IntroductionDecision-making is a process that can be strongly affected by social factors. Evidenc... more IntroductionDecision-making is a process that can be strongly affected by social factors. Evidence has shown how people deviate from traditional rational-choice predictions under different levels of social interactions. The emergence of prosocial decision-making, defined as any action that is addressed to benefit another individual even at the expense of personal benefits, has been reported as an example of such social influence. Furthermore, brain evidence has shown the involvement of structures such as the prefrontal cortex, anterior insula, and midcingulate cortex during decision settings in which a decision maker interacts with others under physical pain or distress or while being observed by others.MethodsUsing a slightly modified version of the dictator game and EEG recordings, we tested the hypothesis that the inclusion of another person into the decision setting increases prosocial decisions in young adults and that this increase is higher when the other person is associated...
Anticipating social stress evokes strong reactions in the organism, including interoceptive modul... more Anticipating social stress evokes strong reactions in the organism, including interoceptive modulations. However, evidence for this claim comes from behavioral studies, often with inconsistent results, and relates almost solely to the reactive and recovery phase of social stress exposure. Here, we adopted an allostatic-interoceptive predictive coding framework to study interoceptive and exteroceptive anticipatory brain responses using a social rejection task. We analyzed the heart-evoked potential (HEP) and task-related oscillatory activity of 58 adolescents via scalp EEG, and 385 human intracranial recordings of three patients with intractable epilepsy. We found that anticipatory interoceptive signals increased in the face of unexpected social outcomes, reflected in larger negative HEP modulations. Such signals emerged from key brain allostatic-interoceptive network hubs, as shown by intracranial recordings. Exteroceptive signals were characterized by early activity between 1-15 Hz across conditions, and modulated by the probabilistic anticipation of reward-related outcomes, observed over distributed brain regions. Our findings suggest that the anticipation of a social outcome is characterized by allostatic-interoceptive modulations that prepare the organism for possible rejection. These results inform our understanding of interoceptive processing and constrain neurobiological models of social stress.
Background: Social affiliation is one of the building blocks that shapes cultures and communities... more Background: Social affiliation is one of the building blocks that shapes cultures and communities. This motivation contributes to the development of social bonding among individuals within a group, enjoying rights, assuming obligations, and strengthening its identity. Evidence has shown that social affiliation has inspired different social phenomena, such as wars, political movements, social struggles, among others, based on two human motivations: the ingroup love and the outgroup hate. One contemporary group to study as a proxy of social affiliation, and ingroup and outgroup motivations is the sports competition. However, this affiliation model has been poorly considered in social neuroscience research. This research aimed to shed light on the neurobiological networks that are related to social affiliation in football fans of two of the most popular Chilean football teams. Methods: To this end, 43 male fans of two football rival teams watched videos of winning and losing goals of their favorite team while their brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results showed that while the activation of the reward system was observed in fans when their team scores goals against the At the request of the author(s), this article is no longer under peer review. What does this mean? Any reports and responses or comments on the article can be found at the end of the article.
Spontaneous corporal coordination in empathic and non-empathic interactions Carlos Cornejo Pontif... more Spontaneous corporal coordination in empathic and non-empathic interactions Carlos Cornejo Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Diego Cosmelli Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Esteban Hurtado Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Vladimir L´ opez Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Abstract: Research on corporal and gestural coordination during conversations has evidenced behavioral matching and synchronized coordination. Following the hypothesis that coordination phenomena are related to empathy (Gallese, 2001; Lipps, 1900), we used a motion capture system to follow head movements of 28 pairs of subjects during conversations. Half the dyads were instructed to know each other (empathic condition). Subjects in the remaining dyads expected the other to lie (non-empathic condition). Positions were cross-correlated in time for each dyad. A mirroring-coordination analysis (one moving left equivalent to another moving right) showed that subjects in both conditions ...
Visual sensory processing of external events decreases when attention is internally oriented towa... more Visual sensory processing of external events decreases when attention is internally oriented toward self-generated thoughts and also differences in attenuation have been shown depending on the thought's modality (visual or auditory thought). The present study aims to assess whether such modulations occurs also in auditory modality. In order to investigate auditory sensory modulations, we compared a passive listening condition with two conditions in which attention was internally oriented as a part of a task; a visual imagery condition and an inner speech condition. EEG signal was recorded from 20 participants while they were exposed to auditory probes during these three conditions. ERP results showed no differences in N1 auditory response comparing the three conditions reflecting maintenance of evoked electrophysiological reactivity for auditory modality. Nonetheless, time-frequency analyses showed that gamma and theta power in frontal regions was higher for passive listening than for internal attentional conditions. Specifically, the reduced amplitude in early gamma and theta band during both inward attention conditions may reflect reduced conscious attention of the current auditory stimulation. Finally, different pattern of beta band activity was observed only during visual imagery which can reflect cross-modal integration between visual and auditory modalities and it can distinguish this form of mental imagery from the inner speech. Taken together, these results showed that attentional suppression mechanisms in auditory modality are different from visual modality during mental imagery processes. Our results about oscillatory activity also confirm the important role of gamma oscillations in auditory processing and the differential neural dynamics underlying the visual and auditory/verbal imagery.
