Aging Increases Prosocial Motivation for Effort.

Social cohesion relies on prosociality in increasingly aging populations. Helping other people requires effort, yet how willing people are to exert effort to benefit themselves and others, and whether such behaviors shift across the life span, is poorly understood. Using computational modeling, we tested the willingness of 95 younger adults (18-36 years old) and 92 older adults (55-84 years old) to put physical effort into self- and other-benefiting acts. Participants chose whether to work and exert force (30%-70% of maximum grip strength) for rewards (2-10 credits) accrued for themselves or, prosocially, for another. Younger adults were somewhat selfish, choosing to work more at higher effort levels for themselves, and exerted less force in prosocial work. Strikingly, compared with younger adults, older people were more willing to put in effort for others and exerted equal force for themselves and others. Increased prosociality in older people has important implications for human behavior and societal structure

Connectivity-based parcellation increases network detection sensitivity in resting state fMRI: An investigation into the cingulate cortex in autism

Although resting state fMRI (RS-fMRI) is increasingly used to generate biomarkers of psychiatric illnesses, analytical choices such as seed size and placement can lead to variable findings. Seed placement especially impacts on RS-fMRI studies of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), because individuals with ASD are known to possess more variable network topographies. Here, we present a novel pipeline for analysing RS-fMRI in ASD using the cingulate cortex as an exemplar anatomical region of interest. Rather than using seeds based on previous literature, or gross morphology, we used a combination of structural information, task-independent (RS-fMRI) and task-dependent functional connectivity (Meta-Analytic Connectivity Modeling) to partition the cingulate cortex into six subregions with unique connectivity fingerprints and diverse behavioural profiles. This parcellation was consistent between groups and highly replicable across individuals (up to 93% detection) suggesting that the organisation of cortico-cingulo connections is highly similar between groups. However, our results showed an age-related increase in connectivity between the anterior middle cingulate cortex and right lateral prefrontal cortex in ASD, whilst this connectivity decreased in controls. There was also a Group × Grey Matter (GM) interaction, showing increased connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex and the rectal gyrus in concert with increasing rectal gyrus GM in controls. By comparing our approach to previously established methods we revealed that our approach improves network detection in both groups, and that the ability to detect group differences using 4 mm radius spheres varies greatly with seed placement. Using our multi-modal approach we find disrupted cortico-cingulo circuits that, based on task-dependent information, may contribute to ASD deficits in attention and social interaction. Moreover, we highlight how more sensitive approaches to RS-fMRI are crucial for establishing robust and reproducible connectivity-based biomarkers in psychiatric disorders.publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Connectivity-based parcellation increases network detection sensitivity in resting state fMRI: An investigation into the cingulate cortex in autism journaltitle: NeuroImage: Clinical articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2016.03.016 content_type: article copyright: © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.status: publishe

Acute stress reduces effortful prosocial behaviour

Acute stress can change our cognition and emotions, but what specific consequences this has for human prosocial behaviour is unclear. Previous studies have mainly investigated prosociality with financial transfers in economic games and produced conflicting results. Yet a core feature of many types of prosocial behaviour is that they are effortful. We therefore examined how acute stress changes our willingness to exert effort that benefits others. Healthy male participants – half of whom were put under acute stress – made decisions whether to exert physical effort to gain money for themselves or another person. With this design, we could independently assess the effects of acute stress on prosocial, compared to self-benefitting, effortful behaviour. Compared to controls (n = 45), participants in the stress group (n = 46) chose to exert effort more often for self- than for other-benefitting rewards at a low level of effort. Additionally, the adverse effects of stress on prosocial effort were particularly pronounced in more selfish participants. Neuroimaging combined with computational modelling revealed a putative neural mechanism underlying these effects: more stressed participants showed increased activation to subjective value in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula when they themselves could benefit from their exerted effort relative to when someone else could. By using an effort-based task that better approximates real-life prosocial behaviour and incorporating trait differences in prosocial tendencies, our study provides important insights into how acute stress affects prosociality and its associated neural mechanisms

Aging Increases Prosocial Motivation for Effort.

Social cohesion relies on prosociality in increasingly aging populations. Helping other people requires effort, yet how willing people are to exert effort to benefit themselves and others, and whether such behaviors shift across the life span, is poorly understood. Using computational modeling, we tested the willingness of 95 younger adults (18-36 years old) and 92 older adults (55-84 years old) to put physical effort into self- and other-benefiting acts. Participants chose whether to work and exert force (30%-70% of maximum grip strength) for rewards (2-10 credits) accrued for themselves or, prosocially, for another. Younger adults were somewhat selfish, choosing to work more at higher effort levels for themselves, and exerted less force in prosocial work. Strikingly, compared with younger adults, older people were more willing to put in effort for others and exerted equal force for themselves and others. Increased prosociality in older people has important implications for human behavior and societal structure

