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Program and Poster Abstracts

Symposium on the Social Brain

14th November 2011

The Royal Academy of Belgium

Brussels, Belgium

Symposium on the Social Brain – 14th November 2011 - Brussels, Belgium

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Symposium on the Social Brain

Organizing Committee

Frank Van Overwalle (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Marcel Brass (Universiteit Gent)

Dana Samson (Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve)

Arnaud D'Argembeau (Université of Liège)

Sponsored by:


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Program and Speakers

09:00 - 10:00 Registration

10:00 - 10:50 David Perret Social signals make a face look healthy and attractive to others

10:50 - 11:40 Christian Keysers The empathic brain - How brains share actions, sensations and emotions with

other brains

11:40 - 12:10 Coffee break

12:10 - 13:00 Rebecca Saxe How brains think about minds

13:00 - 14:00 Lunch & Posters

14:00 - 14:50 David Amodio The egalitarian brain: Neural mechanisms

for the self-regulation of prejudice

14:50 - 15:40 Nathan Emery Are birds folk ethologists or folk psychologists?

15:40 - 16:10 Coffee break

16:10 - 17:00 Jens Krause Collective behavior and swarm intelligence

17:00 - 18:00 Drink


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Poster Abstracts


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1. When my errors are your pain: Effects of agency on pain empathy

L.Koban, C.Corradi-Dell'Acqua, P.Vuilleumier

University of Geneva

[email protected]

A growing body of evidence suggests that humans‟ ability to empathize with

others‟ pain is instantiated in those neural structures, such as the anterior

cingulate (ACC) and insular (AI) cortex, which are involved in the direct

experience of pain. On the other hand individuals might, deliberately or not,

cause pain to others, but the question of how this causal agency influences

the neural underpinnings of pain empathy has not been addressed yet. In an

event-related fMRI experiment, participants played a visual judgment task in

turns with a friend placed outside the scanner. Errors always led to monetary

losses to both players but, in half of the erroneous trials, an additional

painful stimulation was applied to the friend. This allowed to investigate the

neural underpinnings of self- vs. other-generated errors (factor: AGENCY)

which, in turn, might yield to vicarious experience of a painful vs. painless

heat (factor: PAIN). Behaviorally, self-caused painful errors were associated

with increased guilt and pain ratings than other-caused painful errors.

Functional imaging results showed, consistently with previous studies, a main

effect for PAIN, with enhanced activity in ACC and AI for painful (rather than

painless) errors. Critically, AI was also associated with a significant

PAIN*AGENCY interaction, reflecting increased pain-related activations when

errors were caused by oneself. We provide unprecedented evidence of top-

down influences of agency on empathy which might be well suited to study

abnormal empathic or moral emotions in clinical populations such as

psychopathy and depression.

mailto:[email protected]


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2. Effects of one‟s own emotional state on perspective taking and prosocial

behavior.

H. B.Bukowski, D.Samson

Université Catholique de Louvain

[email protected]

Little is known about the influence of our emotional state on our ability to

take another‟s perspective. Moreover, emotions elicited through classical

paradigms (video, music, autobiographical recall) are often not directed

towards the person whom we are supposed to take the perspective of. We

designed a pseudo-interactive virtual card game in order to induce either

guilt, anger or mild joy (control condition) through the interaction with the

game partner. After performing the card game, each participant completed a

visual perspective-taking task in which they were asked to judge from their

own or the perspective of their game partner. Participants also completed a

tombola tickets sharing task to measure prosocial behaviour. Physiological

recordings and retrospective self-reports confirmed that the guilt and anger

induction were successful and resulted in emotional responses. As expected

from previous studies examining the effect of guilt and anger on prosocial

behaviour, participants in the guilt condition shared more tombola tickets

with their game partner than participants in the anger condition.

Interestingly, the emotional state had not only effects on prosocial behaviour

but also on participants‟ performance in the visual perspective taking task:

participants in the anger condition gave more weight to their own perspective

than their partner‟s perspective whereas the opposite was found for the

participants in the guilt condition. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that

emotions can influence perspective taking even its most cognitive aspects

and in very different ways depending on the emotion.



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3. Neurofunctional basis of group influences on action preparation

R.Hortensius, B.de Gelder

Tilburg University

[email protected]

We spontaneously react to the actions of other people. For example humans

and other primates automatically help conspecifics in difficulty. The goal of

this study is to measure the influence of a group on these processes using

the bystander effect. So far only top down mechanisms and higher cognitive

explanations were provided. We take a bottom-up perspective and argue that

a reduction in action preparation and emotional processing underlie the

diminished helping behavior as a function of group size. We measure both

implicit behavioral and neurofunctional effects of group size. Preliminary fMRI

results show that two separate processes reflect the influence of a group: i)

reduction with more bystanders in brain areas associated with

somatosensoric perception and action preparation, ii) increase with more

bystander in brain areas associated with inferring mental states of others.

Currently, we are testing this to further extend by additional fMRI analysis

and behavioral analysis.



