Prefrontal recruitment during social rejection predicts greater subsequent self-regulatory imbalance and impairment: neural and longitudinal evidence

Neural Markers of Emotion Reactivity and Regulation Before and After a Targeted Social Rejection: Differences Among Girls With and Without Suicidal Ideation and Behavior Histories

BACKGROUND

Suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) are common among adolescent girls and increase risk for suicide death. Emotion regulation difficulties are linked with STBs, particularly in response to targeted social rejection. However, neural correlates of this link have not been investigated and may identify novel targets for interventions. Here, we examined neural correlates of emotion regulation before and after an experimentally delivered targeted social rejection in adolescent girls with STBs and girls without STBs (i.e., control participants).

METHODS

Girls (N = 138; age range, 9-15 years; mean [SD] age = 11.6 [1.79] years) completed a functional neuroimaging emotion regulation task. In the middle of the task, participants were socially rejected by an unfamiliar confederate whom the participants had elected to meet. Participants also completed a multimethod STB assessment.

RESULTS

Before rejection, girls with a history of STBs, compared with control participants, showed greater activation in the right superior frontal gyrus when passively viewing negative stimuli, and girls with suicidal behavior (SB) versus those without SB showed less activation in the right frontal pole during emotion regulation attempts. Following the rejection, girls with STBs, compared with control participants, showed greater activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus during emotion regulation.

CONCLUSIONS

Before social rejection, girls with SB versus without SB may not activate brain regions implicated in emotion regulation, suggesting a vulnerability to poor regulation at their baseline emotional state. After social rejection, girls with any history of STBs showed altered activation in a brain region strongly associated with inhibition and emotion regulation success, possibly reflecting increased effort at inhibiting emotional responses during regulation following stress exposure.

A neurocognitive model of early onset persistent and desistant antisocial behavior in early adulthood

It remains unclear which functional and neurobiological mechanisms are associated with persistent and desistant antisocial behavior in early adulthood. We reviewed the empirical literature and propose a neurocognitive social information processing model for early onset persistent and desistant antisocial behavior in early adulthood, focusing on how young adults evaluate, act upon, monitor, and learn about their goals and self traits. Based on the reviewed literature, we propose that persistent antisocial behavior is characterized by domain-general impairments in self-relevant and goal-related information processing, regulation, and learning, which is accompanied by altered activity in fronto-limbic brain areas. We propose that desistant antisocial development is associated with more effortful information processing, regulation and learning, that possibly balances self-relevant goals and specific situational characteristics. The proposed framework advances insights by considering individual differences such as psychopathic personality traits, and specific emotional characteristics (e.g., valence of social cues), to further illuminate functional and neural mechanisms underlying heterogenous developmental pathways. Finally, we address important open questions and offer suggestions for future research to improve scientific knowledge on general and context-specific expression and development of antisocial behavior in early adulthood.

Influence of Social Exclusion on Cool and Hot Inhibitory Control in Chinese College Students

Social exclusion can affect nearly every aspect of a person's mental health, both on an emotional and cognitive level. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether cool or hot inhibitory control capacity varied under social exclusion. More precisely, participants who had experienced and not experienced social exclusion were compared to explore the influence of social exclusion on cool and hot inhibitory controls. Social exclusion was induced through the use of a Cyberball game, and participants were divided into an exclusion group and an inclusion group. The number Stroop task and emotional face Stroop task were used to measure the cool and hot inhibitory control, respectively. In the cool Stroop task, participants had to refrain from reading printed digits to identify the number of items presented in the array. In the hot Stroop task, participants had to inhibit the meaning of the word to identify the emotion displayed on the face. Reaction time, accuracy, and Stroop interference were analyzed to compare the inhibitory control between the exclusion group and the inclusion group. The results showed an extension of the response time in the exclusion group compared to the inclusion group. We found a higher interference effect in the number of Stroop tasks in the exclusion group than that in the inclusion group, but it was not significant in the emotional face Stroop task. The results suggest that the cognitive and emotional basis of inhibitory control may differ during social exclusion. The present findings expand our understanding of how social exclusion affects cool and hot inhibitory controls and their internal psychological mechanism.

