A Quantitative Meta-Analysis of Functional Imaging Studies of Social Rejection

Early neuroimaging studies using Cyberball suggested that social rejection activated the pain matrix, as identified in studies of physical pain. However, these early studies were characterized by small sample sizes. Our statistical multi-level kernel density analysis (MKDA) of Cyberball neuroimaging studies with 244 participants fails to support the claim that social rejection operates on the same pain matrix as nociceptive stimuli, questioning whether social pain is more figurative or literal. We also performed an MKDA of the neuroimaging studies of reliving a romantic rejection to test whether the pain matrix was activated if the rejection were more meaningful. Results again failed to support the notion that rejection activates the neural matrix identified in studies of physical pain. Reliving an unwanted rejection by a romantic partner was significantly characterized by activation within and beyond the “Cyberball” brain network, suggesting that the neural correlates of social pain are more complex than previously thought

Maternal face processing in Mosuo preschool children

Instinctively responding to maternal face is an evolutionary function of enhancing survival and development. However, because of the confounding nature of familiarity, little is known concerning the neural mechanism involved in maternal face recognition. We had a rare opportunity to examine Mosuo preschool children who were raised in a matrilineal society in which mothers and aunts represent equally familiar faces to the children. The participants were exposed to photographs of their mother's face, aunt's face, and an unfamiliar female's faces during electroencephalography (EEG) recording. The EEG results showed that the mother's face elicited a more negative N1 component, a larger left N170 component, and a larger P300 component; both the mother's and aunt's faces elicited a larger right N170 component. These results suggest that the emotional attachment between mother and child has neural ramifications across three successive face processing stages that are distinguished from the neural effects of facial familiarity. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Trait and State Levels of Loneliness in Early and Late Adolescents:Examining the Differential Reactivity Hypothesis

According to the differential reactivity hypothesis, lonely individuals respond differently to their environment compared to nonlonely individuals, which may sustain their loneliness levels. However, this interesting hypothesis has not yet been explored in daily life: Do lonely individuals feel lonely all the time, or do they feel more or less lonely in specific social contexts? The main aim of the present study was to test the differential reactivity hypothesis in daily life by examining in three samples whether trait levels of loneliness affected the levels of state loneliness in different social contexts. We used baseline questionnaires to measure trait loneliness and the Experience Sampling Method to collect data on state loneliness, in early adolescents (N = 269, Mage = 14.49, 59% female) and late adolescents (N = 223, Mage = 19.60, 91% female) from the Netherlands and late adolescents from the United States (N = 126, Mage = 19.20, 51% female). Results provided evidence for the differential reactivity hypothesis in the total sample, as high lonely adolescents experienced higher levels of state loneliness in situations in which they were alone than low lonely adolescents, but also benefited more from being with intimate company than low lonely adolescents. In sum, the present study provided evidence for the differential reactivity hypothesis and showed that the experience of loneliness in daily life was remarkably similar across age and culture. Our findings provide important insights into the daily experiences of trait lonely people, which may provide starting points for interventions

Understanding the unfolding of stress regulation in infants

Early identification of problems with psychosocial stress regulation is important for supporting mental and physical health. However, we currently lack knowledge about when reliable individual differences in stress-responsive physiology emerge and which aspects of maternal behavior determine the unfolding of infants' stress responses. Knowledge of these processes is further limited by analytic approaches that do not account for multiple levels of within- and between-family effects. In a low-risk sample (n = 100 dyads), we observed infant cortisol and mother/infant behavior during regular play and stress sessions longitudinally from age 1 to 3, and used a three-level model to separately examine variability in infant cortisol trajectories within sessions, across years, and across infants. Stable individual differences in hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis regulation were observed in the first 3 years of life. Infants of less sensitive and more intrusive mothers manifested stress sensitization, that is, elevated cortisol levels during and following stress exposure, a profile related to behavioral distress. These findings have important practical implications, suggesting that children at risk for long-term stress dysregulation may be identified in the earliest years of life

A feasibility study for NOn-Traditional providers to support the management of Elderly People with Anxiety and Depression: the NOTEPAD study Protocol