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4. Inter-hemispheric integration of emotional information and emotional

intelligence

T.Anand, R.Pandey

D.D.U.Gorakhpur University,Gorakhpur, U.P.,INDIA

[email protected]

Researchers have demonstrated the potential advantages of Emotional

intelligence (EI) for human beings and it is now believed that it makes people

smarter in different domains of their life. However, the exact mechanisms

and processes that make high EI individual to outperform their counterpart

low EI individuals are still not known. We hypothesize that the better

capacity to integrate information between the two cerebral hemispheres

while processing emotional information may be a potential factor for better

performance of the high EI individuals in real life situations. This speculation

is based on the earlier observations that people with a whole brain approach

or the capacity to flexibly use both hemispheres perform better than those

who rely on the capacity of only one cerebral hemisphere. To test the

aforesaid speculation we compared low and high EI individuals ( N= 35 in

each group) in terms of perceptual accuracy and speed (reaction time) of

processing emotional information (facial emotion identification and

discrimination) presented either laterally to left/right visual fields or

bilaterally to both visual fields. The higher accuracy or quicker response time

under bilateral condition as compared to unilateral condition was considered

as an indicator of the capacity for inter-hemispheric integration of

information. The obtained data from emotional identification and

discrimination tasks were treated separately in a 2 (EI group: low & high) X 3

(visual field: left, right, & bilateral) X 3 (emotions: positive, negative aroused,

& negative non-aroused) ANOVA with repeated measure on the last two

factors . The results revealed that the high EI individuals showed a bilateral

advantage, whereas the low EI individuals showed bilateral disadvantage in

discrimination and identification of facial expressions of emotions. This

finding implies that EI is associated with a better capacity for inter-

hemispheric integration of emotional information and is theoretical

congruent with the conceptual model of emotional intelligence that assumes

that EI involves the ability to integrate the cognitive ( assumed to be

represented in the left hemisphere) and affective (right hemisphere) systems

for personal growth. Findings have been discussed in the light of the

available empirical evidences and theoretical models of EI.



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5. Increased spontaneous facial mimicry for more rewarding faces:

Evidence from a facial Electromyography (EMG) study

T.Sims, C.van Reekum, T.Johnstone, B.Chakrabarti

Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics, School of

Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights,

Reading RG6 6AL, UK

[email protected]

Facial mimicry, which occurs both unconsciously and spontaneously during

social interaction, represents a rudimentary form of empathy. Social

psychological studies have shown that people tend to mimic those who they

like more. This has led to the proposal that more rewarding social stimuli

elicit increased spontaneous mimicry. In the current experiment, we test if

spontaneous mimicry is dependent upon reward value of stimuli. An implicit

reward conditioning paradigm was used to manipulate the reward value

associated with four neutral target faces. The participants (N=32)

subsequently viewed short video clips of the same target faces making happy

emotional expressions, while facial EMG was recorded from the congruent

facial muscle (Zygomaticus Major, ZYM) as a measure of spontaneous facial

mimicry. While watching the happy expressions participants showed

significantly higher activation in ZYM in response to faces associated with

high rewards, than in response to those associated with low rewards

(p=.013). These results suggest that reward value of a socially rewarding

stimulus can modulate the extent of spontaneous facial mimicry. We

speculate that such a link might result in spontaneous mimicry that occurs

during social interaction being reinforced and that this in turn might provide

a mechanism by which reward processes reinforce general social behaviours.

Therefore, a dysfunctional link between reward and mimicry might underlie

conditions such as ASC which are characterized by both deficits in empathy

and also in social reward processing. This speculation is supported by our

finding that the difference in the extent of spontaneous mimicry for happy

faces associated with high vs. low reward was negatively correlated with

autistic traits.



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6. Emotional responding modulates subsequent information processing:

Does age and social context matter?

A.N.W.Taylor, G.Osborne, J.Ellis, C.M.van Reekum

University of Reading

[email protected]

An important component of adaptive emotional responding is the ability to

modulate the recovery time of an emotional response, and individuals differ

substantially in “emotional recovery” (Davidson, 1998). Research suggests

older adults have a bias towards positive information (i.e. a positivity effect),

due to perceived “time of life” goals and motivations (Carstensen, 1995). If

ageing is characterised by a positivity bias, one would expect this bias to

impact recovery time, either by faster recovery from negative and/or

maintenance of responding to positive events. We examined the extent to

which and for how long emotionally relevant information disrupts subsequent

cognitive processing in older and younger adults. We recorded reaction times

(RTs) while participants were required to make a judgement on group

membership of abstract figures presented at variable time intervals after the

offset of emotional images. Based on the positivity bias in ageing, we predict

that relative to younger adults, older adults will show a slower recovery,

indexed by relatively longer RTs over time, when the images are positive.

Effects of specificity of the positivity effect were compared against effects of

negative and neutral information. The results showed age-independent task

disruption by emotional information, particularly shortly (250ms to 1000ms)

and at a substantial delay (3000ms to 4000ms) after picture offset. After

positive images, older adults demonstrated slower RTs relative to younger

adults, whilst younger adults showed slower RTs after negative images vs.

older adults. Finally, data showed that RTs were slower for negative and

neutral social images vs. non-social, but this was not evident in positive

images. The results of this novel task suggests that picture-elicited affect

persists for a substantial time after event offset, disrupting subsequent

cognitive performance. Importantly, these findings suggest that the impact of

positive and negative information is modulated by age and sociality. These

findings will be discussed in a social neuroscience of ageing framework.