The brain in social context: A systematic review of substance use and social processing from adolescence to young adulthood

Substance use escalates between adolescence and young adulthood, and most experimentation occurs among peers. To understand underlying mechanisms, research has focused on neural response during relevant psychological processes. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research provides a wealth of information about brain activity when processing monetary rewards; however, most studies have used tasks devoid of social stimuli. Given that adolescent neurodevelopment is sculpted by the push-and-pull of peers and emotions, identifying neural substrates is important for intervention. We systematically reviewed 28 fMRI studies examining substance use and neural responses to stimuli including social reward, emotional faces, social influence, and social stressors. We found substance use was positively associated with social-reward activity (e.g., in the ventral striatum), and negatively with social-stress activity (e.g., in the amygdala). For emotion, findings were mixed with more use linked to heightened response (e.g., in amygdala), but also with decreased response (e.g., in insula). For social influence, evidence supported both positive (e.g., cannabis and nucleus accumbens during conformity) and negative (e.g., polydrug and ventromedial PFC during peers' choices) relations between activity and use. Based on the literature, we offer recommendations for future research on the neural processing of social information to better identify risks for substance use.

The causal role of the bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortices on emotion regulation of social feedback

The ventrolateral prefrontal cortices (VLPFC) are crucial regions involved in voluntary emotion regulation. However, the lateralization of the VLPFC in downregulating negative emotions remains unclear; and whether the causal role of the VLPFC is generalizable to upregulating positive emotions is unexplored. This study used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to examine the causal relationship between the left/right VLPFC and social emotion reappraisal. One hundred and twenty participants were randomly assigned to either active (left and right VLPFC groups, n = 40/40) or sham (vertex, n = 40) TMS groups. Participants were instructed to passively receive social feedback or use reappraisal strategies to positively regulate their emotions. While the subjective emotional rating showed that the bilateral VLPFC facilitated the reappraisal success, the electrophysiological measure of the late positive potential (LPP) demonstrated a more critical role of the right VLPFC on social pain relief (decreased LPP amplitudes) and social reward magnification (enhanced LPP amplitudes). In addition, the influence of emotion regulation on social evaluation was found to be mediated by the memory of social feedback, indicating the importance of memory in social behavioral shaping. These findings suggest clinical protocols for the rehabilitation of emotion-regulatory function in patients with affective and social disorders.

Social exclusion increases the executive function of attention networks

Previous studies in humans have shown that brain regions activating social exclusion overlap with those related to attention. However, in the context of social exclusion, how does behavioral monitoring affect individual behavior? In this study, we used the Cyberball game to induce the social exclusion effect in a group of participants. To explore the influence of social exclusion on the attention network, we administered the Attention Network Test (ANT) and compared results for the three subsystems of the attention network (orienting, alerting, and executive control) between exclusion (N = 60) and inclusion (N = 60) groups. Compared with the inclusion group, the exclusion group showed shorter overall response time and better executive control performance, but no significant differences in orienting or alerting. The excluded individuals showed a stronger ability to detect and control conflicts. It appears that social exclusion does not always exert a negative influence on individuals. In future research, attention to network can be used as indicators of social exclusion. This may further reveal how social exclusion affects individuals' psychosomatic mechanisms.

Regional homogeneity abnormalities of resting state brain activities in children with growth hormone deficiency

Growth hormone deficiency (GHD) is a common developmental disorder in children characterized by low levels of growth hormone secretion, short stature, and multiple cognitive and behavioral problems, including hyperactivity, anxiety, and depression. However, the pathophysiology of this disorder remains unclear. In order to investigate abnormalities of brain functioning in children with GHD, we preformed functional magnetic resonance imaging and regional homogeneity (ReHo) analysis in 26 children with GHD and 15 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs) in a resting state. Compared with HCs, children with GHD exhibited increased ReHo in the left putamen and decreased ReHo in the right precentral gyrus, reflecting a dysfunction of inhibitory control. Decreased ReHo was also identified in the orbital parts of the bilateral superior frontal gyrus and the medial part of the left superior frontal gyrus, a finding that correlated with the inappropriate anxiety and depression that are observed in this patient population. Our results provide imaging evidence of potential pathophysiologic mechanisms for the cognitive and behavioral abnormalities of children with GHD.

