Interoception is associated with the impact of eye contact on spontaneous facial mimicry

自分の身体の中の感覚に気づきやすい人ほど、表情模倣が起こりやすく、他人の視線にも敏感であることを解明. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2020-12-03.Interoception (perception of one’s own physiological state) has been suggested to underpin social cognition, although the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear. The current study aimed to elucidate the relationship between interoception and two factors underlying social cognition: self-other boundary and sensitivity to social cues. We measured performance in a heartbeat perception task as an index of interoceptive accuracy (IAc), the frequency of spontaneous facial mimicry (SFM) as an index of self-other boundary, and the degree of the effect of eye contact on SFM (difference in SFM between conditions in which models’ eyes were directed to and averted from participants) as an index of social-cue sensitivity, and tested correlations among these measures. The results revealed that IAc and SFM were positively correlated only in the direct gaze condition. The extent of the effect of eye contact on SFM (difference in frequency between direct vs. averted conditions) was positively correlated with IAc. These overall findings were also observed in separate analyses of male and female participant groups, supporting the robustness of the findings. The results suggest that interoception is related to sensitivity to social cues, and may also be related to the self-other boundary with modulation by social context

Neural dynamics in human imitation revealed by ERP surface topography

To clarify the neural dynamics in human motor imitation, we examined event-related potentials (ERP) for a reaction time task that required responses to an actor's ¢nger motions with identical motions. Compared with a control task (reaction to an LED illumination), the ERP surface topography in the imitative reaction was di¡erentiated at around 120^200 ms post-cueing, showing an early sensitivity to the response hand over the pre-central region.This result suggested that activities around the motor areas were facilitated in the imitative reaction, which is consistent with recent neuroimaging studies. However, taken together with that there were no di¡erences in reaction times, the early ERP latency of conditional divergence indicated that neural activities related to imitation are visual responses and do not directly lead to motor acceleration. NeuroRepor

Association between interoception and empathy : Evidence from heartbeat-evoked brain potential (Post-Print Version)

Physiological bodily states play an important role in affective experiences. This study investigated whether the neural processing of internal body state (interoception) is associated with empathy, the understanding of the affective states of others. We used the ‘heartbeat-evoked potential’ (HEP), a surface electroencephalography (EEG) pattern, as a neural index of interoceptive processing. The HEP is contingent on the most prominent peak (R-wave) of the electrocardiogram (ECG) and is thought to reflect cortical processing of cardiac afferent input. Twenty-one healthy adults performed empathy and control tasks while EEG and ECG were recorded, where they made judgments based on either the affective or physical aspects of images of human eyes. HEP, ECG and heart rate in each task block were calculated and compared. Results showed that cardiac activity was not significantly different between tasks. In contrast, HEP showed a significant task-difference, exhibited as an increased negativity during the empathy task over frontocentral sites at a latency of approximately 250 – 430 ms. Furthermore, a self-reported measure of empathy was associated with mean HEP amplitude during the period of task-related differentiation. These results suggest that afferent feedback from visceral activity may contribute to inferences about the affective state of others

Temporal matching between interoception and exteroception: electrophysiological responses in a heartbeat discrimination task

Recent studies on interoception emphasize the importance of multisensory integration between interoception and exteroception. One of the methods frequently applied for assessing interoceptive sensitivity is the heartbeat discrimination task, where individuals judge whether the timing of external stimuli (e.g., tones) are synchronized to their own heartbeat. Despite its extensive use in research, the neural dynamics underlying the temporal matching between interoceptive and exteroceptive stimuli in this task have remained unclear. The present study used electroencephalography (EEG) to examine the neural responses of healthy participants who performed a heartbeat discrimination task. We analyzed the differences between EEG responses to tones, which were likely to be perceived as “heartbeat-synchronous” (200 ms delayed from the R wave) or “heartbeat-asynchronous” (0 ms delayed). Possible associations of these neural differentiations with task performance were also investigated. Compared with the responses to heartbeat-asynchronous tones, heartbeat-synchronous tones caused a relative decrease in early gamma-band EEG response and an increase in later P2 event-related potential (ERP) amplitude. Condition differences in the EEG/ERP measures were not significantly correlated with the behavioral measures. The mechanisms underlying the observed neural responses and the possibility of electrophysiological measurement of interoceptive sensitivity are discussed in terms of two perspectives: the predictive coding framework and the cardiac-phase-dependent baroreceptor function.This version of the article may not completely replicate the final authoritative version published in Journal of Psychophysiology at https://doi.org/10.1027/0269-8803/a000224. It is not the version of record and is therefore not suitable for citation. Please do not copy or cite without the permission of the author(s)

Auditory ERPs to Stimulus Deviance in an Awake Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes): Towards Hominid Cognitive Neurosciences

