Interactions between emotions and social context: Basic, clinical and non-human evidence

Moral decision-making is a key asset for humans’ integration in social contexts, and the way we decide about moral issues seems to be strongly influenced by emotions. For example, individuals with deficits in emotional processing tend to deliver more utilitarian choices (accepting an emotionally aversive action in favor of communitarian well-being). However, little is known about the association between emotional experience and moral-related patterns of choice. We investigated whether subjective reactivity to emotional stimuli, in terms of valence, arousal, and dominance, is associated with moral decision-making in 95 healthy adults. They answered to a set of moral and non-moral dilemmas and assessed emotional experience in valence, arousal and dominance dimensions in response to neutral, pleasant, unpleasant non-moral, and unpleasant moral pictures. Results showed significant correlations between less unpleasantness to negative stimuli, more pleasantness to positive stimuli and higher proportion of utilitarian choices. We also found a positive association between higher arousal ratings to negative moral laden pictures and more utilitarian choices. Low dominance was associated with greater perceived difficulty over moral judgment. These behavioral results are in fitting with the proposed role of emotional experience in moral choice.

33,421 views

11 citations

Original Research

11 October 2013

Emotional modulation of the attentional blink and the relation to interpersonal reactivity

Philipp Kanske

, 1 more and

Michèle Wessa

10,756 views

27 citations

Original Research

16 August 2013

Structural neuroimaging of social cognition in progressive non-fluent aphasia and behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia

Blas Couto

, 7 more and

Agustin Ibáñez

(A) Main VBM results, atrophy of all FTD patients compared to controls, p < 0.05, α = 0.2 FDR corrected. (B) Atrophy of bvFTD group compared to controls in the frontal, insular, and temporal regions, p < 0.05, small volume corrected. (C) Atrophy of PNFA group compared to controls in the frontal, insular, and temporal regions, p < 0.05, small volume corrected.

Social cognition impairments are pervasive in the frontotemporal dementias (FTD). These deficits would be triggered by (a) basic emotion and face recognition processes as well as by (b) higher level social cognition (e.g., theory of mind, ToM). Both emotional processing and social cognition impairments have been previously reported in the behavioral variant of FTD (bvFTD) and also in other versions of FTDs, including primary progressive aphasia. However, no neuroanatomic comparison between different FTD variants has been performed. We report selective behavioral impairments of face recognition, emotion recognition, and ToM in patients with bvFTD and progressive non-fluent aphasia (PNFA) when compared to controls. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) shows a classical impairment of mainly orbitofrontal (OFC), anterior cingulate (ACC), insula and lateral temporal cortices in patients. Comparative analysis of regional gray matter related to social cognition deficits (VBM) reveals a differential pattern of fronto-insulo-temporal atrophy in bvFTD and an insulo-temporal involvement in PNFA group. Results suggest that in spite of similar social cognition impairments reported in bvFTD and PNFA, the former represents an inherent ToM affectation whereas in the PNFA these deficits could be related to more basic processes of face and emotion recognition. These results are interpreted in the frame of the fronto-insulo-temporal social context network model (SCNM).

12,253 views

136 citations

The two different theories regarding facial emotion perception. (A) The categorical theory proposes the existence of six basic, distinct and universal emotions, with clear boundaries separating emotional states. (B) The dimensional theory proposes the existence of the two fundamental dimensions of valence and arousal, which form an emotional space. In the dimensional theory, each emotional state may be continuously represented as a linear combination of values in these two dimensions. The original faces were drawn from Ekman and Friesen (1976), and Russell (1997).

Original Research

26 September 2013

The implicit processing of categorical and dimensional strategies: an fMRI study of facial emotion perception

Yoshi-Taka Matsuda

, 5 more and

Kazuo Okanoya

20,219 views

27 citations

Relationship between participant's reports of pleasure from watching MMA and percent signal change in the nucleus accumbens (MNI coordinates: ±10, 12, −2). Each point corresponds to a single subject's percent signal change on the X axis and self-reported pleasure or displeasure rating on the Y axis.

