Making Work Better: an Independent Inquiry into Working Life in Britain

The purpose of this independent inquiry is to identify what government, employers, employees (and those that represent them) can do to improve working life in Britain. Our focus is on what makes for a better workplace and better employment. What government policies and actions by employers, management and unions would make a difference; and how can we aspire to a high-skills, high-productivity, high-wage economy where more people are satisfied with their work and have greater opportunities and more control over what they do

"Making it explicit" makes a difference: Evidence for a dissociation of spontaneous and intentional level 1 perspective taking in high-functioning autism

This research was supported by Volkswagen Foundation grant “Being addressed as you: Conceptual and empirical investigations of a Second-Person approach to other minds” awarded to LS and BT. LS is also supported by the Koeln Fortune Program of the Medical Faculty, University of Cologne. BT was supported by a European Commission Marie Curie Fellowship FP7-PEOPLE-IEF 237502 “Social Brain.” We thank Dana Samson for providing the stimulus material and Julia Proft and Franka Pieplow for data collection. For helpful comments and suggestions we are also grateful to three anonymous reviewers.Peer reviewedPreprin

Decoding social intentions in human prehensile actions: Insights from a combined kinematics-fMRI study

Consistent evidence suggests that the way we reach and grasp an object is modulated not only by object properties (e.g., size, shape, texture, fragility and weight), but also by the types of intention driving the action, among which the intention to interact with another agent (i.e., social intention). Action observation studies ascribe the neural substrate of this `intentional' component to the putative mirror neuron (pMNS) and the mentalizing (MS) systems. How social intentions are translated into executed actions, however, has yet to be addressed. We conducted a kinematic and a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study considering a reach-to-grasp movement performed towards the same object positioned at the same location but with different intentions: passing it to another person (social condition) or putting it on a concave base (individual condition). Kinematics showed that individual and social intentions are characterized by different profiles, with a slower movement at the level of both the reaching (i.e., arm movement) and the grasping (i.e., hand aperture) components. fMRI results showed that: (i) distinct voxel pattern activity for the social and the individual condition are present within the pMNS and the MS during action execution; (ii) decoding accuracies of regions belonging to the pMNS and the MS are correlated, suggesting that these two systems could interact for the generation of appropriate motor commands. Results are discussed in terms of motor simulation and inferential processes as part of a hierarchical generative model for action intention understanding and generation of appropriate motor commands

Neural endophenotypes of social behaviour in autism spectrum conditions

Autism is characterized by qualitative impairments in social interaction, communication, and stereotyped repetitive behaviors and/or restricted interests. Beyond these diagnostic criteria, autism is viewed as a neurodevelopmental condition with possibly several etiologies that manifest in complex patterns of atypical structural and functional brain development, cognition, and behavior. Despite the multidimensional nature of and substantial variation within the autism spectrum, impairments in social interaction remain among the most visible hallmarks of the condition. It is this profound developmental deficit in the social domain that makes autism a unique case in the field of social neuroscience. This chapter contributes to the dialogue amongst both the fields of autism research and social neuroscience by deliberately taking the stance of asking how we can understand more about the etiological mechanisms underlying social behavior in autism. It presents a multi-level overview of the literature on the behavioral, neural, and genetic underpinnings of social functioning in autism spectrum conditions (ASC). The main objective is to highlight the current state of the field regarding theory of mind/empathy difficulties in ASC, and then to suggest distinct candidate neural endophenotypes that can bridge the gap between social behavior and genetic mechanisms

Interactivity and Reward-Related Neural Activation during a Serious Videogame

This study sought to determine whether playing a “serious” interactive digital game (IDG) – the Re-Mission videogame for cancer patients – activates mesolimbic neural circuits associated with incentive motivation, and if so, whether such effects stem from the participatory aspects of interactive gameplay, or from the complex sensory/perceptual engagement generated by its dynamic event-stream. Healthy undergraduates were randomized to groups in which they were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) as they either actively played Re-Mission or as they passively observed a gameplay audio-visual stream generated by a yoked active group subject. Onset of interactive game play robustly activated mesolimbic projection regions including the caudate nucleus and nucleus accumbens, as well as a subregion of the parahippocampal gyrus. During interactive gameplay, subjects showed extended activation of the thalamus, anterior insula, putamen, and motor-related regions, accompanied by decreased activation in parietal and medial prefrontal cortex. Offset of interactive gameplay activated the anterior insula and anterior cingulate. Between-group comparisons of within-subject contrasts confirmed that mesolimbic activation was significantly more pronounced in the active playgroup than in the passive exposure control group. Individual difference analyses also found the magnitude of parahippocampal activation following gameplay onset to correlate with positive attitudes toward chemotherapy assessed both at the end of the scanning session and at an unannounced one-month follow-up. These findings suggest that IDG-induced activation of reward-related mesolimbic neural circuits stems primarily from participatory engagement in gameplay (interactivity), rather than from the effects of vivid and dynamic sensory stimulation

From Tones in Tinnitus to Sensed Social Interaction in Schizophrenia: How Understanding Cortical Organization Can Inform the Study of Hallucinations and Psychosis

The content, modality, and perceptual attributes of hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms may be related to neural representation at a single cell and population level in the cerebral cortex. A brief survey of some principles and examples of cortical representation and organization will be presented together with evidence for a correspondence between the neurobiology of brain areas activated at the time of a hallucination and the content of the corresponding hallucinatory and psychotic experiences. Contrasting the hallucinations of schizophrenia with other conditions, we highlight phenomenological aspects of hallucinations that are ignored in clinical practice but carry potentially important information about the brain regions and dysfunctions underlying them. Knowledge of cortical representation and organization are being used to develop animal models of hallucination and to test treatments that are now beginning to translate to the clinical domain

Die pädagogische Beziehung. Neurowissenschaften und Pädagogik im Dialog. Ein Überblick unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Vorschulzeit

Soziale Erfahrungen werden vom Gehirn evaluiert, mit biologischen Reaktionen beantwortet und formen das kindliche Gehirn. Dieser Prozess hat beim Eintritt eines Kindes in die Schule bereits über Jahre hinweg stattgefunden und Tatsachen geschaffen. Daher sollte die vorschulische Entwicklung des Kindes stärker in den Blickpunkt der Schulpädagogik rücken. Aus neurowissenschaftlicher Perspektive lassen sich zwei Phasen der Kleinkindpädagogik unterscheiden. Der Autor beschreibt, unter welchen Voraussetzungen sich in den ersten zwei Lebensjahren ein „Selbst“ bildet und wie sich dessen neurobiologische Korrelate formieren. Die Zeit vom dritten bis sechsten Lebensjahr steht in einem Spannungsfeld von Individuation einerseits und der Notwendigkeit andrerseits, soziale Regeln zu verinnerlichen. Entscheidend für die Entwicklung von Kindern und Jugendlichen ist die pädagogische Beziehung. Instrumente wie Spiegelung, Resonanz und Anleitung zur Selbststeuerung, deren sich die Pädagogik bereits in den vorschulischen Jahren bedienen muss, bleiben auch in der Schulpädagogik bestimmend. (DIPF/Orig.