BACKGROUND: For decades, the chimpanzee, phylogenetically closest to humans, has been analyzed intensively in comparative cognitive studies. Other than the accumulation of behavioral data, the neural basis for cognitive processing in the chimpanzee remains to be clarified. To increase our knowledge on the evolutionary and neural basis of human cognition, comparative neurophysiological studies exploring endogenous neural activities in the awake state are needed. However, to date, such studies have rarely been reported in non-human hominid species, due to the practical difficulties in conducting non-invasive measurements on awake individuals. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We measured auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) of a fully awake chimpanzee, with reference to a well-documented component of human studies, namely mismatch negativity (MMN). In response to infrequent, deviant tones that were delivered in a uniform sound stream, a comparable ERP component could be detected as negative deflections in early latencies. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The present study reports the MMN-like component in a chimpanzee for the first time. In human studies, various ERP components, including MMN, are well-documented indicators of cognitive and neural processing. The results of the present study validate the use of non-invasive ERP measurements for studies on cognitive and neural processing in chimpanzees, and open the way for future studies comparing endogenous neural activities between humans and chimpanzees. This signifies an essential step in hominid cognitive neurosciences

Is Empathy Possible?; An Overview of Empathy Symposium 2012, Kansai University

This article reported an overview of a series of lectures and a symposium done as part of “special research project” program at the Graduate School of Psychology, Kansai University in December, 2012. First, the background of this symposium was described. Second, three lectures in this program were summarized. Third, a brief summary of three speeches on “facial expression and empathy”, “cognitive and neural mechanism of empathy”, and “empathetic understanding” was provided and a comment on each speech was offered. Finally, a connotation of empathy was discussed

Neural Correlates of Face and Object Perception in an Awake Chimpanzee (Pan Troglodytes) Examined by Scalp-Surface Event-Related Potentials

BACKGROUND: The neural system of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, is a topic of increasing research interest. However, electrophysiological examinations of neural activity during visual processing in awake chimpanzees are currently lacking. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In the present report, skin-surface event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were measured while a fully awake chimpanzee observed photographs of faces and objects in two experiments. In Experiment 1, human faces and stimuli composed of scrambled face images were displayed. In Experiment 2, three types of pictures (faces, flowers, and cars) were presented. The waveforms evoked by face stimuli were distinguished from other stimulus types, as reflected by an enhanced early positivity appearing before 200 ms post stimulus, and an enhanced late negativity after 200 ms, around posterior and occipito-temporal sites. Face-sensitive activity was clearly observed in both experiments. However, in contrast to the robustly observed face-evoked N170 component in humans, we found that faces did not elicit a peak in the latency range of 150-200 ms in either experiment. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Although this pilot study examined a single subject and requires further examination, the observed scalp voltage patterns suggest that selective processing of faces in the chimpanzee brain can be detected by recording surface ERPs. In addition, this non-invasive method for examining an awake chimpanzee can be used to extend our knowledge of the characteristics of visual cognition in other primate species

Perceiving an opponent's loss: gender-related differences in the medial-frontal negativity

Along with expanding the understanding of the human ‘social brain’, a new challenge for neuroscience is to elucidate the nature of individual differences in social competence. Here we report a neural index of gender difference in empathy-related processing in a complex social situation. Using electroencephalography, we measured the neural activity of perceptions to one's own and another's monetary gain or loss, while individuals played a ‘competitive’ two-person gambling game, in which one's monetary gain resulted in the other's loss. The medial-frontal negativity (MFN), a component within 300 ms latency reflecting an emotional categorization of the event, showed a significant gender difference in perceiving an opponent's, but not a self-performed outcome. When females perceive the opponent's outcomes, the MFN was elicited, indicating that another's loss was categorized as negative, even though it resulted in a benefit to them. On the contrary, the males did not elicit discernable MFN to the opponent's outcomes. Together with the fact that the affect score has a negative linear correlation with the MFN, this indicated that the MFN was sensitive to socio-emotional processing. These results suggest that individual differences in complex social behavior result from rapid neural activity in response to external stimuli

Mothers' multimodal information processing is modulated by multimodal interactions with their infants.

「子どもが育つ、親も育つ」-養育経験が脳の働きに与える影響-. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2014-10-20.Social learning in infancy is known to be facilitated by multimodal (e.g., visual, tactile, and verbal) cues provided by caregivers. In parallel with infants' development, recent research has revealed that maternal neural activity is altered through interaction with infants, for instance, to be sensitive to infant-directed speech (IDS). The present study investigated the effect of mother- infant multimodal interaction on maternal neural activity. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of mothers were compared to non-mothers during perception of tactile-related words primed by tactile cues. Only mothers showed ERP modulation when tactile cues were incongruent with the subsequent words, and only when the words were delivered with IDS prosody. Furthermore, the frequency of mothers' use of those words was correlated with the magnitude of ERP differentiation between congruent and incongruent stimuli presentations. These results suggest that mother-infant daily interactions enhance multimodal integration of the maternal brain in parenting contexts