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7. Perception of emotional facial expressions in individuals with high autism

spectrum traits

E.Poljac, E.Poljac, J.Wagemans

Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven

[email protected]

We employed The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) to quantify autistic traits

in a group of 500 healthy individuals and investigate whether the typical

decline in affective functioning observed in autism spectrum disorders is

related to these specific traits and thus can also be found in a broader

autistic phenotype. The results on The Emotion recognition task revealed a

less accurate recognition of emotions of anger, disgust, and sadness. This

finding can be interpreted as a selective impairment in identification of

emotional facial expressions that is primarily related to the extent of autistic

traits.



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8. Action understanding and imitation in infants at risk for autism spectrum

disorders: A systematic investigation of the mirror neuron theory from a

developmental perspective.

M.Vanvuchelen

Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven - PHL University

College (Belgium)

[email protected]

Our project seeks to examine the correlation between a diminished functional

connectivity within the mirror neuron system (MNS), which is a promising

early biomarker for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and the development of

the ASD phenotype. Our working hypothesis is that a deficit in the

perception-action linkage is evident within the first years of life among

infants at risk for ASD (i.e. younger siblings of affected children).

At the moment, we conduct a behavioural study using eye-tracking

techniques and EMG registration to investigate the onset of the perception-

action linkage in typically developing young children. We predict that,

regardless of the level of motor familiarity with the presented actions,

typically developing infants and toddlers will show pro-active goal-directed

eye movements and pro-active electromyographic activity when they observe

goal-directed actions of adults, indicating that action-understanding proceeds

action-execution (Vanvuchelen, PHL University College – Vrije Universiteit

Brussel).

Later on, we will use EEG techniques for assessing mu rhythm

desynchronisation (MRD) to investigate this perception-action linkage in

infants at risk for ASD aged 8-20 months compared to typically developing

infants (Vanvuchelen, Steyaert, Alaerts, Leuven Autism Research

K.U.Leuven). We predict that, regardless of the level of motor representation

and the familiarity with the presented actions, siblings who go on to be

diagnosed with ASD will show a lack of MRD and siblings who are non-

diagnosed will show a reduced MRD compared to typically developing infants.

In that case, the MNS deficit is linked to ASD symptoms rather than an

indication of the children‟s developmental level.



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9. What is the role of motor simulation in action understanding?

G.Vannuscorps, M.Andres A.Pillon

Université catholique de Louvain,Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique

[email protected]

The mere viewing of an agent performing an action causes automatic covert

activity in the motor system of the observer as if his own body performed the

action (e.g., Aziz-Zadeh et al., 2006). According to the motor simulation

theory, this activity reflects the automatic remapping of the observed action

onto a motor representation of the same action in the observer‟s motor

system and this process would play a central role in understanding others‟

actions (e.g., Rizzolatti et al., 2001). Here we investigated the functional role

of motor simulation in manual action understanding by assessing action

understanding in an individual, DC, presenting with a congenital absence of

arms and hands (limb aplasia). DC was invited to perform tasks tapping

different aspects of action understanding (conceptual categorization of

actions vs. kinematic processing of actions) for manual and non manual

actions and in conditions varying in the amount of information provided by

the visual action stimulus. The results indicated that motor simulation is not

necessary for understanding actions when the visual stimulus conveys both

form and motion information, even when visual motion is only implied

(photographs), target objects are missing (pantomimes), or fine-grained

processing of the kinematics of action is required (weight estimation and

violation of expectations). They also suggested that motor simulation does

contribute to action processing when visual form information is missing

(actions as point-light animations). This pattern is consistent with the

hypothesis that motor simulation contributes, in a top-down fashion, to the

perceptual processing of conspecifics‟ body motion, especially when visual

information is partly missing or ambiguous (e.g., Wilson & Knoblich, 2005).



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10. Interactive or individual emotions in crowds: An fMRI study

E.M.J.Huis in ‟t Veld, B.de Gelder

Tilburg University

[email protected]

Studies on the perception of crowds are gaining a lot of interest, also in the

ICT community. However, most studies so far have used stimuli portraying

many individuals loosely put together in a single picture, rather than showing

the interaction and synchronisation of movement between the individuals.

We used fMRI to study the neurological underpinnings of natural and

emotional crowd perception. Participants viewed video stimuli of a group of

actors that were displaying a neutral, happy or fearful emotion. However, in

one condition, the crowd was collectively sharing the emotion, and in the

other each group member experienced the emotion without interacting with

the others. Preliminary results show that early visual processing areas and

areas related to biological motion already respond differently to collectively

shared emotion and that this is stronger for some emotions than others.



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11. The influence of being imitated on empathy for pain.

