Implicit signals in small group settings and their impact on the expression of cognitive capacity and associated brain responses

Unraveling the social hierarchy: Exploring behavioral and neural dynamics in shaping inhibitory control

Inhibitory control is crucial for regulating emotions, suppressing biases, and inhibiting inappropriate responses in social interactions. Social rank, or perceived position in the hierarchy, can influence inhibitory control, with high-rank individuals requiring it to regulate dominant behavior and low-rank individuals requiring it to regulate emotional reactions or avoid submissive behaviors. Furthermore, research suggests that social status can affect the neural mechanisms underlying inhibitory control, leading to differences in abilities and strategies based on perceived rank. In this study, we investigated the effects of social rank on inhibitory control using a dot estimation task to prime social hierarchy. Subsequently, we assessed the inhibitory control of the participants using a Go/Nogo task with photos of individuals in different social ranks. The study recruited a total of 43 students (22 males and 21 females), with a mean age of 26.8 years (SD=4.08). We measured both behavioral (reaction time and response accuracy) and electrophysiological (N200 and P300 event-related potentials) responses to investigate the neural correlates of inhibitory control. Results showed that participants responded slower to lower-rank individuals but had higher accuracy when inhibiting their response to them. The N200 amplitude was greater when presented with higher ranks stimuli in Go trials, indicating greater conflict monitoring, while the P300 amplitude was significantly higher in Nogo trials compared to Go trials. These findings suggest that social rank can influence inhibitory control and highlight the importance of considering the impact of social hierarchy in social interactions.

Neurocomputational mechanisms engaged in moral choices and moral learning

The neural circuitry involved in moral decisions has been studied since the early days of cognitive neuroscience, mainly using moral dilemma. However, the neurocomputational mechanisms describing how the human brain makes moral decisions and learns in various moral contexts are only starting to be established. Here we review recent results from an emerging field using model-based fMRI, which describes moral choices at a mechanistic level. These findings unify the field of moral decision making, extend a conceptual framework previously developed for value-based decision making and characterize how moral processes are computed in the brain. Moral dilemma can be modeled as value-based decisions that weigh self-interests against moral costs/harm to others and different types of prediction errors can be distinguished in different aspects of moral learning. These key computational signals help to describe moral choices and moral learning at an algorithmic level and to reveal how these cognitive operations are implemented in the brain. This researches provide a foundation to account for the neurocomputational mechanisms underlying moral decision making.

The neural signatures of social hierarchy-related learning and interaction: A coordinate- and connectivity-based meta-analysis

Numerous neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural mechanisms of two mutually independent yet closely related cognitive processes aiding humans to navigate complex societies: social hierarchy-related learning (SH-RL) and social hierarchy-related interaction (SH-RI). To integrate these heterogeneous results into a more fine-grained and reliable characterization of the neural basis of social hierarchy, we combined coordinate-based meta-analyses with connectivity and functional decoding analyses to understand the underlying neuropsychological mechanism of SH-RL and SH-RI. We identified the anterior insula and temporoparietal junction (dominance detection), medial prefrontal cortex (information updating and computation), and intraparietal sulcus region, amygdala, and hippocampus (social hierarchy representation) as consistent activated brain regions for SH-RL, but the striatum, amygdala, and hippocampus associated with reward processing for SH-RI. Our results provide an overview of the neural architecture of the neuropsychological processes underlying how we understand, and interact within, social hierarchy.

Understanding urbanicity: how interdisciplinary methods help to unravel the effects of the city on mental health

Twenty-first century urbanization poses increasing challenges for mental health. Epidemiological studies have shown that mental health problems often accumulate in urban areas, compared to rural areas, and suggested possible underlying causes associated with the social and physical urban environments. Emerging work indicates complex urban effects that depend on many individual and contextual factors at the neighbourhood and country level and novel experimental work is starting to dissect potential underlying mechanisms. This review summarizes findings from epidemiology and population-based studies, neuroscience, experimental and experience-based research and illustrates how a combined approach can move the field towards an increased understanding of the urbanicity-mental health nexus.