Bidirectional effects between expressive regulatory abilities and peer acceptance among Chinese adolescents

The current study examined potential bidirectional effects between adolescents' expressive regulation (the ability to enhance and suppress overt emotional behavior in line with situational demands) and peer interactions via two experiments. Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that adolescents' expressive regulation affects their social acceptance from peers. Participants (N = 147) were randomly divided into three conditions and watched video clips in which a same-sex partner differed in his or her levels of expressive enhancement and suppression abilities. Results showed that participants reported greater liking of the partner when he or she was able to flexibly enhance and suppress emotional expressions in line with situational demands compared with when either one of these abilities was impaired. Experiment 2 then examined whether peer rejection reduced participants' enhancement and suppression abilities. We manipulated participants' feelings of rejection through a virtual Cyberball game. Following this manipulation (N = 100; Inclusion vs. Exclusion), we tested participants' expressive enhancement and suppression abilities, as well as their natural expressivity, via an observational task. Peer exclusion resulted in lower levels of enhancement ability and natural expressive behaviors but did not impair suppression ability. The results of these experiments suggest that both expressive enhancement and expressive suppression are important for adolescents to obtain higher peer acceptance. In addition, peer exclusion also caused impairments in expressive regulation, specifically reduced enhancement abilities. In summary, these results evidenced the bidirectional effects between expressive regulation and peer acceptance.

Social exclusion modulates dual mechanisms of cognitive control: Evidence from ERPs

Many studies have investigated how social exclusion influences cognitive control but reported inconsistent findings. Based on the dual mechanisms of control framework, this study investigated how social exclusion influences proactive and reactive modes of control (Experiment 1) and the underlying mechanisms (Experiment 2). The Cyberball game was used to manipulate social exclusion. Eighty-six female participants (about 40 for each experiment) performed cognitive control tasks while event-related potentials were recorded. In Experiment 1, an AX Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT) was adopted to differentiate between proactive and reactive control. Results showed that social exclusion weakened proactive control but enhanced reactive control, as reflected by the weaker proactive control indicators (i.e., P3b and CNV), but strengthened reactive control indicators (accuracy and N2) in excluded individuals. More importantly, in Experiment 2, through varying in whether task cues were available before or after target onset in a cued-flanker task, we further manipulated the possibility of engaging proactive control, and found the weakened proactive control could be attributed to both impaired cognitive ability and lowered motivation to engage proactive control in excluded individuals. Together, these results provide insight on how social exclusion influences cognitive control and suggest promising implications for designing effective interventions to relieve the negative impact of social exclusion.

Social exclusion influences conditioned fear acquisition and generalization: A mediating effect from the medial prefrontal cortex

Fear acquisition and generalization play key roles in promoting the survival of mammals and contribute to anxiety disorders. While previous research has provided much evidence for the repercussions of social exclusion on mental health, how social exclusion affects fear acquisition and generalization has received scant attention. In our study, participants were divided into two groups according to two Cyberball paradigm conditions (exclusion/inclusion). Both groups underwent a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and skin conductance response (SCR) assessments. We aimed to determine the effects of social exclusion on fear acquisition and generalization and whether modulation of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) mediates this relationship. Our results showed that socially excluded participants featured significantly higher and lower shock risk scores to safety stimuli (conditioned stimulus, CS-) and threatening stimuli (CS+), respectively, than did socially included subjects during fear acquisition. The exclusion group had increased skin conductance responses (SCRs) to CS and exhibited heightened shock risk and increased SCRs to generalized stimuli compared with the inclusion group. The fNIRS results demonstrated that the CS ​+ ​evoked larger oxy-Hb changes in the mPFC in the inclusion group than in the exclusion group during fear acquisition. Furthermore, the oxy-Hb of left mPFC of CS ​+ ​mediated the effect on the association between social exclusion and perceived risk of CS+ in the fear acquisition. Our results indicate that social exclusion impairs fear acquisition and generalization via the mediation of the mPFC and that social exclusion increases susceptibility to anxiety disorders through bias processing of fear discrimination in fear acquisition and generalization. By studying the role of social relationship in fear acquisition and generalization, our research provides new insights into the pathological mechanisms of anxiety disorder.

After-effects of self-control: The reward responsivity hypothesis

Exercising self-control can be phenomenologically aversive. Insofar as individuals strive to maintain a positive emotional state, one consequence of exercising self-control may thus be a temporarily tuning toward or amplification of reward-related impulses (perhaps arising to countermand the aversive feelings that stem from self-control). Reward-relevant after-effects are relatively underappreciated in self-control research. In the current paper, we review theory and research pertaining to the idea that exercising self-control increases reward responsivity. First, we review theoretical models of self-control focusing on the relationship between control systems and reward systems. Second, we review behavioral studies regarding the effects of exercising self-control on subsequent reactivity to food, money, drugs, and positive emotional images. Third, we review findings from functional neuroimaging and electroencephalographic research pertaining to the reward responsivity hypothesis. We then call for additional research to integrate how, when, and under what circumstances self-control exertion influences reward processing. Such an endeavor will help to advance research and theory on self-control by offering a more precise characterization of the dynamic interactions between control systems and reward systems.