A decisive element of moral cognition is the detection of harm and its assessment as intentional ... more A decisive element of moral cognition is the detection of harm and its assessment as intentional or unintentional. Moral cognition engages brain networks supporting mentalizing, intentionality, empathic concern and evaluation. These networks rely on the amygdala as a critical hub, likely through frontotemporal connections indexing stimulus salience. We assessed inferences about perceived harm using a paradigm validated through functional magnetic resonance imaging, eye-tracking and electroencephalogram recordings. During the task, we measured local field potentials in three patients with depth electrodes (n = 115) placed in the amygdala and in several frontal, temporal, and parietal locations. Direct electrophysiological recordings demonstrate that intentional harm induces early activity in the amygdala (<200 ms), which-in turn-predicts intention attribution. The amygdala was the only site that systematically discriminated between critical conditions and predicted their classific...
Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2013
Empathy is a highly flexible and adaptive process that allows for the interplay of prosocial beha... more Empathy is a highly flexible and adaptive process that allows for the interplay of prosocial behavior in many different social contexts. Empathy appears to be a very situated cognitive process, embedded with specific contextual cues that trigger different automatic and controlled responses. In this review, we summarize relevant evidence regarding social context modulation of empathy for pain. Several contextual factors, such as stimulus reality and personal experience, affectively link with other factors, emotional cues, threat information, group membership, and attitudes toward others to influence the affective, sensorimotor, and cognitive processing of empathy. Thus, we propose that the frontoinsulartemporal network, the so-called social context network model (SCNM), is recruited during the contextual processing of empathy. This network would (1) update the contextual cues and use them to construct fast predictions (frontal regions), (2) coordinate the internal (body) and external milieus (insula), and (3) consolidate the context-target associative learning of empathic processes (temporal sites). Furthermore, we propose these context-dependent effects of empathy in the framework of the frontoinsular-temporal network and examine the behavioral and neural evidence of three neuropsychiatric conditions (Asperger syndrome, schizophrenia, and the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia), which simultaneously present with empathy and contextual integration impairments. We suggest potential advantages of a situated approach to empathy in the assessment of these neuropsychiatric disorders, as well as their relationship with the SCNM.
Although there is extensive literature about the effects of stimulants on sustained attention tas... more Although there is extensive literature about the effects of stimulants on sustained attention tasks in attentional deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), little is known about the effect of these drugs on other attentional tasks involving different neural systems. In this study we measured the effect of stimulants on ADHD children, both in the electroencephalographic (EEG) activity during sustained attentional tasks and in psychometric performance during selective attentional tasks. These tasks are known to rely on different cortical networks. Our results in children medicated with 10 mg of d-amphetamine administered 60 min before the study indicate (i) a significant increase in amplitude but not latency of the P300 component of the event-related potential (ERP) during the sustained attentional task and (ii) a significant improvement in the reaction times and correct responses in the selective attentional task. In addition to supporting the use of stimulants in children with attention
Decision making is a process that can be strongly affected by social factors. Profuse evidence ha... more Decision making is a process that can be strongly affected by social factors. Profuse evidence has shown how people deviate from traditional rational-choice predictions under different levels of social interactions. The emergence of prosocial decision making, defined as any action that is addressed to benefit another individual even at the expense of personal benefits, has been reported as an important example of such social influence. Furthermore, brain evidence has shown the involvement of structures such the prefrontal cortex, anterior insula and midcingulate cortex during decision settings in which a decision maker interacts with others under physical pain or distress or while being observed by others. Using a slightly modified version of the dictator game, we tested the hypothesis that the inclusion of another person into the decision setting increases prosocial decisions in young adults and that this increase is higher when the other person is associated with others in need. A...
The auditory efferent system has been proposed to function as a biological filter of cochlear res... more The auditory efferent system has been proposed to function as a biological filter of cochlear responses during selective attention. Here, we recorded electroencephalographic activity and otoacoustic emissions in response to auditory distractors during a visual working memory task in humans. We found that the olivocochlear efferent activity is modulated during the visual working memory period suggesting a common mechanism for suppressing cochlear responses during selective attention and working memory.