Original Research

13 August 2013

Violence as a source of pleasure or displeasure is associated with specific functional connectivity with the nucleus accumbens

Eric C. Porges

and

Jean Decety

16,212 views

31 citations

Display of a trial in the intentional fair-alternative condition. The name of the proposer is shown at the top (here “Proposer”) and the name of the participant is shown underneath (here “You”). The two potential distributions are specified by red and blue coins (red for proposer, blue for responder), with the offer selected by the proposer encircled in red. Participants have to indicate via button press whether to accept (“Yes”) or reject (“No”) the offer. Note that for unintentional offers (not shown here), the otherwise black silhouette of the proposer was purple with a banner displaying “Computer chooses,” which was also depicted instead of the proposer's name.

Original Research

26 July 2013

Unfair offers, unfair offenders? Fairness considerations in incarcerated individuals with and without psychopathy

Sina Radke

, 3 more and

Ellen R. A. de Bruijn

7,752 views

20 citations

Original Research

23 July 2013

Your emotion or mine: labeling feelings alters emotional face perception—an ERP study on automatic and intentional affect labeling

Cornelia Herbert

, 1 more and

Terry Blumenthal

24,537 views

71 citations

Timeline of procedures. We evaluated the long-term effects of chronic unpredictable stress during the adolescent life stage on adult cognition and behavior using the following tests: cognitive bias, successive negative contrast, sucrose preference, novel object, and open field.

Original Research

04 July 2013

Long-term changes in cognitive bias and coping response as a result of chronic unpredictable stress during adolescence

Lauren E. Chaby

, 3 more and

Victoria A. Braithwaite

11,684 views

73 citations

Review

26 June 2013

Social modulation of decision-making: a cross-species review

Ruud van den Bos

, 1 more and

Judith R. Homberg

15,468 views

45 citations

Tentative model of a framework for the relationship between FI, PCA, SC, and PSA. Prefrontal cortex, FI, and SC (which includes PCA) predict PSA.

Opinion

18 June 2013

Fluid intelligence, social cognition, and perspective changing abilities as pointers of psychosocial adaptation

David Huepe

and

Natalia Salas

10,927 views

11 citations

Description of the test. The test was delivered to each child in a novel computer format. The experimenter first said to each child: “There are six levels; you will have to answer correctly in each one of them to win the game. Let's go!” Then, for each task, the experimenter explained the task to the child, who could choose any of the options given. There were no wrong answers, such that, independently of the answer, a “CORRECT” screen appeared next. Three of the tasks are shown in the figure.

Original Research

17 June 2013

Age and gender dependent development of Theory of Mind in 6- to 8-years old children

Cecilia I. Calero

, 2 more and

Mariano Sigman

The ability to attribute different mental states to distinct individuals, or Theory of Mind (ToM), is widely believed to be developed mostly during preschool years. How different factors such as gender, number of siblings, or coarse personality traits affect this development is not entirely agreed upon. Here, we introduce a computerized version of the scaled ToM suite of tasks introduced by Wellman and Liu (2004), which allows us to meaningfully test ToM development on children 6 to 8-years old. We find that kids this age are still not entirely proficient in all ToM tasks, and continue to show a progression of performance with age. By testing this new age range, too, we are able to observe a significant advantage of girls over boys in ToM performance. Other factors such as number of siblings, birth order, and coarse personality traits show no significant relation with the ToM task results. Finally, we introduce a novel way to quantify the scaling property of the suite involving a sequence of set inclusions on one hand and a comparison between specially tailored sets of logistic models on the other. These measures confirm the validity of the scale in the 6- to 8-years old range.

52,999 views

82 citations

Mini Review

27 March 2013

Beyond human intentions and emotions

Elsa Juan

, 4 more and

Stephanie Cacioppo

10,932 views

15 citations

Original Research

18 March 2013