Turning Away From Averted Gazes: The Effect of Social Exclusion on Gaze Cueing

Past studies showed increased sensitivity to other people’s gaze after social exclusion. In the present research, across two studies, we tested whether social exclusion could affect the basic cognitive phenomenon of gaze-cueing effect, namely, the tendency to redirect visual attention to the same location that other people are looking at. To this purpose, participants were socially excluded or included using the Cyberball manipulation. In Study 1, after the manipulation, participants performed a gaze-cueing task in which an individual’s gaze, oriented rightward or leftward, preceded a peripheral target stimulus requiring a simple categorization response. The gaze direction could be congruent or incongruent with the location of the target. Results revealed a reduced gaze-cueing effect for socially excluded than for socially included participants. In Study 2, where human gazes were replaced by arrow cues, such an interaction between social exclusion and trial congruency disappeared, indicating a specific effect of social stimuli. We interpreted these findings with the notion that excluded participants can perceive an averted gaze as a further sign of social exclusion, thus showing a reduced gaze-cueing effect.

When less is more: mindfulness predicts adaptive affective responding to rejection via reduced prefrontal recruitment

Social rejection is a distressing and painful event that many people must cope with on a frequent basis. Mindfulness—defined here as a mental state of receptive attentiveness to internal and external stimuli as they arise, moment-to-moment—may buffer such social distress. However, little research indicates whether mindful individuals adaptively regulate the distress of rejection—or the neural mechanisms underlying this potential capacity. To fill these gaps in the literature, participants reported their trait mindfulness and then completed a social rejection paradigm (Cyberball) while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Approximately 1 hour after the rejection incident, participants reported their level of distress during rejection (i.e. social distress). Mindfulness was associated with less distress during rejection. This relation was mediated by lower activation in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during the rejection incident, a brain region reliably associated with the inhibition of negative affect. Mindfulness was also correlated with less functional connectivity between the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the bilateral amygdala and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which play a critical role in the generation of social distress. Mindfulness may relate to effective coping with rejection by not over-activating top-down regulatory mechanisms, potentially resulting in more effective long-term emotion-regulation.

Stimulating Self-Regulation: A Review of Non-invasive Brain Stimulation Studies of Goal-Directed Behavior

Self-regulation enables individuals to guide their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a purposeful manner. Self-regulation is thus crucial for goal-directed behavior and contributes to many consequential outcomes in life including physical health, psychological well-being, ethical decision making, and strong interpersonal relationships. Neuroscientific research has revealed that the prefrontal cortex plays a central role in self-regulation, specifically by exerting top-down control over subcortical regions involved in reward (e.g., striatum) and emotion (e.g., amygdala). To orient readers, we first offer a methodological overview of tDCS and then review experiments using non-invasive brain stimulation techniques (especially transcranial direct current stimulation) to target prefrontal brain regions implicated in self-regulation. We focus on brain stimulation studies of self-regulatory behavior across three broad domains of response: persistence, delay behavior, and impulse control. We suggest that stimulating the prefrontal cortex promotes successful self-regulation by altering the balance in activity between the prefrontal cortex and subcortical regions involved in emotion and reward processing.

Neural mechanisms of the rejection-aggression link

Social rejection is a painful event that often increases aggression. However, the neural mechanisms of this rejection–aggression link remain unclear. A potential clue may be that rejected people often recruit the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex’s (VLPFC) self-regulatory processes to manage the pain of rejection. Using functional MRI, we replicated previous links between rejection and activity in the brain’s mentalizing network, social pain network and VLPFC. VLPFC recruitment during rejection was associated with greater activity in the brain’s reward network (i.e. the ventral striatum) when individuals were given an opportunity to retaliate. This retaliation-related striatal response was associated with greater levels of retaliatory aggression. Dispositionally aggressive individuals exhibited less functional connectivity between the ventral striatum and the right VLPFC during aggression. This connectivity exerted a suppressing effect on dispositionally aggressive individuals’ greater aggressive responses to rejection. These results help explain how the pain of rejection and reward of revenge motivate rejected people to behave aggressively.