De Coster, Verschuere, Goubert, Brass

Ghent University

[email protected]

Social psychological research suggests that being imitated leads to prosocial

behaviour and changes the way we experience others (Chartrand & Bargh,

1999). Furthermore, pain perception research indicates that pain-related

brain representations become activated in the observer when viewing

another person in pain (Singer et al., 2004). The aim of the present project

was to combine both lines of research, and investigate whether being

imitated can modulate empathy for pain. To this end, we developed an

experimental approach combining a simple imitation task with a pain

perception task: Participants had to carry out an index, middle, ring, or little

finger movement that was either imitated by a previously videotaped hand

on screen (imitation block, e.g. subject lifts index finger – hand on screen

lifts index finger) or not (nonimitation block, e.g. subject lifts index finger –

hand on screen lifts middle, ring, or little finger). At the end of each block,

the hand on screen received painful stimulation (e.g. a paper cut to the

hand). Behavioural and physiological results (questionnaires, startle blink

reflex, and heart rate) were in line with our prediction, providing evidence for

the idea that being imitated leads to higher empathy for pain than not being

imitated. In a second step, we adjusted the imitative paradigm to a rubber

hand illusion (RHI) setup. Similar to our first experiment, behavioural and

physiological results of a second experiment suggested that a RHI elicits

more empathy for pain than no RHI. A temporal variation manipulation will

be necessary to distinguish imitative (delay) and RHI (no delay) processes.



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12. Flying Dutchmen: Temporal Predictions for Coordinating with Others

C.Vesper, R.van der Wel, G.Knoblich, N.Sebanz

Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Center for Cognition,

Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

[email protected]

When acting together, people often have to precisely coordinate the timing of

their individual action parts. We investigated how temporal predictions

support coordination when no online perceptual information about another‟s

action is available. Pairs of participants performed simple forward jumps of

variable length with the task to synchronize landing times. They could not

see or hear their partner, but were informed about their own and the other‟s

jump distance beforehand. Auditory feedback when people landed provided

information about the accuracy of coordination. We expected participants to

take their partners‟ jumping distance into account for their own movement

planning. The results confirmed this prediction. Specifically, the movement

onset (i.e. how long someone waits before jump take-off) was significantly

longer when the distance to their partner was larger. This suggests that also

in the absence of online perceptual information, people integrate predictions

about their own and their partner‟s actions to achieve coordination.



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13. Neural correlates of impulsivity: lack of perseverance is associated with

decreased activity in the dorsal attention network during mind-wandering.

D.Stawarczyk, S.Majerus, A.D'Argembeau

University of Liège

[email protected]

Impulsivity is an important personality dimension involved in many

problematic behaviors and psychological disorders. The UPPS model suggests

that impulsivity is a multifaceted construct that comprises four facets with

distinct etiologies and related to different cognitive processes: urgency, lack

of premeditation, lack of perseverance, and sensation seeking. In this study,

we examined whether these different facets of impulsivity are associated with

distinct neural correlates. During fMRI, participants performed a go/no go

task and their level of attention to the task was assessed by probing mind-

wandering episodes. We found that individuals who score high on lack of

perseverance had more variable response times and showed decreased

activity in the dorsal attention network when their mind was wandering. This

network comprises lateral parietal, frontal, and visual areas and is involved in

the controlled orientation of attention towards task-related stimuli. On the

other hand, the remaining facets of impulsivity did not modulate the activity

of the dorsal attention network. Urgency and sensation seeking were related

to increased activity in the ventral tegmental area during mind-wandering,

and urgency was also related to increased activity in the medial prefrontal

cortex. The ventral tegmental area is part of the reward circuitry of the brain

and the medial prefrontal cortex underlies self-related processing. No brain

activation was found for lack of premeditation. These findings constitute a

first demonstration of specific as well as shared neural correlates between

the different components of the UPPS model of impulsivity. In addition, they

strengthen the view that lack of perseverance is associated with difficulties to

maintain a consistent level of attention during cognitive tasks, whereas

urgency and sensation seeking are more closely related to motivational

processes.



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14. Innocent but paternalistic comments as interference that strikes hard on

women

Marie Sarlet, Benoît Dardenne

Université de Liège/Aspirante FRS-FNRS

[email protected]

Hostility toward women is a well documented cause of physical as well as

psychological harm. Less well known however are the potential negative

consequences of a more benevolent and subtle form of discrimination toward

women, protective paternalism. Protective paternalism is defined as

considering subordinated group nicely but with condescendence. In a classic

Stroop task, we found that protective paternalism targeted at the group level

created an attentional deficit that led to a general slowing effect compared to

the neutral and the hostile sexism conditions. Moreover, incompetence as

well as warmth-related ideas were found to be activated more in the

condition of protective paternalism than in the other conditions. These

findings demonstrate that seemingly innocent but paternalistic comments are

detrimental to women basic cognitive performance through mental intrusions

of thoughts related to women‟s incompetence, but also lead to a

compensation process that promotes warmth.



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15. When do people cooperate? The neuroeconomics of prosocial decision-

making.

