Knowledge Clips Part 1: Psychological Methods of SNS

Subjective Measures:
- Emotional experience assessment
- Personality questionnaires (e.g., STAI/STAS, LSAS, EQ-SQ, BIS-BAS)

How to Use in SNS?
- Control variable
- Correlation with other measures
- Comparison across studies

Observational Measures:
- Frequency of behaviors
- Used in animal and infant studies
- Scoring and counting behaviors
- Camera usage (blinding, inter-rater reliability)
- Eye-tracking

Performance Measures:
- Speed, reaction time, accuracy
- IQ tests
- (Emotion) recognition tests
- Selective attention
  - Implicit association test
  - Stroop task
  - Classical task
  - Emotional task (interference of emotion)
  - Facial fear stroop

Physiological Measures:
- Controlled by the brain and spinal cord
- (Electro)physiological methods
  - Skin conductance
  - Heart rate, respiration
  - Electromyography (EMG)

Skin Conductance Response (SCR):
- Measures sweat gland reactivity
- Related to sympathetic arousal

Heart Rate:
- Declaration and acceleration
- Heart rate variability (HRV)

Electromyography (EMG):
- Measures muscle activity
- Mimicking facial expressions
- Startle potentiation (e.g., eye blink potentiation)

Electrophysiological Brain Imaging:
- Neuron structure: cell body, axon, dendrites
- Single-cell recordings for firing rate measurement

Electroencephalography (EEG):
- Measures neural activity in the cortex
- Frequency bands (e.g., delta waves, beta waves)
- Event-related potentials (ERPs)

Advantages/Disadvantages of ERP:
- Advantage: Excellent temporal resolution
- Disadvantage: Poor spatial resolution

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI):
- Better for spatial resolution compared to ERP
- Relies on alignment of water molecules
- Functional MRI measures blood oxygenation

Advantages/Disadvantages of fMRI:
- Advantage: Good spatial resolution (voxel size as low as 1mm3)
- Disadvantage: Poor temporal resolution

Structural Imaging Methods:
- Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) for mapping white matter microstructure
- Measures communication bundles

Brain Imaging Conclusion:
- MRI measures brain structure, connections, and activation location
- Event-related potentials for timing of activation
- Subcortical brain imaging with high temporal resolution not currently available

Lesion Methods:
- Reversed engineering to infer function by removing a region
- Techniques include chemo/optogenetics
- Human research relies on accidents, stroke, lobectomy, genetic disorders

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS):
- Coil with electric current induces a magnetic field
- Focal, reversible, and movable
- Investigates time-course of cognitions

Advantages/Disadvantages of TMS:
- Advantage: Focal stimulation
- Disadvantage: Lack of good placebo condition

Conclusion of Imaging Methods of SNS:
- Different temporal and spatial resolutions and invasiveness

Knowledge Clips Part 2: Amygdala and Emotional Processing

Amygdala Structure:
- Part of the limbic system
- Studied as a single structure in humans
- Evolutionary changes in amygdala size (BLA vs. CeA)

Low and High Routes (LeDoux):
- Visual processing routes in threat

Live Lecture: Social Neuroscience Overview

1. Multidisciplinary Approach:
   - Sociology, psychology, neuroscience
   - Martin Luther King's quote emphasizing the importance of diverse perspectives to understand prejudice.

2. Sociology:
   - Study of social behavior, origins, development, organizations, networks, and institutions.
   - Recognition of in-group favoritism and inherent prejudice.

3. (Social) Psychology:
   - Explores individual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
   - Examines phenomena like dehumanization to understand motivations and emotions underlying prejudice.

4. Neuroscience:
   - Studies behavior by examining brain circuitry.
   - Example: Oxytocin's role in bonding but also potential for reinforcing racist stereotypes.
   - Social neuroscience aims to integrate biology, individual psychology, and group sociology.

5. The Social Brain: Modular or Non-Modular?
   - Discussion on whether the social brain functions through specialized routines or a more integrated, non-modular approach.
   - Consideration of the triune brain model, highlighting reptilian, mammalian, and primate brain components.

6. Evolution and the Triune Brain:
   - Bigger brains influencing both social and non-social intelligence.
   - Social intelligence hypothesis: Pressure to outwit peers leading to increased intelligence in non-social domains.
   - Social and non-social cognition interdependent.

7. Brain Evolution:
   - Triune brain model overview, highlighting reptilian, mammalian, and primate brain structures.
   - Mirror neurons as a social mechanism for observational learning.

8. Mixed Mode of the Social Brain:
   - Parts may be modular, module-like, or non-modular, depending on specific functions.
   - Advocacy for a network approach rather than assigning discrete social functions to specific brain regions.