Human ventromedial prefrontal cortex is necessary for prosocial motivation.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by a Medical Research Council Fellowship (MR/P014097/1 and MR/P014097/2), a Christ Church Junior Research Fellowship, a Christ Church Research Centre Grant, a Jacobs Foundation Research Fellowship, a Leverhulme Prize (PLP-2021-196) a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellowship (223264/Z/21/Z) and a UKRI EPSRC Frontiers Research Guarantee/ERC Starting Grant (EP/X020215/1) to P.L.L.; a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council David Phillips Fellowship (BB/R010668/1) and Biosciences and Biotechnology Research Council Future Leader Fellowship (BB/M013596/1) awarded to M.A.J.A.; Wellcome Trust Principal Fellowship (098282/Z/12/Z and 206330/Z/17/Z) and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre funding to M.H.; and a Clinician Scientist Fellowship (MR/P00878/X) and Leverhulme Research Grant no. 2018-310 to S.G.M. The research was also funded/supported by the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. For open access, the authors have applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. We also thank our colleagues who acted as the other participants during the study.Funder: Jacobs Foundation; doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003986Funder: Christ Church Junior Research Fellowship and a Christ Church Research Centre GrantFunder: DH | National Institute for Health Research (NIHR); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000272Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is vital for decision-making. Functional neuroimaging links vmPFC to processing rewards and effort, while parallel work suggests vmPFC involvement in prosocial behaviour. However, the necessity of vmPFC for these functions is unknown. Patients with rare focal vmPFC lesions (n = 25), patients with lesions elsewhere (n = 15) and healthy controls (n = 40) chose between rest and exerting effort to earn rewards for themselves or another person. vmPFC damage decreased prosociality across behavioural and computational measures. vmPFC patients earned less, discounted rewards by effort more, and exerted less force when another person benefited, compared to both control groups. Voxel-based lesion mapping revealed dissociations between vmPFC subregions. While medial damage led to antisocial behaviour, lateral damage increased prosocial behaviour relative to patients with damage elsewhere. vmPFC patients also showed reduced effort sensitivity overall, but reward sensitivity was limited to specific subregions. These results reveal multiple causal contributions of vmPFC to prosocial behaviour, effort and reward

Acute stress reduces effortful prosocial behaviour

Acute stress can change our cognition and emotions, but what specific consequences this has for human prosocial behaviour is unclear. Previous studies have mainly investigated prosociality with financial transfers in economic games and produced conflicting results. Yet a core feature of many types of prosocial behaviour is that they are effortful. We therefore examined how acute stress changes our willingness to exert effort that benefits others. Healthy male participants – half of whom were put under acute stress – made decisions whether to exert physical effort to gain money for themselves or another person. With this design, we could independently assess the effects of acute stress on prosocial, compared to self-benefitting, effortful behaviour. Compared to controls (n = 45), participants in the stress group (n = 46) chose to exert effort more often for self- than for other-benefitting rewards at a low level of effort. Additionally, the adverse effects of stress on prosocial effort were particularly pronounced in more selfish participants. Neuroimaging combined with computational modelling revealed a putative neural mechanism underlying these effects: more stressed participants showed increased activation to subjective value in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula when they themselves could benefit from their exerted effort relative to when someone else could. By using an effort-based task that better approximates real-life prosocial behaviour and incorporating trait differences in prosocial tendencies, our study provides important insights into how acute stress affects prosociality and its associated neural mechanisms

Host genetics and viral load in primary HIV-1 infection: clear evidence for gene by sex interactions.

Research in the past two decades has generated unequivocal evidence that host genetic variations substantially account for the heterogeneous outcomes following human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection. In particular, genes encoding human leukocyte antigens (HLA) have various alleles, haplotypes, or specific motifs that can dictate the set-point (a relatively steady state) of plasma viral load (VL), although rapid viral evolution driven by innate and acquired immune responses can obscure the long-term relationships between HLA genotypes and HIV-1-related outcomes. In our analyses of VL data from 521 recent HIV-1 seroconverters enrolled from eastern and southern Africa, HLA-A*03:01 was strongly and persistently associated with low VL in women (frequency = 11.3 %, P < 0.0001) but not in men (frequency = 7.7 %, P = 0.66). This novel sex by HLA interaction (P = 0.003, q = 0.090) did not extend to other frequent HLA class I alleles (n = 34), although HLA-C*18:01 also showed a weak association with low VL in women only (frequency = 9.3 %, P = 0.042, q > 0.50). In a reduced multivariable model, age, sex, geography (clinical sites), previously identified HLA factors (HLA-B*18, B*45, B*53, and B*57), and the interaction term for female sex and HLA-A*03:01 collectively explained 17.0 % of the overall variance in geometric mean VL over a 3-year follow-up period (P < 0.0001). Multiple sensitivity analyses of longitudinal and cross-sectional VL data yielded consistent results. These findings can serve as a proof of principle that the gap of "missing heritability" in quantitative genetics can be partially bridged by a systematic evaluation of sex-specific associations

Justify your alpha

In response to recommendations to redefine statistical significance to P ≤ 0.005, we propose that researchers should transparently report and justify all choices they make when designing a study, including the alpha level