in promoting emotional contagion.
Social status in zebrafish modulates the behavioral response to 5-HT2C receptor agonists and antagonists.
de Oliveira LN, Alves NFP, Soares MC … +1 more , Maximino C
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Apr · PMID 40762500 · Publisher ↗
The effects of previous social experiences on social behavior have been demonstrated across species both in cooperative and competitive contexts. In dominance-subordinate hierarchies, differences across social ranks have...
The effects of previous social experiences on social behavior have been demonstrated across species both in cooperative and competitive contexts. In dominance-subordinate hierarchies, differences across social ranks have been observed in many different mechanisms. Dominance hierarchies interfere in defensive behavior, where subordinate animals present a greater defensive behavior, regarding potential threats ("anxiety-like behavior"), than dominant animals. The serotonergic system plays a key role in regulating and mediating threat responses, including 5-HT2 receptors in the types of proximal threat responses modulated by the stress of social defeat. We separated 148 adult zebrafish in pairs and allowed them to interact for five days; after that, the dominant-subordinate rank was determined, and animals were treated with a 5-HT receptor agonist (MK-212) or antagonist (RS-102221) before being observed in the novel tank test. While MK-212 increased bottom-dwelling, erratic swimming, and freezing across all statuses, RS-102221 decreased these variables in dominants but increased them in subordinates. Moreover, the effects of MK-212 were larger in subordinates than in controls or dominants, suggesting a sensitization of the 5-HT receptor.
A neuroimaging-based meta-analysis of prosocial behavior in childhood and adolescence.
Bonandrini R, Beveridge F, Steinbeis N
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Apr · PMID 40746165 · Publisher ↗
Despite increasing interest in the neural underpinnings of prosociality during childhood and adolescence, there is little convergence across studies of brain activations associated with prosocial behavior in developmenta...
Despite increasing interest in the neural underpinnings of prosociality during childhood and adolescence, there is little convergence across studies of brain activations associated with prosocial behavior in developmental populations. Here, we build on 11 neuroimaging studies on prosocial behavior in developmental samples of average age between 8 and 17 years and conducted an Activation Likelihood Estimation meta-analysis. We found clusters of significant spatial convergence across studies in the insulae, inferior frontal gyrus, middle cingulum, and the precentral gyrus. The cluster in the cingulate cortex, which existing literature associates with cognitive control, shows overlap with previous meta-analytical data on prosocial behavior in adults. This region may constitute a core neurocognitive mechanism underlying prosociality from childhood to adulthood.
Non-significant results as for the association between heart rate variability, personality, and the objectification of lab-animals into the conduct of animal testing.
Vezirian K, Beffara B, Bègue L
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Apr · PMID 40719367 · Publisher ↗
To develop pharmaceutical drugs, people experiment on lab-animals. While this practice disturbs the general population, various factors in laboratory settings may contribute to enabling experiments that harm animals. Usi...
To develop pharmaceutical drugs, people experiment on lab-animals. While this practice disturbs the general population, various factors in laboratory settings may contribute to enabling experiments that harm animals. Using an ultra-realistic protocol mimicking animal research and collecting behavioral and physiological data, we invited laypersons from the general population to administrate a toxic drug on a (fake) laboratory animal. This preregistered study ( = 145) aimed to examine individual determinants and contextual frameworks that may influence willingness to engage in such experimentation. Because low self-regulatory abilities are associated with less discomfort seeing others suffer, and that objectification of lab-animals allows disengagement from them, we also examined whether they both would predict involvement in an animal-research. We also examined whether some personality markers known to predict human-animal relations (i.e. social dominance orientation, speciesist attitudes, and empathic dispositions) could be related to the willingness to experiment on a lab animal. Overall, the results of this research were mixed, as neither self-regulation abilities, animal objectification, social dominance orientation, nor empathy significantly predicted participation in animal testing. However, low speciesist attitudes significantly reduced the willingness to kill animals for science.
An ERP-study on the extent to which partisanship conditions the early processing of politicians' faces.
Couto de Jesus G, Homan MD, Petropoulos Petalas D … +3 more , Bakker BN, Bathelt J, Schumacher G
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Apr · PMID 40696785 · Publisher ↗
Partisanship has been associated with various cognitive biases. These findings are primarily based on self-reports and task performance and less on measures of neural activity. We reviewed the literature on in-group vs....