C.H.Declerck, C.Boone, G.Emonds

University of Antwerp

[email protected]

Understanding the roots of prosocial behavior is an interdisciplinary research

endeavor that has generated an abundance of empirical data across many

disciplines. This review integrates research findings from different fields into

a novel theoretical framework that can account for when prosocial behavior is

likely to occur. Specifically, we propose that the motivation to cooperate,

generated by the reward system in the brain (extending from striatum to the

ventromedial prefrontal cortex), is modulated by two neural networks: a

cognitive control system (centered on the lateral prefrontal cortex) that

processes extrinsic cooperative incentives, and/or a social cognition system

(including the superior temporal sulcus, the anterior medial frontal cortex

and the amygdala) that processes trust signals. The independent modulatory

influence of incentives and trust on the decision to cooperate is substantiated

by a growing body of neuroimaging data and reconciles the apparent paradox

between economic versus social rationality in the literature, suggesting that

we are in fact wired for both. Furthermore, the theoretical framework can

account for substantial behavioral heterogeneity in prosocial behavior. Based

on the existing data, we postulate that self-regarding individuals (who are

more likely to adopt an economically rational strategy) are more responsive

to extrinsic cooperative incentives and therefore rely relatively more on

cognitive control to make (un)cooperative decisions, whereas other-regarding

individuals (who are more likely to adopt a socially rational strategy) are

more sensitive to trust signals to avoid betrayal and recruit relatively more

brain activity in the social cognition system.



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16. Interactive social decision-making in severe Major Depressive Disorder

M.Destoop, D.Schrijvers, B.Sabbe, ERA.De Bruijn

Collaborative Antwerp Psychiatric Research Institute

[email protected]

Although recent studies focusing on features of major depressive disorder

(MDD) suggest deviant social decision-making, studies using the Ultimatum

Game (UG) in patients actually diagnosed with MDD do not exist. Moreover

all aforementioned studies so far focused on responder behavior and thus

fairness considerations and to this date no one investigated social interactive

behavior which involves proposer behavior requiring second-order

mentalizing as well. To address this gap, 39 MDD patients and 22 healthy

controls played a modified UG, both in the role of responder and proposer

against the same partner. MDD patients accepted both fair and unfair offers

as many times as the healthy controls in their role as responder,

demonstrating that MDD patients are capable of making social decisions

based on fairness considerations in the same way as controls do. Importantly,

however, in the role of proposer MDD patients offered significantly more than

the control group did. This is an indication that MDD patients are more

focused on maintaining a good reputation, which is suggested to be caused

by disturbed second-order mentalizing and harm avoidance in MDD. Together,

these findings provide unique evidence that social decision-making studied in

a realistic context is disturbed in MDD.



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17. Face to face with unfairness: How emotional facial expressions modulate

social decisions in major depression

S.Radke, I.C.Schäfer, B.Müller, E.R.A.De Bruijn

Radboud University Nijmegen, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and

Behaviour, The Netherlands

[email protected]

In social situations, emotional expressions can facilitate understanding the

goals, intentions or motivational states of one‟s interaction partner. In

particular, facial expressions serve as important social signals, e.g.

communicating cooperation by displaying a happy smile, that can guide

adaptive behavior. Negative processing biases observed in depressive

patients may alter the influence of emotional cues on their decision behavior.

Therefore, the current study focused on the differential role of emotional

facial expressions that accompany unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game in

patients with major depression and healthy controls. In both groups alike,

rejection rates were highest following unambiguous signals of unfairness and

decline, e.g. an angry face of the proposer. However, depressive patients

showed higher rejection rates than healthy volunteers in response to cues

(perceived as) congruent with their typical affective experience, i.e. sadness.

These findings suggest that social decision-making profoundly relies on

salient features. Importantly, the impact of negative processing biases in

depression may lead to less well-balanced decisions and disturbances in

social interactions.



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18. Differentiating cooperative motives and affective reactions in prosocials

and proselfs with fMRI

G.Emonds, C. H.Declerck, C.Boone, R.Soerinck

Universiteit Antwerpen

[email protected]

Individual differences in social value orientation (proselfs versus prosocial)

are a well-documented determinant of cooperative behavior in social

dilemmas. Previous research has shown that, for proselfs, the decision to

cooperate is calculative and incentive-based, while prosocials are intrinsically

motivated to cooperate, which may make them particularly sensitive to

breaches of trust. In this study, we use event-related fMRI to further gain

insight into the neural correlates of (un)cooperative decision making of

prosocials and proselfs, and additionally investigate their affective response

to a non-reciprocating partner.

Method: Participants (n= 38) under the scanner engage in a series of one-

shot Prisoner‟s Dilemma (PD) games. The first series of games, played

simultaneously, reveal participants‟ intrinsic motivations. Later games are

played sequentially (participants act as first movers) and include a feedback

phase. The sequential PD games offer greater cooperative incentives and

also reveal uncooperative intentions of partners. Brain contrasts are

computed between the decision making phases of prosocials and proselfs in

both types of games, and between their responses to a non-reciprocating

partner in the sequential PD.

The following hypotheses are tested: (1) Cooperative and defect decisions of

proselfs are associated with activation of brain regions involved with

cognition (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulated gyrus, and

caudatum). (2) cooperative decisions of prosocials are associated with a

„warm glow of giving‟ (activating the ventral striatum and subgenual area),

while defect decision are driven by ( fear of betrayal (amygdala activation).

(3) Prosocials show a stronger emotional reaction to feedback compared to

proselfs (activation of ventral striatum/subgenual area for cooperative

feedback, and insula for defect feedback), (4) Prosocials show a greater

emotional spill-over effect which affects their behavior in a subsequent round

of the game, and (5) there is functional connectivity between activation of

brain regions involved in emotions during cooperative decisions in the

simultaneous PD and the affective response to a defecting partner in the

sequential PD.