Social exclusion weakens storage capacity and attentional filtering ability in visual working memory

Social exclusion has been found to impair visual working memory (WM), while the underlying neural processes are currently unclear. Using two experiments, we tested whether the poor WM performance caused by exclusion was due to reduced storage capacity, impaired attentional filtering ability or both. The Cyberball game was used to manipulate social exclusion. Seventy-four female participants performed WM tasks while event-related potentials were recorded. In Experiment 1, participants were made to remember the orientations of red rectangles while ignoring salient green rectangles. Results showed that exclusion impaired the ability to filter out irrelevant items from WM, as reflected by the similar contralateral delay activity (CDA) amplitudes for one-target-one-distractor condition and two-targets condition, as well as the similar CDA amplitudes for two-targets-two-distractors condition and four-targets condition in excluded individuals. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to remember 1–5 colored squares. Results showed that exclusion reduced storage capacity, as the CDA amplitudes reached asymptote at loads of two items for exclusion group and at loads of three items for inclusion group. Together, these two experiments provided complementary evidence that WM deficits caused by social exclusion were due to reduced storage capacity and impaired attentional filtering ability.

Emotion Reactivity and Regulation in Adolescent Girls Following an Interpersonal Rejection

Failures in emotion regulation, especially as a result of interpersonal stress, are implicated as transdiagnostic risk factors for psychopathology. This study examines the effects of an experimentally timed targeted interpersonal rejection on emotion reactivity and regulation in typically developing adolescent girls. Girls ( n = 33, ages 9-16 years, M = 12.47, SD = 2.20) underwent fMRI involving a widely used emotion regulation task. The emotion task involves looking at negative stimuli and using cognitive reappraisal strategies to decrease reactions to negative stimuli. Participants also engaged in a social evaluation task, which leads participants to believe a preselected peer was watching and evaluating the participant. We subsequently told participants they were rejected by this peer and examined emotion reactivity and regulation before and after this rejection. Adolescent girls evidence greater reactivity via higher self-reported emotional intensity and greater amygdala activation to negative stimuli immediately after (compared with before) the rejection. Self-reported emotional intensity differences before and after rejection were not observed during regulation trials. However, on regulation trials, girls exhibited increased prefrontal activation in areas supporting emotion regulation after compared with before the rejection. This study provides evidence that a targeted rejection increases self-report and neural markers of emotion reactivity and that girls increase prefrontal activation to regulate emotions after a targeted rejection.

Neural processing of social exclusion in individuals with psychopathic traits: Links to anger and aggression

Psychopathy is a cluster of personality traits associated with high rates of aggression. While research on psychopathic traits largely focuses on neurobiological factors implicated in aggression, other research suggests that contextual factors, such as social exclusion, also contribute to promoting aggression. Yet, the relationships among psychopathic traits, neural processing of exclusion, and aggression remain unknown. A sample of 76 adolescents and young adults completed Cyberball, a task involving conditions of social inclusion, ambiguous exclusion, and unambiguous exclusion. During Cyberball, a slow wave (SW) event-related potential (an index of elaborative processing) and self-reported anger were measured. Additionally, acts of real-world aggression were assessed. Results indicated that as psychopathic traits increased, SW during ambiguous exclusion also increased, but SW during inclusion decreased. However, the combination of smaller SW during ambiguous exclusion and higher psychopathic traits predicted heightened anger following Cyberball and more frequent real-world aggression. This response to social exclusion among individuals with elevated psychopathic traits may represent an unreflective, reactive style that exacerbates anger and aggression in certain contexts. These data suggest that neurobiological dysfunction in elaborative processing is related to psychopathic traits, and social context comprises another important influence on the aggression of individuals with elevated psychopathic traits.

A Developmental Social Neuroscience Model for Understanding Pathways to Substance Use Disorders During Adolescence

Adolescence is a transitional period of development characterized by critical changes in physical, neural, cognitive, affective, and social functions. Studies investigating the underlying mechanisms of substance use at levels of self-report, brain response, and behavioral data are generally consistent with suggestions from dual-process model that differential growth rates of frontally mediated control and striato-frontal reward processing are related to a heightened risk of substance use during adolescence. However, social theories highlight the important role of social context and environment in which adolescents grow up and suggest that growing up in an unfavorable environment and in particular exposure to adverse childhood experiences play a huge role in how this vulnerability is translated into actual risk. In this review, we provide a summary of recent theories that examine a number of key individual and social and environmental risk factors underlying risk for early initiation and escalation of substance misuse. We also present a model that expands the dual-process model to incorporate the role of negative self-concept and negative affect associated with growing up in an unfavorable environment and their interactions with cognitive control and inhibition to further explain vulnerability to early initiation and development of substance misuse in adolescents.

