Psych 155a: Midterm 1: Lecture

What does your brain do in its free time?

It practices something

What is the Shulman 1997b study?

For regions of the brain were studied when doing nothing vs a task, showed a specific brain region was doing more when doing nothing than when doing a task aka more active when you lay there and do nothing

Which regions were more active in rest in the Shulman 1997b study?

Medial Surface: Precuneus/posterior cingulate, medial prefrontal cortex, temporal pole

Lateral surface: Temporoparietal junction

What is the Fox, Snyder, et al 2005 study?

They took the PCC (precuneus/posterior cingulate) and MPF (medial prefrontal cortex) and found they do the same thing at rest/active; suggested they are working together; also found opposite pattern in the IPS (critical for analytical thinking) so found an antagonistic pattern between the two

What do the brain do at rest?

The default mode network (DMN) comes on, active and coordinated at rest

What is the Anticevic 2010 study?

A working memory study, participants shown shapes then nothing then shown a shape and is asked whether they saw the shape before; interested in the delay period between shown shapes; found the default mode network showed a characteristic pattern, a downward trajectory; right answer -> DMN shut off and wrong answer -> DMN stayed active or increased; DMN makes you worse at working memory tasks

What is the why > how Spunt Lieberman 2012 study?

When you think about why, the DMN looks like it turns on; when you think about how, the DMN does not come on active; aka when you mentalize the DMN turns on aka social world

What is mentalizing?

The process of making sense of another person's (or one's own) mental states and psychological characteristics

Does the DMN always turn on at rest because we are interested in the social world?

That may be part of the story but that's not the full answer

What is the Lieberman 2013 study?

Math for 20 seconds rest for 2 seconds, showed that the DMN still comes on during the 2 seconds and that it is not due to just thinking about the social world; the regions must come on spontaneously and independently of your social thinking

How quickly does the DMN come on after you finish a math problem?

400 ms, the DMN/social cognition network comes on automatically after 400 ms during a break, very quickly

What is the idea of DMN as a pre-loading software?

The DMN being active during downtime primes the brain to be better able to read the other person/socialize; to preemptively make us more likely to focus on the minds behind the actions we see, to see people as mental agents rather than as just bodies in motion; we think evolution has made a bet that one of th ebest things for the brain to do in any spare moment is to prepare to see the world socially

What is the Spunt Meyer Lieberman 2015 study?

3 second break, how trial, 5 second break, why trial, 4 second break, math trial; hypothesis: if the DMN during rest gets us ready to think socially then the more DMN activity during rest period prior to a why trial which requires mentalizing the better we should be at that; found that more you activate DMN the better you do at a trial that requires that kind of thinking/mentalizing aka the DMN primes a social lens

What is short term for DMN? Long term?

Short term: Prime a social lens; resting acitivty may nudge us to see events in social and mental terms instead of physical terms

Long term: Build social cognitive expertise; may help us extract rules from our experiences, may help consolidate information about people/groups/social rules

What is DMN and rest relationship?

The DMN activates whenever the brain has free time, no other network does this

What is the DMN and mentalizing relationship?

It overlaps substantially with the network for thinking about other people's minds

What is the DMN and priming relationship?

DMN activity at rest primes faster/more efficient mentalizing, even for tasks you didnt know where coming

What is the DMN and evolution relationship?

Of all the things evolution could have the brain practice in its downtime, it chose social cognition; this is the brain's single biggest bet on what matters

Do humans have the largest brains?

No, we do not have the largest/most estimated brain volume or estimated total neurons

What is encephalization?

Excess brain tissue over and above what is needed to monitor and regulate the body; cognitive excess

What are three accounts of enephalization?

Innovation (IQ), imitation, and group size

Who has the most encephalization?

Humans

What is Dunbar's number?

n=150; suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships

What are the pros and cons of group living?

Hunting is better in groups, others steal your mates/food; smart coalitions manage the tradeoffs successfully

What are some relationship with n and dyadic?