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Conclusions: Economists have attributed sustained cooperation in

populations to the behavior of strong reciprocity, referring to an individual‟s

propensity to resist free-riding and to punish defection at a personal cost.

Corroboratory evidence for the above hypotheses would substantiate the

idea that prosocials possess more strong reciprocating characteristics than

proselfs, and that these differences have a biological ground.


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19. Acting on social exclusion: neural underpinnings of punishment and

forgiveness

G.J.Will, E.A.Crone, B.Güroğlu

Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, the Netherlands

[email protected]

Human social behavior is contingent upon information about prior

interactions. For instance, people adjust their decision-making in accordance

with their interaction partner‟s previous behavior or perceived moral

character. The current fMRI study set out to test how a negative social

interaction relates to subsequent social exchange behavior and its neural

correlates. Participants (22 young adults) first played a virtual ball-tossing

game (Cyberball) with anonymous peers, which reliably induced feelings of

social exclusion. Subsequently, in a Dictator Game (DG) they divided money

between themselves and the players who previously included or excluded

them during the Cyberball interaction. In this economic paradigm participants

were given the opportunity to either punish the norm violators (i.e.,

excluders) by decreasing their outcomes or to forgive them by offering an

equal distribution in spite of the violated norm. Behavioral results show that

social exclusion resulted in a willingness to punish the excluders in the DG.

Neuroimaging results revealed a network of regions associated with making

offers to the excluders compared to the includers, including the

temporoparietal junction (TPJ), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and

the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) irrespective of the decision to

either punish or forgive. These activations might be interpreted in terms of

higher mentalizing and affect regulation demands required in social decision-

making when interacting with norm violators. Punishment of the excluders

resulted in activity in the posterior insula and amygdala, brain structures that

have been found to be important for affective processing. Interestingly,

dMPFC and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex were more active during fair offers

for excluders, suggesting a role for mentalizing and control involved in

forgiveness.



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20. Trust all, love a few: Neural correlates of social interactions with

personally familiar others

E.T.Klapwijk, B.Güroğlu

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Curium - Leiden University Medical Center,

the Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), the

Netherlands; Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, the Netherlands

[email protected]

When people interact with other people, they have all sorts of expectations

about each other‟s intentions. For example, they might expect people they

like to cooperate and people they do not like to be less cooperative. Such

diverse expectations about others guide people‟s social decisions in everyday

life. In this study we investigated the neural correlates of trust related social

decision-making in which participants interacted with personally familiar

peers from their classroom. So far 11 young adults (mean age = 20.5 years)

have participated in the fMRI study, where they played a repetitive Trust

Game as the first player with three interaction partners: a friend (i.e., a liked

peer), an antagonist (i.e., a disliked peer), and an anonymous peer they met

on the day of the experiment (a confederate). Although amounts of trust

displayed by the participants towards the three different interaction partners

were similar on average, there were differences in mentalizing and reward-

related brain regions activated during the interactions. Preliminary findings

show higher activation in posterior superior temporal sulcus, tempoparietal

junction and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for the antagonist compared

to the anonymous peer, suggesting increased mentalizing and attention to

coupling one‟s decision with the expected behavior of the antagonist. Further,

interactions with the friend were associated with higher activation in caudate

nucleus and the orbitofrontal cortex, possibly reflecting the rewarding nature

of interacting with friends. Furthermore, we found higher activation in the

right temporal pole and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex when not trusting

compared to trusting the antagonist which might reflect the coupling of

negative emotions with perceptions about the antagonist. The findings

highlight the moderating role of interaction partners in activating various

„social brain‟ regions.



26

21. Neural Underpinnings of Dynamic Social Tie Formation in a Public Good

Game

N.Bault, B.Pelloux, K.R.Ridderinkhof, F.A.A.M.van Winden

Cognitive Science Center Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, The

Netherlands

[email protected]

In models of other-regarding preferences, formalized through interdependent

utility functions, a weight is attached to the utility or welfare of other

individuals. These models generally assume this weight to be stable,

regardless of the interaction history with the interaction partner. Here we

test a model of choice where this weight is related to the dynamic formation

of a social tie. A social tie refers to a caring about the interests of a specific

other person, based on feelings experienced while interacting with that other

person. We tested the hypothesis that brain regions known to process social

information might keep track of the tie strength.

Twenty five pairs of subjects repeatedly played a public good game (PGG).

During the outcome phase they were presented with the contribution of the

other and both players‟ payoff. We measured the BOLD signal of one

participant in each pair using fMRI. Behavioral data were used to estimate

the tie building up between participants during the game. The social tie was

then used as a regressor in fMRI analyses.

Our model performed well in predicting the behavior of participants. At the

moment of choice, activity in the bilateral posterior temporal sulcus (pSTS),

medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and temporo-parietal junction (TPJ)

correlated with the dynamically estimated tie parameter, supporting a role of

these regions in social tie formation. In addition, activity of the mPFC

correlated with contributions in the PGG. We also found functional

connectivity between the STS and the mPFC, suggesting that the

representation of social ties is integrated in the decision process.

