Principles, processes, and puzzles of social cognition: an introduction for the special issue on social cognitive neuroscience

The Impact of Street Space Perception Factors on Elderly Health in High-Density Cities in Macau—Analysis Based on Street View Images and Deep Learning Technology

The urban space environment has been proven to be related to the health of the elderly. However, as a high-density city, Macau’s limited urban space must cope with the growing population and the arrival of an aging society. In the existing studies, less attention has been paid to Macau, especially the relationship between Macanese elderly and urban space. This study uses Baidu Street View (BSV) on the Macau Peninsula and conducts field surveys to obtain street view data to evaluate the openness, greenness, interface coverage, and road area ratio of street space and its association with the physical and mental health of the elderly and social health. The results show that the data truly reflect the overall street space conditions on the Macau Peninsula. The street openness, greenery rate, and interface enclosure are all related to the elderly in various evaluations in areas with a higher population dependency index and aging index. Human space perception is related to health gain, and road area ratio is weaker than other indicators. The research results have certain policy implications and have practical significance for city managers and designers.

Neural substrates underlying the effects of oxytocin: a quantitative meta-analysis of pharmaco-imaging studies

The hypothalamic peptide oxytocin (OT) is crucial in social adaptation and used to treat emotional and social deficits. Here, we conducted a systematic, quantitative meta-analysis of functional-MRI studies intranasally administering OT (IN-OT) to uncover neural substrates underlying the IN-OT effects and to elucidate differential IN-OT effects between healthy and clinical populations. Meta-analyses were conducted on 66 IN-OT fMRI studies, stratified by psychopathology, valence and sex. IN-OT increased bilateral amygdala, caudate head, and superior temporal activity in healthy individuals and increased dorsal anterior cingulate activity in patients. Moreover, IN-OT decreased amygdala activity in both patients and healthy individuals but did so to a greater degree in patients than healthy individuals. The OT-increased amygdala activity was only found on the negative social and affective processes, whereas the OT-decreased amygdala activity was mainly contributed by contrasts on negative-valenced processes. IN-OT increased parahippocampal activity and decreased amygdala activity during negative socio-affective processing. During positive socio-affective processes, IN-OT increased caudate head activity. This study indicates convergent neural substrates and the underlying neuropsychological mechanisms for IN-OT effects on social and affective processes. The common and different effects of IN-OT on patients and healthy individuals and the modulation of OT effects by valence have critical implications.

Scientific Challenges to Free Will and Moral Responsibility

Here, I review work from three lines of research in cognitive science often taken to threaten free will and moral responsibility. This work concerns conscious deciding, the experience of acting, and the role of largely unnoticed situational influences on behavior. Whether this work in fact threatens free will and moral responsibility depends on how we ought to interpret it, and depends as well on the nature of free and responsible behavior. I discuss different ways this work has been interpreted and argue that though work on conscious deciding and the experience of acting presents no real threat, work on situational influences is more difficult to dismiss. This work may present a real threat, and it may require us to revise our commonsense understanding of free and responsible behavior. But this work may also present ways to augment free and responsible behavior. Determining whether and how advancing science threatens, enhances, or simply describes free will is an ongoing task for scientists and philosophers alike.

Unpacking Intuition: A Process and Outcome Framework

In recent years, the topic of intuition has become an important focus of attention in psychology. It is often assumed to be a unitary construct; however, recent research suggests that intuition is multifaceted. This article disaggregates intuition by discriminating between domain-general mechanisms and domain-specific processes of intuiting and primary types of intuition and secondary types of intuition. The theoretical relationships between and within processes and types are examined and analyzed at behavioral and information processing levels, noting the importance in advances in social cognition research. As a result of this analysis, we provide a conceptual framework that connects intuitive processes and outcomes. The article concludes by outlining some of the implications of the framework and in particular highlights future methodological challenges faced by intuition researchers in laboratory and organizational field settings.