[(N x (N-1)) / 2]

ex: n=15 then 100 dyadic relationships

What two things shaped the social brain?

Cooperation (evolution for cooperation): working together in larger groups; the primary reason our brains grew over evolution was to increase our capacity to cooperate in larger groups and gian the benefits of doing so

Social thought (the default social mode): preparing for social life during breaks; the DMN evolved to come on when action pauses; this predisposition gives us time to practice social thinking and prepare for being social

What is social cognitive neuroscience?

A bridge between social psychology and brain science; it uses neuroscience tools to study the mental mechanisms that create, frame, regulate, and respond to our experience of the social world; social cognition provides the questions then cognition connects psychological questions with neural measurements then cognitive neuroscience provides the methods to test those explanations

What are the five contributions of social cognitive neuroscience?

Unexpected convergences, unexpected divergences, necessary processes, brain as a mediator, and brain as a predictor

What are unexpected convergences?

Hidden similarities; imagining an object and actually seeing it recruit overlapping visual cortex regions

What are unexpected divergences?

Different processes behind similar behavior; implicit and explicit memory rely on distinct neural pathways

What are necessary processes?

What a process truly requires; people with amnesia can still rationalize choices, explicit memory is not required for this cognitive dissonance effect

What is brain as a mediator?

From social experience to the body; neural processes can help explain how loneliness and social isolation relate to physical health

What is brain as a predictor?

Forecasting later behavior; responses to persuasive messages can predict later behavior, sometimes beyond what people report they intend to do

What areas are basically the same and all involved in working memory?

Dorosolateral prefrontal cortex, brodmann area 46, area f4, middle front gyrus, lateral frontal cortex

What are the four directions for non-primate orientation?

Dorsal/superior, up/top of head

Anterior, left/nose

Posterior, right/back

Ventral/inferior, down/chin

What are the planes of the brain?

Coronal (side to side)

Sagittal (front to back)

Axial (lateral)

What is the lateral view?

Side view of the brain, shows frontal lobe/central sulcus/parietal lobe/lateral fissure/temporal lobe/occipital lobe

What is the medial view?

Inside slice/side of the brain; shows the inside of frontal lobe/ central sulcus/parietal lobe/occipital lobe/temporal lobe/brainstem/cerebellum

What is the dorsal view?

From above; shows the top of the frontal lobe/central sulcus/parietal lobe/longitudinal fissure/occipital lobe

What is the ventral view?

From below; shows the bottom of the frontal lobe/temporal lobe/cerebellum/cranial nerves/brainstem

What are lobes?

Brain parts that define broad divisions of the cerebral cortex

What are the two brain hemispheres?

Right and left

What are folds in the brain's surface?

Gyri (gyrus)

What is the cerebral cortex?

The brain's outer 'bark' layer

What does a coronal slice show?

Gray matter, white matter, and deep crevies called sulci (sulcus)

What are brodmann areas?

Regions of the brain after their neurons, 1-46

What is dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex?

Upper outer frontal part of brain

What is ventral-lateral prefrontal cortex?

Bottom outer frontal part of brain

What is orbital frontal cortex?

Frontal part of brain near eyes

What are some neuroimaging techniques?

EEG and MEG, fNIRS, MRI imaging, 2-DG imaging, and brain lesions

What is EEG/ERP?

Event-related potentials are voltage changes measured with EEG that occur in response to specific sensory, cognitive, or motor events; by averaging EEg signals across many trials, ERPs isolate these event-related responses from background brain activity revealing distinct waveforms associated with different cognitive processes

What is an fNIR?

Functional near infrared spectroscopy; measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood oxygenation levels using near-infrared light, which penetrates the scalp and skull; by analyzing how light is absorbed and scattered, fNIRS identifies regions of increased neural activity

What is an MRI?

Magnetic resonance imaging

What is the bold signal?

Blood oxygen level dependent signal

What are block designs?

Trials that are blocked together (ex: rest block, house block, rest block, face block, rest black, house block, rest block, face block, rest block); looks at parts of the brain (red means more active)

What are some analysis types?