Partisanship has been associated with various cognitive biases. These findings are primarily based on self-reports and task performance and less on measures of neural activity. We reviewed the literature on in-group vs. out-group bias that employs face-viewing paradigms and ERP methodology to investigate unconscious bias in politics. We subsequently preregistered hypotheses about the extent to which partisanship is associated with early neural processing of political leaders' faces. Our lab experiment was conducted in the Netherlands ( = 51), a multi-party democracy, and sufficiently powered to pick up modest effect sizes for in-party vs. out-party comparisons. As expected, we find that politicians' faces elicit a stronger N170 ERP response than strangers' faces, but we did not find the same pattern for the N250 component. Contrary to our hypotheses, we did not find statistically significant differences in the P200 and N200 components for the in-party vs. out-party comparison. These findings, supported by our cluster-based permutation analysis, indicate that seeing faces of political leaders enhances attention during facial processing, regardless of party affiliation, possibly due to their frequent and affectively salient presence in media. Since in-party vs. out-party differences did not emerge early on, implications for partisanship are discussed relative to racial and minimal group bias findings.
Oxytocin and vasopressin 1a receptor alterations in the superior temporal sulcus and hypothalamus in schizophrenia.
Snowden AW, Schwartz SE, Smith AL … +2 more , Goodman MM, Freeman SM
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Apr · PMID 40696503 · Publisher ↗
Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric condition marked by social impairments. Given that social cognitive functioning strongly predicts life outcomes in schizophrenia, understanding its neurobiological basis is crucial....
Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric condition marked by social impairments. Given that social cognitive functioning strongly predicts life outcomes in schizophrenia, understanding its neurobiological basis is crucial. This study used receptor autoradiography to measure vasopressin 1a (AVPR1a) and oxytocin receptor (OXTR) densities in postmortem brain tissue from individuals with schizophrenia ( = 23) and matched controls ( = 18). We focused on the superior temporal sulcus, a region involved in social perception and often impaired in schizophrenia. AVPR1a binding densities exceeded those of OXTR. Notably, AVPR1a densities increased with age in females with schizophrenia, which may explain age-related changes in positive symptom severity (e.g. paranoia) in this group. Additionally, schizophrenia was associated with increased OXTR and a trend toward higher AVPR1a densities in the hypothalamus, a region central to oxytocin and vasopressin synthesis and stress response regulation. These findings suggest compensatory upregulation of nonapeptide receptor systems due to potentially reduced oxytocin and vasopressin release. Overall, our results highlight age- and sex-dependent alterations in receptor binding, providing insights into the neurobiology of social dysfunction in schizophrenia.
The impact of stigma on quality of life in patients with epilepsy.
Mollaoğlu M, Yilmaz M
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Apr · PMID 40684281 · Publisher ↗
OBJECTIVE: Epilepsy is one of the chronic neurological diseases with high stigmatization due to the psychosocial problems caused by seizures. The study was conducted to examine the quality of life and stigma in people wi...
OBJECTIVE: Epilepsy is one of the chronic neurological diseases with high stigmatization due to the psychosocial problems caused by seizures. The study was conducted to examine the quality of life and stigma in people with epilepsy (PWE). METHOD: The data of the descriptive and cross-sectional study were collected using the Personal Information Form, the Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory (QOLIE-31), and the Stigma Scale for Epilepsy (SSE) and analyzed using the SPSS program. RESULTS: The study included 86 patients receiving outpatient treatment at the neurology outpatient clinic of a university hospital. The mean score of epilepsy patients in QOLIE-31 was 61.95 ± 22.68, while their mean score in the SSE was 74.67 ± 5.94. It was determined that gender, seizure type, antiepileptic drug regimen, and seizure time affected the quality of life in PWE, while educational status and seizure type affected stigma. It was determined that there was a significant relationship between the level of stigma and quality of life in epilepsy patients, and that their quality of life decreased as the level of stigma increased. CONCLUSION: As a result, epilepsy negatively affects the quality of life of patients and causes stigma. Reducing stigma is effective in increasing the quality of life.
Mothers with higher empathy have children who make moral decisions and exhibit higher medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activity when discussing hypothetical moral dilemmas: an fNIRS study from Singapore.