32-channel(+6) data (Biosemi Active two, 10-20, 2048Hz) unfiltered from the 2016 Plos ONE paper &... more 32-channel(+6) data (Biosemi Active two, 10-20, 2048Hz) unfiltered from the 2016 Plos ONE paper "Spontaneous alpha power lateralization predicts detection performance in an un-cued signal detection task"
Shifting attention to a thought: electroencephalographic dynamics during a modified word generati... more Shifting attention to a thought: electroencephalographic dynamics during a modified word generation task. Diego Cosmelli Escuela de Psicolog´ia, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Centro Interdiciplinario de Neurociencias, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Cristobal Moenne Programa de Doctorado en Ciencias de la Ingenier´ia, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Hern´ an Labb´ e Escuela de Psicolog´ia, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Karim Jerbi Brain Dynamics and Cognition Lab, INSERM U821, Lyon, France. Vladimir L´ opez Escuela de Psicolog´ia, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Centro Interdiciplinario de Neurociencias, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Francisco Aboitiz Laboratorio de Neurociencia Cognitiva, Departamento de Psiquiatr´ia, Escuela de Medicina, Pontificia Universidad Cat´ olica de Chile. Centro Interdiciplinario de Neurociencias, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Abstract: What happens if you are asked to come up w...
Acute psychosocial stress is associated with physiological, subjective and cognitive changes. In ... more Acute psychosocial stress is associated with physiological, subjective and cognitive changes. In particular, attention, which is considered one of the main processes driving cognition, has been related to different stress outcomes, such as anxiety, cortisol levels and autonomic responses, individually. Nonetheless, their specific contributions to and association with attention is still not fully understood. To study this association, 42 male participants were asked to perform an attentional task just before and immediately after being exposed to either an experimental treatment designed to induce psychosocial stress using the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) or a matching stress-free control condition. The salivary cortisol concentration, heart rate, and self-reported anxiety were measured to assess the physiological response to stress and the subjective experience during the protocol. As expected, psychosocial stress induced increases in heart rate, salivary cortisol levels and anxi...
IntroductionDecision-making is a process that can be strongly affected by social factors. Evidenc... more IntroductionDecision-making is a process that can be strongly affected by social factors. Evidence has shown how people deviate from traditional rational-choice predictions under different levels of social interactions. The emergence of prosocial decision-making, defined as any action that is addressed to benefit another individual even at the expense of personal benefits, has been reported as an example of such social influence. Furthermore, brain evidence has shown the involvement of structures such as the prefrontal cortex, anterior insula, and midcingulate cortex during decision settings in which a decision maker interacts with others under physical pain or distress or while being observed by others.MethodsUsing a slightly modified version of the dictator game and EEG recordings, we tested the hypothesis that the inclusion of another person into the decision setting increases prosocial decisions in young adults and that this increase is higher when the other person is associated...
Anticipating social stress evokes strong reactions in the organism, including interoceptive modul... more Anticipating social stress evokes strong reactions in the organism, including interoceptive modulations. However, evidence for this claim comes from behavioral studies, often with inconsistent results, and relates almost solely to the reactive and recovery phase of social stress exposure. Here, we adopted an allostatic-interoceptive predictive coding framework to study interoceptive and exteroceptive anticipatory brain responses using a social rejection task. We analyzed the heart-evoked potential (HEP) and task-related oscillatory activity of 58 adolescents via scalp EEG, and 385 human intracranial recordings of three patients with intractable epilepsy. We found that anticipatory interoceptive signals increased in the face of unexpected social outcomes, reflected in larger negative HEP modulations. Such signals emerged from key brain allostatic-interoceptive network hubs, as shown by intracranial recordings. Exteroceptive signals were characterized by early activity between 1-15 Hz across conditions, and modulated by the probabilistic anticipation of reward-related outcomes, observed over distributed brain regions. Our findings suggest that the anticipation of a social outcome is characterized by allostatic-interoceptive modulations that prepare the organism for possible rejection. These results inform our understanding of interoceptive processing and constrain neurobiological models of social stress.