9. Electrical Connections and Neuromodulators:
   - Action potentials for motion, more diffuse for emotion.
   - Role of neurotransmitters (glutamate, GABA) and neuromodulators (norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine) in emotion.

10. Autonomous Nervous System:
    - Rest and digest vs. fight or flight balance.
    - Hypothalamus regulation and its connection to emotional states.

11. Motivation and Emotion:
    - Distinction between motivation (reward seeking and punishment avoidance) and emotion.
    - Approach/avoidance actions and subjective liking/disliking.

12. Theories of Emotion:
    - James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Papez and Maclean, and Schachter & Singer models.
    - Body and brain connection in emotional states.

13. Basic and Complex Emotions:
    - Exploration of basic emotions (fear, happy) across cultures.
    - Evolutionary perspective on emotions with dedicated neural substrates.
    - Introduction of complex social emotions like guilt, pride, and jealousy.
 

Live Lecture: Hormones and Behavior

Testosterone: hypothalamus - pituitary - gonads (HPG) axis:
→ Testosterone drives dominance behavior in a highly dynamic manner.

Challenge hypothesis:
- High testosterone for competition and challenge
- Low testosterone for parental care and social bonding

Testosterone works recursively: it can build up, and it can decline.
→ It motivates us to go into competition with others, and by going into competition, the testosterone goes up too. So it motivates, but it also goes up by the motivation itself.
→ But if you lose these competitions, the testosterone will go down, and the motivation will decline as well.

Cortisol: hypothalamus - pituitary - adrenal glands (HPA) axis
→ Cortisol is produced in response to stress (reactive threat system: amygdala - hypothalamus - autonomous nervous system)
Cortisol is an end product! → High cortisol is not the cause of stress but the result of stress.
→ Serves a homeostasis function.
→ Can also build up (promotes threat anticipation): it will help to focus your attention on stressors more strongly.
- When this happens, you can reach an excess point of cortisol = allostatic load (when cortisol is overloaded, you won’t be able to reach a point of homeostasis anymore, chronic overload of cortisol).
- Related to different types of diseases, like obesity, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, etc.

Cortisol (HPA) versus testosterone (HPG): the HPA axis inhibits the HPG axis and thus testosterone production, on all its levels, and cortisol also inhibits the action of testosterone in the brain.
→ This balance helps explain how testosterone can contribute to dominance behaviors.
- For example, when testosterone is high, when in competition, it can inhibit cortisol. And also the other way around.
- The inhibition is not perfect; both hormones can be high or low at the same time as well.

Testosterone and social hierarchy:
- Social hierarchy favors the individual (higher individuals have, for example, more power, food, sex, more chance of surviving).
- It also favors the group (makes the group stronger, more food, in war situations they are stronger, etc.)
Hierarchy dynamics:
- Social aggression: forms and maintains social hierarchy
- Physical violence: causes damage or is symbolic (fight without harm)
- Displays of dominance:
  → Physical displays (without physical contact)
    - Like having gorilla groups, the upper gorilla is dominant, shows that in his behavior (eye contact, for example).
  → Cultural displays
    - Things like clothing in humans
  → Signaling behavior:
    - Staring contest

Eye contact/staring contest:
- Social confrontation: prevents aggression (like a referee looking at a footballer in the eyes with a severe gaze, to make clear he must not show that kind of behavior again).
- Gaze aversion is a subordinate gesture

The (classical/emotional) stroop task compared to eye contact/gaze aversion studies:
→

Knowledge Clips Week 3: Understanding Others

These clips focus on empathy, simulation theory, and autism.

Empathy: the ability to read the mind of others.
→ In daily life, we consider it to be a good thing.
When we talk about empathy, we talk about hypotheses or inferences we make about the mind of others.
→ But how do we even know that others have a mind? We cannot be sure that other people have the same feelings, thoughts, etc., as we do.

- Philosophical zombie problem (David Chalmers)
Daniel Dennett: intentional stance
- Zero order intentionality: we look at things without assuming that there are intentions there. For example, when we look at a rock laying on the ground.
- First order: we assume that another person has a mind
- Second-order: we assume that another person is making assumptions about the mind of others
- Third-order: where you assume that another person is assuming about the mind of others.

Empathy: Two explanations
1. Theory-theory: formal cognitive knowledge about mental states and behavior.
- Inferences about goals or emotions
- Fairly spontaneous
- Stem from an understanding of the situation
- Probe recognition task: [link to the task]
→ Sally Anne task (theory of mind): putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes. Really about cognitive empathy, about knowing what the other one knows
> If children are using a theory of mind, they will say that Sally is going to look in the basket (because that is where they think that Sally thinks the ball is). But if they cannot do that, and thus cannot distinguish between their own knowledge and the knowledge of another, they will say Sally is going to look in the box.