Abdul Malek FNB, Lim M, Khoo VQL … +6 more , Ziyi ZG, Chai HPS, Mustapha Kamal NAH, Arya B, Esposito G, Azhari A
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Dec · PMID 40581774 · Publisher ↗
Parents' empathic responses are crucial in shaping children's attitudes. Empathy triggers positive emotional responses, which facilitate adaptive moral judgment and utilitarian decisions. However, no study has examined t...
Parents' empathic responses are crucial in shaping children's attitudes. Empathy triggers positive emotional responses, which facilitate adaptive moral judgment and utilitarian decisions. However, no study has examined the role of parental empathy in influencing children's moral reasoning and their underlying neural responses. In this study, we investigated the association between mothers' empathy levels and children's moral decisions and brain activity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). 19 children wore a 20-channel functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) cap with a standard PFC montage while discussing preschool-aged stories with their mothers. We measured mothers' empathy levels using the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire and their preschool children's empathic tendencies by asking whether they would help the characters of these stories with simple chores in hypothetical scenarios. Findings showed that children are disposed to behave in ways parallel to their mother's attitudes. Empathic mothers have children who make prosocial decisions rooted in empathic mentalization. These helpful children also have higher activations in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the brain area associated with ethical decision-making. This study highlights the impact of parent-child communication in strengthening children's moral knowledge and moral emotions and emphasizes that parents' attitudes and interactions play a significant role in children's decision-making abilities.
Dyad averaged BMI-dependent interbrain synchrony during continuous mutual prediction in social coordination.
Wang YJ, Jie Z, Liu Y … +1 more , Pan Y
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Jun · PMID 40501187 · Publisher ↗
Obesity is linked to notable psychological risks, particularly in social interactions where individuals with high body mass index (BMI) often encounter stigmatization and difficulties in forming and maintaining social co...
Obesity is linked to notable psychological risks, particularly in social interactions where individuals with high body mass index (BMI) often encounter stigmatization and difficulties in forming and maintaining social connections. Although awareness of these issues is growing, there is a lack of research on real-time, dynamic interactions involving dyads with various BMI levels. To address this gap, our study employed a joint finger-tapping task, where participant dyads engaged in coordinated activity while their brain activity was monitored using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Our findings showed that both Bidirectional and Unidirectional Interaction conditions exhibited higher levels of behavioral and interbrain synchrony compared to the No Interaction condition. Notably, only in the Bidirectional Interaction condition, higher dyadic BMI was significantly correlated with poorer behavioral coordination and reduced interbrain synchrony. This finding suggests that the ability to maintain social coordination, particularly in scenarios requiring continuous mutual prediction and adjustment, is modulated by dyads' BMI.
Loneliness - not for the faint of heart? Effects of transient loneliness induction on neural and parasympathetic responses to affective stimuli.
Wiśniewska M, Piejka A, Wolak T … +2 more , Scheele D, Okruszek Ł
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Dec · PMID 40307961 · Publisher ↗
While loneliness has been associated with altered neural activity in social brain networks and reduced heart rate variability (HRV) in response to social stressors, it is still unclear whether these are related or parall...
While loneliness has been associated with altered neural activity in social brain networks and reduced heart rate variability (HRV) in response to social stressors, it is still unclear whether these are related or parallel effects. Thus, the current study aimed to examine the relationship between loneliness and neural and parasympathetic responses to social stimuli by using an experimental induction of momentary loneliness. Sixty-three participants (18-35 y.o.) received manipulated feedback about their future relationships to induce either loneliness (Future Alone, FA; = 31) or feelings of belonging (Future Belong, FB, = 32) and completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging session with concomitant HRV measurement during which affective pictures with social or nonsocial content were presented. In line with our previous research, decreased vagal flexibility and more negative affect were observed in participants subjected to the loneliness induction. Furthermore, even though no significant between-group differences in neural activity were observed, the neural response to negative social vs nonsocial stimuli in the temporoparietal junction was positively associated with the parasympathetic response, and this relationship was stronger in the FA group. Taken together, these results suggest that transient feelings of loneliness may disrupt adaptive responding to environmental demands and negatively impact brain-heart interactions.
Comparing level 1 and level 2 visuo-spatial perspective-taking in the brain: evidence from fMRI.
Schurz M, Tholen MG, Kronbichler M … +2 more , Perner J, Surtees ADR
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Dec · PMID 40281392 · Publisher ↗
Level 1 visuo-spatial perspective-taking (VSPT) refers to judging what other people can and cannot see. Previous research has suggested that this form of VSPT can be achieved relatively effortlessly. Level 2 VSPT, which...
