Developmental differences in affective representation between prefrontal and subcortical structures

Developmental studies have identified differences in prefrontal and subcortical affective structures between children and adults, which correspond with observed cognitive and behavioral maturations from relatively simplistic emotional experiences and expressions to more nuanced, complex ones. However, developmental changes in the neural representation of emotions have not yet been well explored. It stands to reason that adults and children may demonstrate observable differences in the representation of affect within key neurological structures implicated in affective cognition. Forty-five participants (25 children; 20 adults) passively viewed positive, negative, and neutral clips from popular films while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Using representational similarity analysis (RSA) to measure variability in neural pattern similarity, we found developmental differences between children and adults in the amygdala, nucleus accumbens (NAcc), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), such that children generated less pattern similarity within subcortical structures relative to the vmPFC; a phenomenon not replicated among their older counterparts. Furthermore, children generated valence-specific differences in representational patterns across regions; these valence-specific patterns were not found in adults. These results may suggest that affective representations grow increasingly dissimilar over development as individuals mature from visceral affective responses to more evaluative analyses

The transition from childhood to adolescence is marked by a general decrease in amygdala reactivity and an affect-specific ventral-to-dorsal shift in medial prefrontal recruitment

AbstractUnderstanding how and why affective responses change with age is central to characterizing typical and atypical emotional development. Prior work has emphasized the role of the amygdala and prefrontal cortex (PFC), which show age-related changes in function and connectivity. However, developmental neuroimaging research has only recently begun to unpack whether age effects in the amygdala and PFC are specific to affective stimuli or may be found for neutral stimuli as well, a possibility that would support a general, rather than affect-specific, account of amygdala-PFC development. To examine this, 112 individuals ranging from 6 to 23 years of age viewed aversive and neutral images while undergoing fMRI scanning. Across age, participants reported more negative affect and showed greater amygdala responses for aversive than neutral stimuli. However, children were generally more sensitive to both neutral and aversive stimuli, as indexed by affective reports and amygdala responses. At the same time, the transition from childhood to adolescence was marked by a ventral-to-dorsal shift in medial prefrontal responses to aversive, but not neutral, stimuli. Given the role that dmPFC plays in executive control and higher-level representations of emotion, these results suggest that adolescence is characterized by a shift towards representing emotional events in increasingly cognitive terms

The 13th Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-IV Survey Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) began observations in July 2014. It pursues three core programs: APOGEE-2,MaNGA, and eBOSS. In addition, eBOSS contains two major subprograms: TDSS and SPIDERS. This paper describes the first data release from SDSS-IV, Data Release 13 (DR13), which contains new data, reanalysis of existing data sets and, like all SDSS data releases, is inclusive of previously released data. DR13 makes publicly available 1390 spatially resolved integral field unit observations of nearby galaxies from MaNGA,the first data released from this survey. It includes new observations from eBOSS, completing SEQUELS. In addition to targeting galaxies and quasars, SEQUELS also targeted variability-selected objects from TDSS and X-ray selected objects from SPIDERS. DR13 includes new reductions ofthe SDSS-III BOSS data, improving the spectrophotometric calibration and redshift classification. DR13 releases new reductions of the APOGEE-1data from SDSS-III, with abundances of elements not previously included and improved stellar parameters for dwarf stars and cooler stars. For the SDSS imaging data, DR13 provides new, more robust and precise photometric calibrations. Several value-added catalogs are being released in tandem with DR13, in particular target catalogs relevant for eBOSS, TDSS, and SPIDERS, and an updated red-clump catalog for APOGEE.This paper describes the location and format of the data now publicly available, as well as providing references to the important technical papers that describe the targeting, observing, and data reduction. The SDSS website, http://www.sdss.org, provides links to the data, tutorials and examples of data access, and extensive documentation of the reduction and analysis procedures. DR13 is the first of a scheduled set that will contain new data and analyses from the planned ~6-year operations of SDSS-IV.PostprintPeer reviewe

The 16th Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys : First Release from the APOGEE-2 Southern Survey and Full Release of eBOSS Spectra

This paper documents the 16th data release (DR16) from the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS), the fourth and penultimate from the fourth phase (SDSS-IV). This is the first release of data from the Southern Hemisphere survey of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2); new data from APOGEE-2 North are also included. DR16 is also notable as the final data release for the main cosmological program of the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS), and all raw and reduced spectra from that project are released here. DR16 also includes all the data from the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey and new data from the SPectroscopic IDentification of ERosita Survey programs, both of which were co-observed on eBOSS plates. DR16 has no new data from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey (or the MaNGA Stellar Library "MaStar"). We also preview future SDSS-V operations (due to start in 2020), and summarize plans for the final SDSS-IV data release (DR17).Peer reviewe