Regions typically activated in tasks involving social interaction encode both

the kindness of the other‟s choice and the dynamic formation of social ties.

These results provide a new insight in modeling other-regarding preferences

in economic choices and in understanding the underlying neural mechanisms.



27

22. On the role of the left anterior temporal lobe in social cognition:

Neuropsychological evidence from a patient with semantic dementia.

C.Michel, A.Pillon, A.Ivanoiu, D.Samson

Université catholique de Louvain

[email protected]

Neuroimaging studies have shown that the anterior temporal lobes (aTLs) are

part of the neural network commonly activated when people are engaged in

Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks, i.e., tasks requiring to reason about other

people‟s mental states. However, the functional role of the aTLs in social

cognition still remains to be clarified. Based on the observation that these

structures are not only involved in social cognition tasks but also in semantic

processing – as revealed by the conceptual deficit observed in patients

suffering from semantic dementia following the progressive deterioration of

the aTLs – some authors have recently hypothesized that the aTLs contribute

to ToM by subtending the abstract representations of social concepts that we

need to infer other people‟s mental states (e.g., Ross & Olson, 2010).

Compatible with this view, these regions have been shown to be

preferentially activated for social as compared to non-social concepts in

neuroimaging studies (e.g., Zahn et al., 2007). Here, we report the case of a

patient, C.M., who suffers from semantic dementia following a brain

degeneration affecting mainly the left anterior temporal lobe. On several

semantic tasks, C.M. appeared to be equally if not less impaired for social

compared to non-social concepts. Furthermore, despite his lesion, the patient

was perfectly able to infer other people‟s mental states (false beliefs and

knowledge) in non-verbal tasks. These findings challenge the hypothesis

regarding the functional role of the aTLs in ToM: they suggest that (i) the left

aTL is not specifically (if at all) dedicated to the storage of social concepts

that would be needed to infer other people‟s mental states and, (ii) despite

its recurrent activation in neuroimaging studies, the left aTL is not even

necessary for inferring mental states.



28

23. Dissociation in the social brain: The role of the TPJ and mPFC in goal and

trait inferences

N.Ma, N.Van Hoeck, K.Baetens, F.Van Overwalle

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

[email protected]

In his meta-analysis, Van Overwalle (2009) suggested that the Temporo-

Parietal Junction (TPJ) is involved in inferring immediate goals and intentions

from behaviors, while the medial PreFrontal Cortex (mPFC) integrates social

information at a more abstract level, such as traits. However, to date, this

division of inference processes in the social brain has not been investigated

in a single study. We explored the differential role of TPJ and mPFC in goal

and trait inferences respectively, using fMRI. Participants were given verbal

descriptions of agents, together with a photo of the agent. In one half of the

trials (Behavior Condition), the agent was described as engaging in a simple

goal-directed behavior, whereas in the other half this description was absent.

Orthogonal to this, in another half of the trials (Trait Condition), the

participants had to answer a question about a trait of the agent, whereas in

the other half the question was about the agent‟s physical appearance. The

results revealed that the dorsal mPFC was strongly recruited when

participants inferred the agent‟s trait, irrespective of the presence of a

behavioral description. In contrast, the TPJ, posterior Superior Temporal

Sulcus (pSTS), anterior IntraParietal Sulcus and PreMotor Cortex were

activated when behavioral information was presented, irrespective of

whether a trait question was asked or not. In addition, the posterior medial

Frontal Cortex and left PFC typically associated with conflict monitoring were

also recruited under both trait and behavior processing. This may be due to

the multiple types of information between which the participants had to

select, in order to provide an answer. These findings confirm that in a social

context, the TPJ (and pSTS) and mirror areas are activated for understanding

goal-directed behaviors, while the mPFC is involved in processing traits.



29

24. Observing Joint Actions: An fMRI Investigation

T.Eskenazi, F.de Lange, S-A.Rueschemeyer, N.Sebanz

Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior

[email protected]

Action perception studies have so far investigated the perception of individual

actions. It is unknown however how we perceive joint actions. Joint actions

involve two or more individuals coordinating their actions around a shared

intention. According to philosophical accounts of joint action, this is

fundamentally different from multiple individuals acting in parallel without a

shared intention. Do observers process situations where two individuals act

towards a shared intention (joint action) differently than situations where

they act on their independent intentions (parallel action)? To answer this

question, this fMRI study compared perceptually identical yet intentionally

ambiguous actions observed in varying contexts.

In an observation paradigm, a dialogue between two individuals set the

context for the following video depicting these individuals engaging in various

actions. In the joint action condition, the dialogue conveyed two actors

agreeing to do something together (making a pizza). In the parallel action

condition actors expressed their own independent intentions (pizza vs. salad).

Importantly, the videos following the dialogues were identical. Data analysis

focused on the BOLD response during the observation of action performance.

The results revealed significant activations in temporal poles, left superior

temporal sulcus (STS), and the anterior part of the anterior cingulate (ACC)

in the joint action condition compared to the parallel action condition. These

three areas have consistently been associated with mental state reasoning.