Background: Social affiliation is one of the building blocks that shapes cultures and communities... more Background: Social affiliation is one of the building blocks that shapes cultures and communities. This motivation contributes to the development of social bonding among individuals within a group, enjoying rights, assuming obligations, and strengthening its identity. Evidence has shown that social affiliation has inspired different social phenomena, such as wars, political movements, social struggles, among others, based on two human motivations: the ingroup love and the outgroup hate. One contemporary group to study as a proxy of social affiliation, and ingroup and outgroup motivations is the sports competition. However, this affiliation model has been poorly considered in social neuroscience research. This research aimed to shed light on the neurobiological networks that are related to social affiliation in football fans of two of the most popular Chilean football teams. Methods: To this end, 43 male fans of two football rival teams watched videos of winning and losing goals of their favorite team while their brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results showed that while the activation of the reward system was observed in fans when their team scores goals against the At the request of the author(s), this article is no longer under peer review. What does this mean? Any reports and responses or comments on the article can be found at the end of the article.
Spontaneous corporal coordination in empathic and non-empathic interactions Carlos Cornejo Pontif... more Spontaneous corporal coordination in empathic and non-empathic interactions Carlos Cornejo Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Diego Cosmelli Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Esteban Hurtado Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Vladimir L´ opez Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Abstract: Research on corporal and gestural coordination during conversations has evidenced behavioral matching and synchronized coordination. Following the hypothesis that coordination phenomena are related to empathy (Gallese, 2001; Lipps, 1900), we used a motion capture system to follow head movements of 28 pairs of subjects during conversations. Half the dyads were instructed to know each other (empathic condition). Subjects in the remaining dyads expected the other to lie (non-empathic condition). Positions were cross-correlated in time for each dyad. A mirroring-coordination analysis (one moving left equivalent to another moving right) showed that subjects in both conditions ...
Visual sensory processing of external events decreases when attention is internally oriented towa... more Visual sensory processing of external events decreases when attention is internally oriented toward self-generated thoughts and also differences in attenuation have been shown depending on the thought's modality (visual or auditory thought). The present study aims to assess whether such modulations occurs also in auditory modality. In order to investigate auditory sensory modulations, we compared a passive listening condition with two conditions in which attention was internally oriented as a part of a task; a visual imagery condition and an inner speech condition. EEG signal was recorded from 20 participants while they were exposed to auditory probes during these three conditions. ERP results showed no differences in N1 auditory response comparing the three conditions reflecting maintenance of evoked electrophysiological reactivity for auditory modality. Nonetheless, time-frequency analyses showed that gamma and theta power in frontal regions was higher for passive listening than for internal attentional conditions. Specifically, the reduced amplitude in early gamma and theta band during both inward attention conditions may reflect reduced conscious attention of the current auditory stimulation. Finally, different pattern of beta band activity was observed only during visual imagery which can reflect cross-modal integration between visual and auditory modalities and it can distinguish this form of mental imagery from the inner speech. Taken together, these results showed that attentional suppression mechanisms in auditory modality are different from visual modality during mental imagery processes. Our results about oscillatory activity also confirm the important role of gamma oscillations in auditory processing and the differential neural dynamics underlying the visual and auditory/verbal imagery.
A decisive element of moral cognition is the detection of harm and its assessment as intentional ... more A decisive element of moral cognition is the detection of harm and its assessment as intentional or unintentional. Moral cognition engages brain networks supporting mentalizing, intentionality, empathic concern and evaluation. These networks rely on the amygdala as a critical hub, likely through frontotemporal connections indexing stimulus salience. We assessed inferences about perceived harm using a paradigm validated through functional magnetic resonance imaging, eye-tracking and electroencephalogram recordings. During the task, we measured local field potentials in three patients with depth electrodes (n = 115) placed in the amygdala and in several frontal, temporal, and parietal locations. Direct electrophysiological recordings demonstrate that intentional harm induces early activity in the amygdala (<200 ms), which-in turn-predicts intention attribution. The amygdala was the only site that systematically discriminated between critical conditions and predicted their classific...
Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2013
Empathy is a highly flexible and adaptive process that allows for the interplay of prosocial beha... more Empathy is a highly flexible and adaptive process that allows for the interplay of prosocial behavior in many different social contexts. Empathy appears to be a very situated cognitive process, embedded with specific contextual cues that trigger different automatic and controlled responses. In this review, we summarize relevant evidence regarding social context modulation of empathy for pain. Several contextual factors, such as stimulus reality and personal experience, affectively link with other factors, emotional cues, threat information, group membership, and attitudes toward others to influence the affective, sensorimotor, and cognitive processing of empathy. Thus, we propose that the frontoinsulartemporal network, the so-called social context network model (SCNM), is recruited during the contextual processing of empathy. This network would (1) update the contextual cues and use them to construct fast predictions (frontal regions), (2) coordinate the internal (body) and external milieus (insula), and (3) consolidate the context-target associative learning of empathic processes (temporal sites). Furthermore, we propose these context-dependent effects of empathy in the framework of the frontoinsular-temporal network and examine the behavioral and neural evidence of three neuropsychiatric conditions (Asperger syndrome, schizophrenia, and the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia), which simultaneously present with empathy and contextual integration impairments. We suggest potential advantages of a situated approach to empathy in the assessment of these neuropsychiatric disorders, as well as their relationship with the SCNM.