Social exclusion impairs distractor suppression but not target enhancement in selective attention

Social exclusion has been thought to weaken one's ability to exert inhibitory control. Existing studies have primarily focused on the relationship between exclusion and behavioral inhibition, and have reported that exclusion impairs behavioral inhibition. However, whether exclusion also affects selective attention, another important aspect of inhibitory control, remains unknown. Therefore, the current study aimed to explore whether social exclusion impairs selective attention, and to specifically examine its effect on two hypothesized mechanisms of selective attention: target enhancement and distractor suppression. The Cyberball game was used to manipulate social exclusion. Participants then performed a visual search task while event-related potentials were recorded. In the visual search task, target and salient distractor were either both presented laterally or one was presented on the vertical midline and the other laterally. Results showed that social exclusion differentially affected target and distractor processing. While exclusion impaired distractor suppression, reflected as smaller distractor-positivity (Pd) amplitudes for the exclusion group compared to the inclusion group, it did not affect target enhancement, reflected as similar target-negativity (Nt) amplitudes for both the exclusion and inclusion groups. Together, these results extend our understanding of the relationship between exclusion and inhibitory control, and suggest that social exclusion affects selective attention in a more complex manner than previously thought.

Examining human behavior in video games: The development of a computational model to measure aggression

Video games with violent content have raised considerable concern in popular media and within academia. Recently, there has been considerable attention regarding the claim of the relationship between aggression and video game play. The authors of this study propose the use of a new class of tools developed via computational models to allow examination of the question of whether there is a relationship between violent video games and aggression. The purpose of this study is to computationally model and compare the General Aggression Model with the Diathesis Mode of Aggression related to the play of violent content in video games. A secondary purpose is to provide a method of measuring and examining individual aggression arising from video game play. Total participants examined for this study are N = 1065. This study occurs in three phases. Phase 1 is the development and quantification of the profile combination of traits via latent class profile analysis. Phase 2 is the training of the artificial neural network. Phase 3 is the comparison of each model as a computational model with and without the presence of video game violence. Results suggest that a combination of environmental factors and genetic predispositions trigger aggression related to video games.

Neural responses to social exclusion in adolescents: Effects of peer status

We examined whether adolescents' neural responses to social exclusion and inclusion are influenced by their own popularity and acceptance and by the popularity of their excluders and includers. Accepted adolescents are highly prosocial. In contrast, popular adolescents, who are central and influential, show prosocial as well as antisocial behaviors, such as peer exclusion. Fifty-two 12-16 year-old adolescents underwent an functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan while playing the ball-tossing game Cyberball in which they received or did not receive the ball from other virtual players. The other virtual players were described as either highly popular or average in popularity. Participants' own popularity and acceptance were assessed with peer nominations at school (n = 31). Participants' acceptance was positively correlated with activity of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) during exclusion. Participants' popularity was positively associated with ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex activity during exclusion, but only when the excluders were popular virtual players. Participants showed increased rostral ACC activation to inclusion by players who were average in popularity. These findings indicate that peer status plays an important role in adolescents' neural processing of social exclusion and inclusion. Moreover, these findings underscore that popularity and acceptance are distinct types of high peer status in adolescence, with not only distinct behavioral correlates, but also distinct neural correlates.

Data-driven analysis of simultaneous EEG/fMRI reveals neurophysiological phenotypes of impulse control