Reduced brainstem inhibition during anticipated pelvic visceral pain correlates with enhanced brain response to the visceral stimulus in women with irritable bowel syndrome

Cognitive factors such as fear of pain and symptom-related anxiety play an important role in chronic pain states. The current study sought to characterize abnormalities in preparatory brain response before aversive pelvic visceral distention in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients and their possible relationship to the consequences of distention. The brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response to anticipated and delivered mild and moderate rectal distention was recorded from 14 female IBS patients and 12 healthy controls. During cued anticipation of distention, activity decreased in the insula, supragenual anterior cingulate cortex (sACC), amygdala, and dorsal brainstem (DBS) of controls. IBS patients showed less anticipatory inactivation. Group differences were significant in the right posterior insula and bilateral DBS. Self-rated measures of negative affect during scanning were higher in patients than controls (p < 0.001), and the anticipatory BOLD decreases in DBS were inversely correlated with these ratings. During subsequent distention, both groups showed activity increases in insula, dorsal ACC, and DBS and decreases in the infragenual ACC. The increases were more extensive in patients, producing significant group differences in dorsal ACC and DBS. The amplitude of the anticipatory decrease in the pontine portion of DBS was associated with greater activation during distention in right orbitofrontal cortex and bilateral sACC. Both regions have been associated previously with corticolimbic inhibition and cognitive coping. Deficits in preparatory inhibition of DBS, including the locus ceruleus complex and parabrachial nuclei, may interfere with descending corticolimbic inhibition and contribute to enhanced brain responsiveness and perceptual sensitivity to visceral stimuli in IBS.

Social cognitive neuroscience: a review of core processes

Social cognitive neuroscience examines social phenomena and processes using cognitive neuroscience research tools such as neuroimaging and neuropsychology. This review examines four broad areas of research within social cognitive neuroscience: (a) understanding others, (b) understanding oneself, (c) controlling oneself, and (d) the processes that occur at the interface of self and others. In addition, this review highlights two core-processing distinctions that can be neurocognitively identified across all of these domains. The distinction between automatic versus controlled processes has long been important to social psychological theory and can be dissociated in the neural regions contributing to social cognition. Alternatively, the differentiation between internally-focused processes that focus on one's own or another's mental interior and externally-focused processes that focus on one's own or another's visible features and actions is a new distinction. This latter distinction emerges from social cognitive neuroscience investigations rather than from existing psychological theories demonstrating that social cognitive neuroscience can both draw on and contribute to social psychological theory.

Imaging valuation models in human choice

To make a decision, a system must assign value to each of its available choices. In the human brain, one approach to studying valuation has used rewarding stimuli to map out brain responses by varying the dimension or importance of the rewards. However, theoretical models have taught us that value computations are complex, and so reward probes alone can give only partial information about neural responses related to valuation. In recent years, computationally principled models of value learning have been used in conjunction with noninvasive neuroimaging to tease out neural valuation responses related to reward-learning and decision-making. We restrict our review to the role of these models in a new generation of experiments that seeks to build on a now-large body of diverse reward-related brain responses. We show that the models and the measurements based on them point the way forward in two important directions: the valuation of time and the valuation of fictive experience.

Toward socially inspired social neuroscience

Social neuroscience, often viewed as studying the neural foundations of social cognition, has roots in multiple disciplines. This paper argues that it needs a firmer base in social psychology. First, we outline some major opportunities from social psychology--the power of social context and social motives in shaping human behavior. Second, as the social cognition field moves away from studying only deliberate, explicit processes to studying also automatic, implicit processes, adopting a dual-process perspective, social neuroscience also lends itself to both automatic and controlled processes. Finally, social neuroscience is especially suited to study the efficiency and spontaneity of social judgments. All this brings social behavioral grounding to cognitive neuroscience. Among the implications for social neuroscience: Social cognition intrinsically evokes affect, so social cognitive affective neuroscience glues together a variety of fields in psychological and neurosciences.