Although there is extensive literature about the effects of stimulants on sustained attention tas... more Although there is extensive literature about the effects of stimulants on sustained attention tasks in attentional deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), little is known about the effect of these drugs on other attentional tasks involving different neural systems. In this study we measured the effect of stimulants on ADHD children, both in the electroencephalographic (EEG) activity during sustained attentional tasks and in psychometric performance during selective attentional tasks. These tasks are known to rely on different cortical networks. Our results in children medicated with 10 mg of d-amphetamine administered 60 min before the study indicate (i) a significant increase in amplitude but not latency of the P300 component of the event-related potential (ERP) during the sustained attentional task and (ii) a significant improvement in the reaction times and correct responses in the selective attentional task. In addition to supporting the use of stimulants in children with attention
Decision making is a process that can be strongly affected by social factors. Profuse evidence ha... more Decision making is a process that can be strongly affected by social factors. Profuse evidence has shown how people deviate from traditional rational-choice predictions under different levels of social interactions. The emergence of prosocial decision making, defined as any action that is addressed to benefit another individual even at the expense of personal benefits, has been reported as an important example of such social influence. Furthermore, brain evidence has shown the involvement of structures such the prefrontal cortex, anterior insula and midcingulate cortex during decision settings in which a decision maker interacts with others under physical pain or distress or while being observed by others. Using a slightly modified version of the dictator game, we tested the hypothesis that the inclusion of another person into the decision setting increases prosocial decisions in young adults and that this increase is higher when the other person is associated with others in need. A...
The auditory efferent system has been proposed to function as a biological filter of cochlear res... more The auditory efferent system has been proposed to function as a biological filter of cochlear responses during selective attention. Here, we recorded electroencephalographic activity and otoacoustic emissions in response to auditory distractors during a visual working memory task in humans. We found that the olivocochlear efferent activity is modulated during the visual working memory period suggesting a common mechanism for suppressing cochlear responses during selective attention and working memory.
32-channel(+6) data (Biosemi Active two, 10-20, 2048Hz) unfiltered from the 2016 Plos ONE paper &... more 32-channel(+6) data (Biosemi Active two, 10-20, 2048Hz) unfiltered from the 2016 Plos ONE paper "Spontaneous alpha power lateralization predicts detection performance in an un-cued signal detection task"
Shifting attention to a thought: electroencephalographic dynamics during a modified word generati... more Shifting attention to a thought: electroencephalographic dynamics during a modified word generation task. Diego Cosmelli Escuela de Psicolog´ia, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Centro Interdiciplinario de Neurociencias, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Cristobal Moenne Programa de Doctorado en Ciencias de la Ingenier´ia, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Hern´ an Labb´ e Escuela de Psicolog´ia, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Karim Jerbi Brain Dynamics and Cognition Lab, INSERM U821, Lyon, France. Vladimir L´ opez Escuela de Psicolog´ia, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Centro Interdiciplinario de Neurociencias, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Francisco Aboitiz Laboratorio de Neurociencia Cognitiva, Departamento de Psiquiatr´ia, Escuela de Medicina, Pontificia Universidad Cat´ olica de Chile. Centro Interdiciplinario de Neurociencias, Pontificia Universidad Cat´olica de Chile Abstract: What happens if you are asked to come up w...
Acute psychosocial stress is associated with physiological, subjective and cognitive changes. In ... more Acute psychosocial stress is associated with physiological, subjective and cognitive changes. In particular, attention, which is considered one of the main processes driving cognition, has been related to different stress outcomes, such as anxiety, cortisol levels and autonomic responses, individually. Nonetheless, their specific contributions to and association with attention is still not fully understood. To study this association, 42 male participants were asked to perform an attentional task just before and immediately after being exposed to either an experimental treatment designed to induce psychosocial stress using the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) or a matching stress-free control condition. The salivary cortisol concentration, heart rate, and self-reported anxiety were measured to assess the physiological response to stress and the subjective experience during the protocol. As expected, psychosocial stress induced increases in heart rate, salivary cortisol levels and anxi...
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