Whole brain analyses (1), region of interest (ROI) analyses (1), multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) (1), correlational analyses (2), representational similarity analysis (2), neural synchrony (2)

How do analyses work?

First level analysis: start by looking for effects in each subject separately

Second level analysis: then see where effects hold up across subjects

What is a whole brain analysis?

Looking for any brain regions more active in task A than B (in one person for a within subject analysis)

What is an ROI analysis?

Region of interest; is REGION more active in task A or task B?

What is a correlational analysis?

Are there regions for which people higher on trait J also tend to show larger differences in activity to tasks A and B than people lower on trait J?

What is multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA)?

Looks at patterns across voxel/looks for differences, can try to predict whether a person is looking at a certain object

What is representational similarity analysis?

A computational technique that uses pairwise comparisons of stimuli to reveal their representation in higher-order space (similarity in how you represent two classes of things differently)

What is neural synchrony?

The correlation of brain activity across two or more people over time.

What is fMRI good for?

Associations (overlaps) (threats/IAT & amygdala (vision))

Dissociations (face identity & expression (implicit/explicit memory))

Mediation of two non-brain processes (social connection to health)

Brain-as-predictor (persuasion)

What is social pain?

Pain felt when there are threats to connection; the pain of actual or potential threats to our social connections; a signal to protect and restore connection

Is connection a basic need?

Yes, mammalian infants depend on caregivers to survive; separation distress helps keep them close

What are the two components of pain?

Sensory (where is it/how intense is it) and affective (how distressing is it)

What does social pain overlap with?

Social pain overlaps especially with the distress component

What are the three pieces of evidence for shared processes?

1) Opioids reduced separation cries in isolated puppies

2) Cyberball exclusion engaged dACC and anterior insula, regions linked to pain-related distress

3) Studies comparing social and physical pain found overlapping responses

What is the neural alarm hypothesis?

Proposed role of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC): detect a problem (monitor threats and mismatches) and sound the alarm (distress captures attention and motivates action)

What is the importance of social connection?

Social connection is a fundamental need and for every need there is a corresponding pain

What is the social pain overlap theory (SPOT)?

Mammalian attachment system piggybacked onto the physical pain system to promote survival; mammals have long period of immaturity + need to maintain close social contact for nourishment and protection + attachment system maintains that contact; if separation from a caregiver is a threat to survival then feeling 'hurt' by separation may be an adaptive way to prevent it

What is the initial evidence of social pain in the opioid system?

The dogs with morphine had less social distress calls when separated/experiencing social distress; morphine help with physical pain as well

What is dACC?

Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dorsal meaning up, anterior meaning towards forehead)

What are the four systems in the pain network?

dACC, somatosensory cortex (S1 (touch)), posterior insula, and anterior insula.

What is the affective dimension of pain study?

Cingulate surgery that has proven successful for chronic pain and could still identify sensory aspects of pain stimulus; aka pain was continued but not distressing or particularly bothersome

What is a cingulotomy surgery?

Either removes a chunk of the dACC (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) or separates the connections to dACC; aka cingulate stops contributing to brain function; tried to use it to treat lots of disorders (depression, anxiety, ocd, etc.)

What are the sensory aspects of pain?

The detection and discrimination of a painful stimulus aka its location, intensity, and quality (ie sharp vs dull)

What are the affective aspects of pain?

The emotional unpleasantness and suffering that accompanies a painful stimulus; the felt sense that the experience is distressing and should be avoided

What is the sensory dimension of pain study?

Damage to the sensory cortex after a stroke (opposite of cingulatory surgery study), the patient spontaneously described a clearly unpleasant intensity dependent feeling emerging from an ill-localized and extended area somewhere between fingertips and shoulder than he wanted to avoid

What are responsible for distress and sensory parts of pain?

Distress: dACC and anterior insula

Sensory: S1, S2, posterior insula

What is the lesions to the ACC reduce distress vocalizations study?

Squirrels would stop making social distress calls when lessioned in the dACC

What is the electrical stimulation of the ACC leads to the spontaneous elicitation of distress vocalization?