BACKGROUND: Anxiety and depression are common among older people, with up to 20% reporting such symptoms, and the prevalence increases with co-morbid chronic physical health problems. Access to treatment for anxiety and depression in this population is poor due to a combination of factors at the level of patient, practitioner and healthcare system. There is evidence to suggest that older people with anxiety and/or depression may benefit both from one-to-one interventions and group social or educational activities, which reduce loneliness, are participatory and offer some activity. Non-traditional providers (support workers) working within third-sector (voluntary) organisations are a valuable source of expertise within the community but are under-utilised by primary care practitioners. Such a resource could increase access to care, and be less stigmatising and more acceptable for older people. METHODS: The study is in three phases and this paper describes the protocol for phase III, which will evaluate the feasibility of recruiting general practices and patients into the study, and determine whether support workers can deliver the intervention to older people with sufficient fidelity and whether this approach is acceptable to patients, general practitioners and the third-sector providers. Phase III of the NOTEPAD study is a randomised controlled trial (RCT) that is individually randomised. It recruited participants from approximately six general practices in the UK. In total, 100 participants aged 65 years and over who score 10 or more on PHQ9 or GAD7 for anxiety or depression will be recruited and randomised to the intervention or usual general practice care. A mixed methods approach will be used and follow-up will be conducted 12 weeks post-randomisation. DISCUSSION: This study will inform the design and methods of a future full-scale RCT. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN, ID: ISRCTN16318986 . Registered 10 November 2016. The ISRCTN registration is in line with the World Health Organization Trial Registration Data Set. The present paper represents the original version of the protocol. Any changes to the protocol will be communicated to ISRCTN

It’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it! Effective message styles for promoting innovative new services

While innovations are critical to firms' long-term survival, they have a high failure rate. Identifying the factors that encourage consumer adoption of innovations is therefore essential for the successful management of new products and services. While prior research suggests that two message styles (i.e., metaphors and narratives) can help convey the benefits of new services, extant scholarly work has not examined which style increases adoption intentions to a greater extent. Study 1 demonstrates that metaphors enhance adoption intentions more than narratives for incrementally new services (INSs) but not for really new services (RNSs). Study 2 shows that low-figurativeness metaphors enhance adoption intentions more than high-figurativeness metaphors for INSs but not for RNSs and that consumers' negative cognitive responses underlie this effect. These findings have important implications for theory and practice

Predicting Intentions of a Familiar Significant Other Beyond the Mirror Neuron System

Inferring intentions of others is one of the most intriguing issues in interpersonal interaction. Theories of embodied cognition and simulation suggest that this mechanism takes place through a direct and automatic matching process that occurs between an observed action and past actions. This process occurs via the reactivation of past self-related sensorimotor experiences within the inferior frontoparietal network (including the mirror neuron system, MNS). The working model is that the anticipatory representations of others' behaviors require internal predictive models of actions formed from pre-established, shared representations between the observer and the actor. This model suggests that observers should be better at predicting intentions performed by a familiar actor, rather than a stranger. However, little is known about the modulations of the intention brain network as a function of the familiarity between the observer and the actor. Here, we combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a behavioral intention inference task, in which participants were asked to predict intentions from three types of actors: A familiar actor (their significant other), themselves (another familiar actor), and a non-familiar actor (a stranger). Our results showed that the participants were better at inferring intentions performed by familiar actors than non-familiar actors and that this better performance was associated with greater activation within and beyond the inferior frontoparietal network i.e., in brain areas related to familiarity (e.g., precuneus). In addition, and in line with Hebbian principles of neural modulations, the more the participants reported being cognitively close to their partner, the less the brain areas associated with action self-other comparison (e.g., inferior parietal lobule), attention (e.g., superior parietal lobule), recollection (hippocampus), and pair bond (ventral tegmental area, VTA) were recruited, suggesting that the more a shared mental representation has been pre-established, the more neurons show suppression in their response to the presentation of information to which they are sensitive. These results suggest that the relation of performance to the extent of neural activation during intention understanding may display differential relationships based on the cognitive domain, brain region, and the cognitive interdependence between the observer and the actor

Love is in the Gaze: An Eye-Tracking Study of Love and Sexual Desire.

Reading other people's eyes is a valuable skill during interpersonal interaction. Although a number of studies have investigated visual patterns in response to a broad variety of emotions, little is known about eye gaze when it comes to differentiating love vs. lust. To address this question, we conducted two experiments: 1) one testing whether the visual pattern related to the perception of love would differ from that of lust; and 2) one study testing whether the visual pattern related to the expression of love would differ from that of lust. Our results show that a person's eye gaze shifts as a function of the observers' goal when looking at a visual stimulus. Such identification of a distinct visual pattern for love vs. lust (sexual desire) could have theoretical and clinical importance in couple therapy when these two phenomena are difficult to disentangle from one another based on patients' self-reports

Love Is in the Gaze

Reading other people’s eyes is a valuable skill during interpersonal interaction. Although a number of studies have investigated visual patterns in response to a broad variety of emotions, little is known about eye gaze when it comes to differentiating love vs. lust. To address this question, we conducted two experiments: 1) one testing whether the visual pattern related to the perception of love would differ from that of lust; and 2) one study testing whether the visual pattern related to the expression of love would differ from that of lust. Our results show that a person’s eye gaze shifts as a function of the observers’ goal when looking at a visual stimulus. Such identification of a distinct visual pattern for love vs. lust (sexual desire) could have theoretical and clinical importance in couple therapy when these two phenomena are difficult to disentangle from one another based on patients’ self-reports