Level 1 visuo-spatial perspective-taking (VSPT) refers to judging what other people can and cannot see. Previous research has suggested that this form of VSPT can be achieved relatively effortlessly. Level 2 VSPT, which refers to judgments about how an object appears from different viewpoints, is conceptually more complex and linked to higher-level social cognition and mentalizing. Despite growing neuroscientific evidence on VSPT, fMRI studies have not yet directly compared levels of perspective-taking. Study 1 collected fMRI data from a within-subject comparison of level 2 versus level 1 VSPT. We used a common activation contrast comparing inconsistent versus consistent perspectives between self and others. In Study 2, we further distinguished the brain regions associated with level 2 VSPT from those responsive to stimulus ambiguity and complexity. To achieve this, we asked participants to adopt different viewpoints on ambiguous and unambiguous stimuli. Results from both studies found that brain activation for level 2 VSPT was particularly high in areas of the dorsal attention network. Follow-up connectivity analysis found that level 2 VSPT is primarily carried out by the dorsal attention and the frontoparietal network. These results align with theories suggesting that VSPT can be achieved by engaging visuospatial attention and inhibitory control processes.
The influence of empathic concern on evaluative processing in self and charity outcomes.
Tan M, Li M, Luo X … +2 more , Zhang G, Zhong Y
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Apr · PMID 40264262 · Publisher ↗
Empathy plays a crucial role in determining how one understands others' emotional experiences and behavioral decisions. This study aimed to explore whether empathic concern affects the processing of self-related and char...
Empathy plays a crucial role in determining how one understands others' emotional experiences and behavioral decisions. This study aimed to explore whether empathic concern affects the processing of self-related and charity-related outcome evaluations. In this study, participants performed gambling tasks for themselves and low- and high-empathy charities. The behavioral results showed that low-empathy charities had a significantly higher risk rate than the self, whereas there was no significant difference between low-and high-empathy charities. The event-related potential (ERP) results showed that the P300 valence difference (d-P300) of the self was significantly higher for high-empathy charitable activities than for low-empathy charitable activities, and the d-P300 of high-empathy charitable activities was significantly higher than that of low-empathy charitable activities. The P300 valence differences primarily originated from activation difference in the posterior mid-cingulate cortex (pMCC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The time-frequency analysis showed that positive outcomes induced greater β2 event-related desynchronization (ERD) amplitudes for high-empathy charitable activities compared to negative outcomes. These findings suggest that empathic concern increased the distinction between good and bad outcomes for charities and promoted greater cognitive effort allocation toward prosocial rewards. The d-P300 is closely linked to activations in the pMCC and mPFC.
Recognizing communicative intentions from single- and dyadic point light displays in autistic adults.
Krawczyk M, Pinkham A, Golec-Staśkiewicz K … +2 more , Wysocka J, Okruszek Ł
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Dec · PMID 40254913 · Publisher ↗
The present study compares the ability of non-autistic (NA) and autistic adults (ASD) with intellectual functioning in the normal range to process communicative intentions from biological motion (BM) - a capacity often c...
The present study compares the ability of non-autistic (NA) and autistic adults (ASD) with intellectual functioning in the normal range to process communicative intentions from biological motion (BM) - a capacity often considered as a prerequisite for a higher-order social cognition (SC). Twenty-nine ASD and 29 NA completed two tasks assessing the ability to recognize the communicative cues presented by either one or two point-light agents, as well as one point-light emotion recognition task and additional measures of SC abilities. Autistic participants demonstrated a decreased ability to recognize communicative intentions from BM ( = 0.02 for dyadic and = 0.03 for single agent task) despite similar levels of neurocognitive and social cognitive functioning. Additional exploratory analyses revealed an indirect trajectory linking the capacity to recognize communication from BM with autism symptoms through social cognitive capacity. Autistic adults may experience difficulties in processing communicative intentions, even in the absence of detectable higher-order SC problems. A possible mechanism might be the engagement in compensatory strategies that are inadequate for detecting lower-order intuitive social cues. Therefore, including tasks that assess the ability to detect communicative cues from BM may be beneficial for autistic adults with high cognitive abilities, in whom SC difficulties might be overlooked.