Squirrels would make social distress calls when electrical stimulation to dACC

What is the ball throwing social pain study?

Participants were playing a game where they were left out vs when they were included and their brains were studied; while being left out pain network was active

What is the pain of being dumped study (social rejection physical pain overlap, whole brain analysis)?

Dorsal cingulate and anterior insula was active in social rejection

What is the negative social feedback study?

When receiving negative social evaluation, the pain network region was active

What is a meta analysis for neuro?

A meta-analysis for neuroimaging data aggregates the results from many individual brain-imaging studies of the same type of task or experience into a single analysis, letting you see which patterns of brain activation reliably hold u across all of them rather than depending on the finds of any one study

What is the salience controversy?

Salience = attention getting; argues the dACC activtion observed during social exclusion doesn't reflect genuine social pain but rather the unexpectedness or attentional salience of being suddenly excluded, essentially it's a surprise signal not a pain signal; here, any sufficiently salient even would produce similar dACC activity, meaning the response isn't specific to the distress of social rejection

What was the cyberball exclusion overinclusion study?

Participants played a ball-tossing game with two apparent players during fMRI. Afterward, they rated social pain and surprise. Social pain was higher during exclusion tha inclusion or overinclusion. Overinclusion was numerically more surprising than exclusion. dACC activity was greater for exclusion, brain responses diverged despite surprise in both conditions, surprise alone does nto explain the dACC response to exclusion

What is the conflict controversy?

Suggests that when there is a conflict between ones goals and outcomes this is tracked so that we can apply effortful top down processes to correct things; so here the dACC isn't about pain specifically its about monitoring anything that conflicts with ours goals, in this case the goal is to be included in the game

What is the stop-signal task?

You get a signal on almost every trial to press a button, occasionally after the signal there will be a beep that means you stop; it measures the speed of stopping an impending response; the later the beep, the harder it is to stop

What do we see in the conflict controversy study?

We see the dACC activity; conflict monitoring produces dACC activity with more in stop-failures then stop-successes; but maybe the dACC affect was errors modulated by self-reported 'frustration'

What is the neural alarm syste hypothesis?

dACC both detects the discrepancy (outcome vs goal; monitor for a mismatch between what should be happening and what is happening) and sounds the alarm (distress motivates action; generate distress that captures attention and motivates action to address the problem); the dACC may perform both functions of an alarm; conflict monitoring detects the discrepancy and pain/distress signal the need to act

What is the tylenol vs social pain study?

Subjects who took the tylenol long term reported less social pain than the placebo group AND had lowered activity rates in the dACC during the cyberbball game with exclusion; tylenol reduces neural sensitivity to rejection

Which is worse for your health, smoking or not being socially connected to other people?

Not being socially connected to other people, loneliness is an epidemic

Has loneliness increased overtime?

Yes, dramatically 52% increase from 1976 to 2016, with younger generations being more lonely; time spent socializing with friends hours per week has gone down in more recent years

How does the brain process reward?

Ventral striatum and VMPFC (ventromedial prefrontal cortex)

Anticipating vs receiving rewards: the monetary incentive delay task

Gains vs losses: how reward regions respond to different outcomes

Comparing apples and oranges: a common currency for value

What is the anticipation vs outcome meta analysis?

The ventral striatum (VS) is associated with both anticipation and outcome. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) is just associated with outcome.

Anticipation: might win $5, more VS activity, none VMPFC

Outcome: win $5, more VMPFC but still VS activity

What is the gains vs losses analysis brain region (what is more active)?

Gains > Losses: VS and VMPFC

Gains > No Change: VS and VMPFC

Losses > No Change: dACC and anterior insula and VS (which reacts more to a loss than no change at all aka how much you deviate from 0 in either direction but does prefer gains)

What is the graph of responses to gains and losses with VMPFC and VS?

VMPFC: Cares least about loss, then more about neutral, then most about gain

VS: Cares about loss, does not care about neutral, cares the most about gains