Response inhibition is the ability to suppress inadequate but prepotent or ongoing response tendencies. A fronto-striatal network is involved in these processes. Between-subject differences in the intra-individual variability have been suggested to constitute a key to pathological processes underlying impulse control disorders. Single-trial EEG/fMRI analysis allows to increase sensitivity for inter-individual differences by incorporating intra-individual variability. Thirty-eight healthy subjects performed a visual Go/Nogo task during simultaneous EEG/fMRI. Of 38 healthy subjects, 21 subjects reliably showed Nogo-related ICs (Nogo-IC-positive) while 17 subjects (Nogo-IC-negative) did not. Comparing both groups revealed differences on various levels: On trait level, Nogo-IC-negative subjects scored higher on questionnaires regarding attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder; on a behavioral level, they displayed slower response times (RT) and higher intra-individual RT variability while both groups did not differ in their inhibitory performance. On the neurophysiological level, Nogo-IC-negative subjects showed a hyperactivation of left inferior frontal cortex/insula and left putamen as well as significantly reduced P3 amplitudes. Thus, a data-driven approach for IC classification and the resulting presence or absence of early Nogo-specific ICs as criterion for group selection revealed group differences at behavioral and neurophysiological levels. This may indicate electrophysiological phenotypes characterized by inter-individual variations of neural and behavioral correlates of impulse control. We demonstrated that the inter-individual difference in an electrophysiological correlate of response inhibition is correlated with distinct, potentially compensatory neural activity. This may suggest the existence of electrophysiologically dissociable phenotypes of behavioral and neural motor response inhibition with the Nogo-IC-positive phenotype possibly providing protection against impulsivity-related dysfunction. Hum Brain Mapp 37:3114-3136, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

How do negative emotions impair self-control? A neural model of negative urgency

Self-control often fails when people experience negative emotions. Negative urgency represents the dispositional tendency to experience such self-control failure in response to negative affect. Neither the neural underpinnings of negative urgency nor the more general phenomenon of self-control failure in response to negative emotions are fully understood. Previous theorizing suggests that an insufficient, inhibitory response from the prefrontal cortex may be the culprit behind such self-control failure. However, we entertained an alternative hypothesis: negative emotions lead to self-control failure because they excessively tax inhibitory regions of the prefrontal cortex. Using fMRI, we compared the neural activity of people high in negative urgency with controls on an emotional, inhibitory Go/No-Go task. While experiencing negative (but not positive or neutral) emotions, participants high in negative urgency showed greater recruitment of inhibitory brain regions than controls. Suggesting a compensatory function, inhibitory accuracy among participants high in negative urgency was associated with greater prefrontal recruitment. Greater activity in the anterior insula on negatively-valenced, inhibitory trials predicted greater substance abuse one month and one year after the MRI scan among individuals high in negative urgency. These results suggest that, among people whose negative emotions often lead to self-control failure, excessive reactivity of the brain's regulatory resources may be the culprit.

Differential heart rate responses to social and monetary reinforcement in women with obesity

Obesity is often accompanied by weight stigmatization; subsequently, individuals with obesity frequently face social rejection. It has been shown that recurrent negative social experiences can alter the perception of social cues. However, the way individuals with obesity process social stimuli is not well understood. This study aims to investigate obesity-related alterations in social compared to nonsocial information processing. Women with obesity (n = 14) and without obesity (n = 14) participated in a social and a monetary incentive delay task in which they anticipated and received positive, negative, and neutral outcomes in the form of faces or money. During the experiment, phasic heart rate changes and reaction times were measured. Women with obesity, compared to lean women, exhibited a stronger differentiation during the anticipation of monetary and social reinforcement, showing slower reaction times to social cues compared to monetary cues. During the outcome processing phase, women with obesity relative to controls demonstrated diminished heart rate responses particularly to negative social outcomes. Interestingly, differences in cardiac responses in participants with obesity were moderated by weight-related teasing experiences. In women with obesity, a higher BMI was associated with blunted cardiac responses to social cues relative to monetary cues only if they reported more emotional pain after weight-related teasing. Our results contribute to a better understanding of social information processing in obesity and give first evidence for the role of negative social experiences in reinforcement processing.

The pleasure of revenge: retaliatory aggression arises from a neural imbalance toward reward

Most of daily life hums along peacefully but provocations tip the balance toward aggression. Negative feelings are often invoked to explain why people lash out after an insult. Yet people might retaliate because provocation makes aggression hedonically rewarding. To test this alternative hypothesis, 69 participants underwent functional neuroimaging while they completed a behavioral aggression task that repeatedly manipulated whether aggression was preceded by an instance of provocation or not. After provocation, greater activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) (a brain region reliably associated with reward) during aggressive decisions predicted louder noise blasts administered in retaliation. Greater NAcc activation was also associated with participants' history of real-world violence. Functional connectivity between the NAcc and a regulatory region in the lateral prefrontal cortex related to lower retaliatory aggression. These findings suggest that provocation tips the neural balance towards hedonic reward, which fosters retaliatory aggression. Although such pleasure of inflicting pain may promote retaliatory aggression, self-regulatory processes can keep such aggressive urges at bay. Implications for theory and violence reduction are discussed.