Upward and downward comparisons across monetary and status domains

The ability to accurately infer one's place with respect to others is crucial for social interactions. Individuals tend to evaluate their own actions and outcomes by comparing themselves to others in either an upward or downward direction. We performed two fMRI meta‐analyses on monetary (n = 39; 1,231 participants) and status (n = 23; 572 participants) social comparisons to examine how domain and the direction of comparison can modulate neural correlates of social hierarchy. Overall, both status and monetary downward comparisons activated regions associated with reward processing (striatum) while upward comparisons yielded loss‐related activity. These findings provide partial support for the common currency hypothesis in that downward and upward comparisons from both monetary and status domains resemble gains and losses, respectively. Furthermore, status upward and monetary downward comparisons revealed concordant orbitofrontal cortical activity, an area associated with evaluating the value of goals and decisions implicated in both lesion and empirical fMRI studies investigating social hierarchy. These findings may offer new insight into how people relate to individuals with higher social status and how these social comparisons deviate across monetary and social status domains.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of the incidence of psychotic disorders: the distribution of rates and the influence of gender, urbanicity, immigration and socio-economic level

BACKGROUND

Considering existing knowledge on the relationship between certain environmental factors and incidence rates of psychosis, we carried out a systematic review to provide a broad and updated picture of the incidences of different psychotic disorder subgroups worldwide and how some environmental factors influence these rates.

METHODS

Studies with original data related to the incidence of psychosis (published between 2000 and 2015) were identified via searching electronic databases (CINAHL, MEDLINE, PSYCINFO, PUBMED, and SCOPUS). Data on the following risk factors were extracted: gender, urbanicity, immigration and socio-economic level. Descriptive appraisals of variation in incidence rates (IR) and incidence rate ratios (IRR), with a 95% confidence interval were calculated. In addition, a meta-analysis was performed to calculate IR pooled by diagnosis group and IRR pooled by diagnosis and gender, urbanity, immigration and socio-economic level, using a random effects model.

RESULTS

We identified 33 reports to analyse. Overall IR per 100 000 persons for non-affective psychoses (IR pooled = 22.53 (16.51-28.54)) were higher than affective psychoses (IR pooled = 7.12 (5.03-9.22)). There was an increase in rates of psychosis in men v. women (IRR pooled = 1.54 (1.37-1.72)), in urban v. rural areas (IRR pooled = 1.64 (1.38-1.95)), in immigrants v. natives (IRR pooled = 3.09 (2.74-3.49)), and in lower socio-economic level areas (IRR pooled = 1.78 (1.43-2.22)).

CONCLUSIONS

IR among different psychotic disorders was found to vary depending on gender, urbanicity, and immigration (as most of the previous literature focuses on non-affective psychosis or schizophrenia).

Social comparison in the brain: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies on the downward and upward comparisons

Social comparison is ubiquitous across human societies with dramatic influence on people's well-being and decision making. Downward comparison (comparing to worse-off others) and upward comparison (comparing to better-off others) constitute two types of social comparisons that produce different neuropsychological consequences. Based on studies exploring neural signatures associated with downward and upward comparisons, the current study utilized a coordinate-based meta-analysis to provide a refinement of understanding about the underlying neural architecture of social comparison. We identified consistent involvement of the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex in downward comparison and consistent involvement of the anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in upward comparison. These findings fit well with the "common-currency" hypothesis that neural representations of social gain or loss resemble those for non-social reward or loss processing. Accordingly, we discussed our findings in the framework of general reinforcement learning (RL) hypothesis, arguing how social gain/loss induced by social comparisons could be encoded by the brain as a domain-general signal (i.e., prediction errors) serving to adjust people's decisions in social settings. Although the RL account may serve as a heuristic framework for the future research, other plausible accounts on the neuropsychological mechanism of social comparison were also acknowledged. Hum Brain Mapp 39:440-458, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Understanding social hierarchies: The neural and psychological foundations of status perception

Social groups across species rapidly self-organize into hierarchies, where members vary in their level of power, influence, skill, or dominance. In this review, we explore the nature of social hierarchies and the traits associated with status in both humans and nonhuman primates, and how status varies across development in humans. Our review finds that we can rapidly identify social status based on a wide range of cues. Like monkeys, we tend to use certain cues, like physical strength, to make status judgments, although layered on top of these more primitive perceptual cues are sociocultural status cues like job titles and educational attainment. One's relative status has profound effects on attention, memory, and social interactions, as well as health and wellness. These effects can be particularly pernicious in children and adolescents. Developmental research on peer groups and social exclusion suggests teenagers may be particularly sensitive to social status information, but research focused specifically on status processing and associated brain areas is very limited. Recent evidence from neuroscience suggests that there may be an underlying neural network, including regions involved in executive, emotional, and reward processing, that is sensitive to status information. We conclude with questions for future research as well as stressing the need to expand social neuroscience research on status processing to adolescents.