Accordingly, the findings suggest that perception of intentions shared by

multiple individuals evokes more mental state processing than perception of

multiple independent intentions.



30

25. Counterfactual Thinking: Changing the past for a better future!

N.Van Hoeck, N.Ma, M.Vandekerckhove, F.Van Overwalle


[email protected]

Recent studies suggest that a brain network mainly associated with episodic

memory (hippocampal area, temporal lobes, midline and lateral parietal

lobes, and midline and lateral prefrontal cortex) has a more general function

in imagining oneself in another time, place or perspective (e.g. episodic

future thought, theory of mind, default mode). If this is true, counterfactual

thinking (e.g. “If I had left the office earlier, I wouldn‟t have missed my

train.”) should also activate this network. Until today neurological evidence

on the localization of counterfactual processes in the brain is scarce. The

present fMRI study explores these processes by directly comparing the

imagining of upward counterfactuals (creating better outcomes for negative

past events) with the recall of negative past events and the imagining of

positive future events. Results confirm that episodic and counterfactual

thinking share a common brain network. In contrast to episodic thinking,

counterfactual thinking activates inferior parietal lobule and parts of the

medial and lateral prefrontal cortex stronger.



31

26. Situation and person attributions under spontaneous and intentional

instructions:

An fMRI study

J.Kestemont, M.Vandekerckhove, N.Ma, F.Van Overwalle


[email protected]

This research explores how observers make causal beliefs about an event in

terms of the person or situation. Thirty-four participants read various short

descriptions of social events that implied either the person or the situation as

the cause. Half of them were explicitly instructed to judge whether the event

was caused by something about the person or the situation (intentional

inferences) whereas the other half was instructed simply to read the material

carefully (spontaneous inferences). The results showed common activation in

areas related to mentalizing, across all types of causes or instructions

(posterior superior temporal sulcus, temporo-parietal junction, precuneus).

However, the medial prefrontal cortex was activated only under spontaneous

instructions, but not under intentional instruction. This suggests a bias

towards person attributions (e.g., fundamental attribution bias).

Complementary to this, intentional situation attributions activated a stronger

and more extended network compared to intentional person attributions,

suggesting that situation attributions require more controlled, extended and

broader processing of the information.



32

27. Neurocognitive Basis of True and False Belief Attribution

T.Schuwerk, B.Sodian, K.Döhnel, M.Sommer

LMU Munich

[email protected]

Using functional imaging we aimed to specify the neurocognitive

underpinning of Theory of Mind reasoning, in particular of the attribution of

true and false beliefs. Recent research focuses on two subprocesses and

involved brain regions: The right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ) is

assumed to play a crucial role in false belief attribution. However, there is a

controversy in recent literature whether this region is also associated to the

attribution of true beliefs. Activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) is

assumed to be related to inhibitory processes, necessary to juggle diverging

perspectives occurring in the false belief task. Using a modified “Sally-Anne

scenario” we asked adults (N=18; MA=25 years; SD=2.2) to attribute false

and true beliefs. Two respective control conditions required reasoning about

the physical reality with either a congruent or diverging perspective of the

story„s protagonist. Results revealed a region of the RTPJ that was associated

to the attribution of false as well as true beliefs compared to reasoning about

physical reality. Although the true belief task could have been solved by

solely considering the physical reality of the task, the RTPJ activity in both

belief conditions indicates that participants did engage in belief attribution

also in the true belief condition. MPFC activity was not selective to false belief

reasoning, but was related to processing of perspective differences. This

finding corroborates the notion that inhibitory processes associated to MPFC

activity subserve false belief attribution.



33

28. Does agency cueing of geometric shapes affect their attentional cueing

effects? Investigating the social component of endogenous attentional

reorienting

J.Steen, M.Brass, F.Van Overwalle


[email protected]

Recent neuroimaging studies have suggested common cognitive processes to

be involved in (1) tasks tapping into „low-level‟ attentional (re)orienting and

(2) tasks requiring social-cognitive skills, based on substantial overlap in

neural activation patterns. In addition to this suggestion of common

underlying processes (common-processes hypothesis), some researchers

even theorized these basic spatial-attentional processes to be the building

blocks of social cognition, more specifically of „mind-reading‟ abilities

generally referred to as Theory of Mind. We argue that attentional cueing

effects, which are traditionally held to reflect basic spatial-attentional

processes, at least partly reflect some degree of social contract implied by

the communicative or social-intentional nature of the symbolic cue that

predicts where attention should be focused on. Consequently, we posit that

making the social-agentive nature of the cues more salient (e.g., making

them goal-directed agents) will result in stronger cueing effects. To study

this, we conducted an adapted version of Posner‟s endogenous cueing task

using a 2 (cue validity) × 2 (high versus low agency) factorial within-subjects

design. The agency level of the central cues was primed using animations,

which were designed to evoke different levels of agency attribution, just

before the attention task. Preliminary results indicate a significant interaction

between these two factors, providing initial behavioral support for this

common-processes hypothesis. Moreover, these results rise questions

concerning the presumed non-social nature of Posner‟s cueing paradigm.

However, follow-up experiments are planned in order to (1) further support

these claims by precluding potential confounds and to (2) relate these

behavioral modulations to neural activation patterns.


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