To Harm And Be Harmed: Agency And The Perception Of Moral Events

When individuals tell stories from their own lives, they do so by constructing and interpreting these stories in a way that places them within the overarching structure of their moral values. Though preserving one's moral identity as a "good person" is an important goal, individuals often act in ways that are self-serving or cause harm to others. One way that individuals maintain a positive moral identity following immoral behaviors may be to dampen down their ascriptions of their own intentionality for said behaviors-thus aligning one's memories for the event with one's moral code. Across eight studies, I find that this alignment process leads to predictable biases in both event perception and autobiographical memory. In studies 1 and 2, I show that immoral events are construed at a higher level than non-moral events, and that immoral behaviors that individuals have performed themselves are construed at a lower level than immoral behaviors that they have not. The final five studies examine the perception of moral events through the structure of the moral dyad, which posits that moral situations are comprised of "agents" (those with the capacity to harm others) and "patients" (those who are harmed as a result the agent's actions). Study 3 provides evidence that individuals are better able to recall moral patient events than moral agent events. Studies 4 through 6 examine the processes underlying this effect, and find that both event negativity and perceived intentionality impact memory recall for moral events. Studies 7 and 8 test a proposed mechanism for this effect: that agency increases feelings of psychological completeness for moral event

Integrated Neural Circuitry Supporting Emotion Regulation and Decision Making

Recent research in psychology and neuroscience has begun to closely examine the relationship between emotion regulation and decision making. Emotion regulation strategies allow people to change their thoughts and feelings during emotional situations and events. Successful regulation can be particularly important for a variety of decisions made in day-to-day life. This is especially true for decisions involving risk and reward, where highly rewarding and desirable outcomes are often paired with uncertainty in the likelihood of those outcomes. In this chapter, we aim to operationalize both emotion regulation and decision making in the context of recent findings across psychology and neuroscience. We use an everyday, real-world example involving risk and reward to highlight the relationship between these processes behaviorally and neurocognitively. After presenting a framework, we layer in relevant findings in cognitive neuroscience to explore how the human brain supports these processes, both individually and in an integrated capacity. Finally, we highlight future research implications and open questions in the space

The role of self-regulation in giving social support

Social support can benefit recipients when it is provided effectively, but giving effective support can be demanding. Prior research outlines givers’ traits (e.g., compassion) and choices of methods that can make support more beneficial, but it remains unclear how givers regulate their own internal processes to provide optimal support. Through the novel Self-Regulation in Social Support model, we leverage past research on self-regulation (based primarily in North America/Europe) to examine how self-regulatory processes influence effective social support provision. Potential support givers must first evaluate their aims and prioritize relational goals with recipients. Next, support givers must utilize self-regulatory processes (e.g., effort, cognitive control) to enact support by representing recipient’s goals and delivering and maintaining support. More effective self-regulation thus may enhance support exchanges. We also identify factors that may facilitate support givers’ regulatory processes (e.g., recipient closeness). This framework generates testable future research questions exploring how people give effective support

The Self, Emotion, & Regulation Model of Giving and Receiving Constructive Feedback

We must often give and receive constructive feedback in various contexts. Constructive feedback offers unique benefits including improvements in performance, goal-pursuit, self-awareness, and self-efficacy. However, it is challenging to give and receive. This may be due to threats to self-concept that giving and receiving constructive feedback pose. Yet, the role of self-concept threat in constructive feedback remains understudied. We propose that giving and receiving constructive feedback trigger self-concept threat and can result in negative affect for givers and recipients. This framing allows us to approach feedback in a novel way -- as an emotion-regulation problem. Recipients must down-regulate negative affect when hearing negative self-relevant information. Givers must down-regulate negative affect when risking interpersonal rifts or rejection. Here, we review relevant emotion regulation literature as it applies to the feedback process and identify points for future research. Conceptualizing constructive feedback as an emotional-regulation challenge may inform the design of future interventions

Socially Motivated Self Control

Exercising self control can be remarkably difficult. How much of this difficulty is because individuals are overemphasizing the role that the "self" needs to play in executing it? Across three studies (n = 248 and 10,233 observations), we examined whether construing a self control domain in terms of its social implications improved decision-making. We found that thinking about a specific relationship relevant to the self control domain improved decision-making relative to other relationships, that merely thinking about the social ramifications of one's actions in the self control domain improved decision-making, and that these effects were moderated by the extent to which individuals reported higher levels of relational obligation to those around them. Taken together, these studies suggest that when it comes to self control, turning one's focus away from the self may sometimes lead to more effective outcomes

Self-concept forecasting: How do we predict the incorporation of affective life events into self-concept?

The present research examines how individuals predict the influence that future life events will have on their self-concept, or what we term self-concept forecasting, across 5 studies (N = 935). Individuals are motivated to maintain self-concept clarity and continuity, but these motivations may lead to systematic underestimation of self-concept change. In Study 1, we found that individuals predicted that life events would be more central to their self-concept than an average other. In Study 2, participants predicted that the average person would be more vulnerable to self-concept change than the self. We also found that having previously experienced the life event reduced self-other differences. In Study 3, we found the reverse for individuated others, such that experience with the life event increased differences in prediction. In Studies 4 and 5, we examine why experience appears to provide information that predicts similarity relative to an average other and difference relative to an individuated other. We found that manipulating the salience of changeability reduced self-other asymmetries in self-concept forecasting, but considering the passage of time did not. Taken together, this suggests that there are motivated biases underlying self-concept forecasts that are applied differently for the self, average others, and individuated others, and that these biases may be reduced through recall of past experiences or previous disruptions to self-concept