Social status modulates prosocial behavior and egalitarianism in preschool children and adults

Humans are a cooperative species, capable of altruism and the creation of shared norms that ensure fairness in society. However, individuals with different educational, cultural, economic, or ethnic backgrounds differ in their levels of social investment and endorsement of egalitarian values. We present four experiments showing that subtle cues to social status (i.e., prestige and reputation in the eyes of others) modulate prosocial orientation. The experiments found that individuals who experienced low status showed more communal and prosocial behavior, and endorsed more egalitarian life goals and values compared with those who experienced high status. Behavioral differences across high- and low-status positions appeared early in human ontogeny (4-5 y of age).

Neural effects of the social environment

Epidemiological studies have suggested that the association between city upbringing and minority status with risk for schizophrenia can be explained by social mechanisms. Neuroimaging approaches hold promise for investigating this claim. Recent studies have shown that in healthy individuals, city upbringing and minority status are associated with increased activity in brain circuits involved in emotion regulation during social evaluative processing. These findings support the hypothesis that changes in the ability to regulate social stress contribute to the mechanism of risk. This is in accordance with a body of evidence demonstrating the sensitivity of the human brain to social stress, based on observational studies investigating the neurological sequelae of interpersonal trauma and experimental studies manipulating exposure to interpersonal distress. In this report, we summarize these initial findings, discuss methodological and conceptual challenges of pursuing this line of inquiry in schizophrenia, and suggest an outline for future research.

Explicit and implicit issues in the developmental cognitive neuroscience of social inequality

The appearance of developmental cognitive neuroscience (DCN) in the socioeconomic status (SES) research arena is hugely transformative, but challenging. We review challenges rooted in the implicit and explicit assumptions informing this newborn field. We provide balanced theoretical alternatives on how hypothesized psychological processes map onto the brain (e.g., problem of localization) and how experimental phenomena at multiple levels of analysis (e.g., behavior, cognition and the brain) could be related. We therefore examine unclear issues regarding the existing perspectives on poverty and their relationships with low SES, the evidence of low-SES adaptive functioning, historical precedents of the "alternate pathways" (neuroplasticity) interpretation of learning disabilities related to low-SES and the notion of deficit, issues of "normativity" and validity in findings of neurocognitive differences between children from different SES, and finally alternative interpretations of the complex relationship between IQ and SES. Particularly, we examine the extent to which the available laboratory results may be interpreted as showing that cognitive performance in low-SES children reflects cognitive and behavioral deficits as a result of growing up in specific environmental or cultural contexts, and how the experimental findings should be interpreted for the design of different types of interventions-particularly those related to educational practices-or translated to the public-especially the media. Although a cautionary tone permeates many studies, still, a potential deficit attribution-i.e., low-SES is associated with cognitive and behavioral developmental deficits-seems almost an inevitable implicit issue with ethical implications. Finally, we sketch the agenda for an ecological DCN, suggesting recommendations to advance the field, specifically, to minimize equivocal divulgation and maximize ethically responsible translation.

Imaging models of valuation during social interaction in humans

The role of dopamine neurons in value-guided behavior has been described in computationally explicit terms. These developments have motivated new model-based probes of reward processing in healthy humans, and in recent years these same models have also been used to design and understand neural responses during simple social exchange. These latter applications have opened up the possibility of identifying new endophenotypes characteristic of biological substrates underlying psychiatric disease. In this report, we review model-based approaches to functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy individuals and the application of these paradigms to psychiatric disorders. We show early results from the application of model-based human interaction at three disparate levels: 1) interaction with a single human, 2) interaction within small groups, and 3) interaction with signals generated by large groups. In each case, we show how reward-prediction circuitry is engaged by abstract elements of each paradigm with blood oxygen level-dependent imaging as a read-out; and, in the last case (i.e., signals generated by large groups) we report on direct electrochemical dopamine measurements during decision making in humans. Lastly, we discuss how computational approaches can be used to objectively assess and quantify elements of complex and hidden social decision-making processes.

The biology of cultural conflict

Although culture is usually thought of as the collection of knowledge and traditions that are transmitted outside of biology, evidence continues to accumulate showing how biology and culture are inseparably intertwined. Cultural conflict will occur only when the beliefs and traditions of one cultural group represent a challenge to individuals of another. Such a challenge will elicit brain processes involved in cognitive decision-making, emotional activation and physiological arousal associated with the outbreak, conduct and resolution of conflict. Key targets to understand bio-cultural differences include primitive drives—how the brain responds to likes and dislikes, how it discounts the future, and how this relates to reproductive behaviour—but also higher level functions, such as how the mind represents and values the surrounding physical and social environment. Future cultural wars, while they may bear familiar labels of religion and politics, will ultimately be fought over control of our biology and our environment.