2. Simulation theory: we simulate what we perceive and experience mental states (of what the other person is feeling, believing, or intending to do).
- Empathy: useful for a doctor? → Doctors need to have empathy for their patients when talking to them, but for the doctors, it is also good to be able to switch the empathy off when they have to do surgery.
→ Experiment with empathy of pain: the patients watched an injection with a numb hand (not a painful condition) versus a real injection (painful condition). The participants had to rate the pain and unpleasantness of the pictures, while their brain activity was registered.
- The TPJ (temporal parietal junction): an important brain area involved in switching empathy on and off and an important area in taking different perspectives.

Simulation theory: we understand the emotions, behaviors, and intentions of others because we simulate what we see (De Waal & Preston).
→ Not only humans, but also other species have this simulating behavior.
Barrett (2017): core emotions/affect. We have a limited set of core emotions that we experience and can perceive in others.
→ Activation vs deactivation, and pleasant vs

Knowledge Clips: Olfactory Social Neuroscience

The ability of smell in humans is actually very good, as demonstrated by research conducted by Porter et al (2007). In this study, people were required to follow a trail of chocolate oil using only their noses, with their eyes and ears covered. The research revealed that human beings are proficient at performing and following scent trails, guided by their sense of smell. Moreover, humans are capable of discriminating more than a trillion smells.

Why do we look down on our ability to smell?

→ We find it hard to talk about smells and name them. Odors operate below the surface, affecting lower brain regions shared with other mammals and reptiles (limbic brain regions and even lower, regions that produce survival instincts). This bias might explain why we perceive smells as less important to us.

The smell brain: anatomy

→ The sense of smell is chemical, consisting of molecules.
→ Remarkable features include:
  - Limbic overlap: a connection between emotions and odors, with many regions close together and overlapping. This makes smell memories highly emotional.
  - Ipsilateral projection: smell information entering the brain on one side is processed on that same side, with no thalamic intermediary or delay.
  - Feedback to the bulb: top-down modulation, learning, and plasticity, affecting the olfactory bulb, allowing us to rewire which smells we attend to.

Key features of the function of smell:

→ Metastudies have identified typical regions that are active in smell:
  - Piriform cortex (PC): registers stimulus identity (what is this smell) and extends to the amygdala, targeting emotional relevance.
  - Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)
  - Anterior insula (AI): encodes the affective property of the smell (whether we want to approach or avoid the smell).

Plasticity of olfaction: we can quickly learn the importance (and dangers) of smell, for example, the smell of gas.

Odor discrimination after conditioning:

→ Research by Li et al (2008) showed that when a stimulus (hand) was given a shock, the brain could update the importance of a particular smell in connection with that stimulus. Participants could distinguish between two stimuli (hands) even though both emitted the same odor, emphasizing the role of conditioning.

Smell functions:

- Approach/Avoid (for example, food)
- Detecting environmental hazards
- Social communication

Chemical communication: types of information we can smell:

- Neuro Identity (we are all different)
- Strong genetic components to body odor (monozygotic twins)
- The ability to smell illnesses
- Smelling ages, gender
- Smelling emotions

Experimental set-up:

→ In two conditions, the sender watched a horror movie and a nature documentary. The receiver was then exposed to the fear odor and neutral odor of the sender.
- Emotional expressions were measured.
→ The hypothesis was that there would be more sensory intake in the fear condition (evolutionary functional to detect threats).
What they found: Exposure to a fearful body odor

Live Lecture week 4

Live Lecture: Part 1 - Olfactory Social Neuroscience

Smell loss is inversely associated with color vision emergence, suggesting a trade-off between these sensory abilities. Humans, however, can outperform some animals in olfaction, but a certain level of olfactory strength is needed to be detected by humans.

The olfactory processing pathway involves the olfactory bulb, piriform cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex. The piriform cortex exhibits ensemble coding for odor identification, creating different maps of activity for various smells.

Smell serves functions such as judging edibility, avoiding environmental hazards, and social communication. Olfactory cues can convey identity, sickness, or diseases. Sickness affects attractiveness and liking, as observed in studies injecting individuals with saline or lipopolysaccharide (LPS).

The smell of fear is examined through individuals with a genetic variance related to body odor. The ABCC11 gene mutation results in almost odorless individuals. Fear-induced experiments show increased signs of fear and higher skin conductance responses.