The role of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in social decision-making against high- and low-rank opponents: a transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) study.
Mohamadpour H, Goudarzi M, Vahabie AH … +1 more , Heysieattalab S
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Feb · PMID 40059437 · Publisher ↗
Social hierarchy is a key determinant of behavior and individuals interact with others based on their social rank. Previous research has emphasized the role of the mPFC in learning social hierarchies. This study employed...
Social hierarchy is a key determinant of behavior and individuals interact with others based on their social rank. Previous research has emphasized the role of the mPFC in learning social hierarchies. This study employed a social rank learning task alongside a modified version of the Ultimatum Game (UG) to investigate how individuals respond to monetary offers from different social ranks and whether the mPFC modulates these reactions. Our findings indicate that unfair offers are more likely to be rejected and offers made by individuals of lower social rank are more likely to be rejected compared to those from higher social rank. Additionally, men tend to respond quicker than women in the UG. Remarkably, participants who received tDCS over the mPFC demonstrated higher rejection rates and faster response times for offers of low-rank individuals, while the lower rejection rates and slower responses to offers from high-rank opponents. These results shed light on the neural mechanisms involved in social decision-making in competitive contexts. In particular, they reveal increased sensitivity of the mPFC to social ranks after electrical stimulation, which might be an evidence for its role in shaping decisions and reactions toward unfairness within the existing social hierarchies.
Hemispheric alpha asymmetry differentiates within-participants social power states: high social power increases and low social power decreases left frontal cortical activity.
Scholz S, Kissler J
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Feb · PMID 40059410 · Publisher ↗
Social power is linked to approach and withdrawal motivational systems, with frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) in the electroencephalogram (EEG) potentially reflecting these tendencies. Higher left-frontal activity suggests...
Social power is linked to approach and withdrawal motivational systems, with frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) in the electroencephalogram (EEG) potentially reflecting these tendencies. Higher left-frontal activity suggests approach, while lower levels indicate withdrawal. In this study, we used a novel within-subject design to explore how social power affects FAA. Twenty-five participants completed an episodic recall task inducing high or low social power, or a neutral condition, in random order. EEG alpha power (8-12 hz) was measured to calculate FAA indices for frontal and parietal-occipital regions and compared to resting-state asymmetry. Results showed a significant increase in left-hemispheric activity during high social power recall, affecting both frontal and non-frontal regions, compared to low power and control conditions. Low social power was associated with the least left hemispheric activity. These findings highlight strong effects of social power on brain systems related to approach and avoidance but challenge the notion that FAA is confined to frontal regions. The study enhances understanding of the neural mechanisms behind social power and underscores the value of within-subject designs and baseline measurements in studying neural activity related alpha asymmetry and social power.
Executive functions in adolescence: A longitudinal study comparing evaluations before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rivera-Urbina GN, Orozco-Roldán MF, Molero-Chamizo A
Soc Neurosci · 2025 Feb · PMID 39890608 · Publisher ↗
The change in the educational model derived from the COVID-19 pandemic might have an impact on cognitive development, particularly on Executive Functions (EFs). The aim of this study was to explore cognitive performance...
The change in the educational model derived from the COVID-19 pandemic might have an impact on cognitive development, particularly on Executive Functions (EFs). The aim of this study was to explore cognitive performance in adolescents at two time points (12 and 14 years of age), before and after the pandemic restrictions. We also analyzed possible sex differences in the results. We evaluated EFs using the Neuropsychological Battery of Executive Functions and Frontal Lobes (BANFE-2), which includes four cognitive indices corresponding to specific cognitive functions and associated prefrontal areas: Orbitofrontal Cortex (OC index -OCI-), Anterior Prefrontal Cortex (APCI), Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DCI), and Prefrontal cortex as an index of global EFs (EFI). The ANOVA conducted to compare the evaluations before and after the pandemic revealed no significant pre-post-pandemic differences in any sex and in any BANFE-2 index, except for the OCI, in which post-pandemic performance was impaired in boys (pre and post mean score = 96.61 vs. 66.53), but not in girls (pre and post mean score = 93.55 vs. 95.0). Our findings are thus compatible with the idea of a different vulnerability to change in the educational model between sexes, and they also reveal which specific EFs may have been affected during the pandemic.
About
- Frequency
- Sun
- Papers found
- 200
- RSS feed
- Subscribe