Emotional contagion in receivers indicates the ability to detect fear odor. Chemical analysis reveals consistent molecules in the smell of fear, with hexadecanoic acid identified as a potential biomarker.

Possible neural mechanisms in the smell of fear involve connections between the olfactory bulb, piriform cortex, and amygdala, suggesting learned connections between odors.

Urbach-Wiethe disease (UWD) and smell research explore reactions to innate and learned fear, providing insights into the neural mechanisms of smell.

Part 2: Social Preferences or Emotion - Irrational Rejection of Unfair Offers

Homo economicus, from an economic perspective, focuses on personal gain. However, humans exhibit sensitivity to equity and inequity, willing to punish unfairness at a cost to themselves.

The ultimatum game (UG) and impunity game (IG) are explored, with the latter indicating rejection of unfairness even without punishment. The study aims to test whether emotion predicts rejection in IG and UG, focusing on real proposer/responder behavior.

Hypotheses from social preferences and emotional commitment accounts are tested, analyzing rejection rates, social value orientation, anger, subjective emotion measures, facial EMG, EEG, and frontal negativity ERP.

Results indicate that rejection rates are lower in IG than UG, supporting social preferences. Prosocialness and anger influence rejection more in UG than IG. Facial EMG and ERP data suggest that MFN (medial frontal negativity) predicts rejection in UG, particularly for prosocial individuals.

Conclusion: The data supports the social preferences account, highlighting the role of social value orientation and expectancy in rejection behavior. The study has limitations, including low data for IG analysis and missing SCR data.
 

Live Lecture  Identity and Groups

The Self Concept:
The self-concept involves self-referential processing, with different aspects:
1. **Sensorimotor self:** Includes a sense of agency and embodiment.
2. **Ongoing self:** Encompasses personality traits, motivation for self-esteem, and personal memories.
3. **Cultural/collective self:** Involves group membership, shared beliefs, skills, and rituals.

Personal vs. Social Identity:
- **Personal identity:** Identifying as an individual, influenced by motivations and self-esteem maintenance.
- **Social identity:** Identifying as a group member based on commonalities and positive social distinctiveness. People strive for a positive sense of self in both personal and social identity.

Better-Than-Average-Effect:
People tend to think more positively about themselves than the average of the group, serving self-enhancement and contributing to a positive self-view.

Self-Referential Processing and mPFC Activation:
Self-referential processing involves activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Studies show that mPFC activation facilitates self-judgment tasks, suggesting its role in self-referential processing.

Cultural Effects on Self-Referential Processing:
Cultural effects influence self-referential processing, as observed in studies where Chinese participants showed more activation for the "mother" condition, reflecting a collective-oriented interdependent culture, while Westerners exhibited self-judgment regardless of the closeness of the other person.

Social Identity:
Social identity involves social categorization, social identification, and social comparison, aiming to maintain a positive self-concept and social identity. Individuals strive for positive self-concept and social identity simultaneously.

Social Categorization:
Social categorization includes quick attentional processing (N1 and P2) with greater peaks for outgroup members. Deeper processing (N2) shows heightened responses for ingroup members. Ingroup identification influences social categorization, as evidenced in ERP studies.

Importance of Morality for Social Identity:
A study with an implicit association task revealed that emphasizing moral values reduced social bias towards the outgroup, suggesting a connection between moral values, social categorization, and bias.

Ingroup Preference and Group Dynamics:
Ingroup preference was studied in mixed-race groups, showing rapid categorization of ingroup faces. Likability for team members was enhanced in the ingroup condition, reflecting activity in brain regions like the fusiform face area, amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and striatum.

Criticism and Social Bias:
Studies on criticism (moral vs. competence) indicated increased attention to ingroup feedback, with greater activation in the ventral tegmental area and enhanced categorization in the N200 for participants highly identifying with the ingroup.

About Love

Triangular Theory of Love (Sternberg, 1988):
Perfect love involves passion, intimacy, and commitment, but these factors rarely align perfectly in real life.

Evolutionary Origins, Endocrine Factors, and Neural Correlates of Love:
Love's stages have evolutionary origins, endocrine factors like oxytocin and vasopressin, and neural correlates. Prairie voles' monogamous behavior is linked to oxytocin and vasopressin receptors, emphasizing the role of these hormones.

Long-Term Relationships and Neural Correlates:
Long-term relationships show enhanced activation in reward-related brain areas like the ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens. The frequency of sexual activity correlates with higher brain activation.

Grief and Neural Correlates:
Complicated grief involves distinct brain activation patterns, including heightened nucleus accumbens activity in