Social Behavior: A Penny for Your Shocks

SummaryAntisocial behavior is an enormously costly social problem, but its origins are poorly understood. A new study shows that prosocial and antisocial behaviors arise from individual differences in how we represent the value of others’ pain relative to our own potential gain, rather than from variability in the capacity for effortful inhibitory control

Brain Imaging for Legal Thinkers: A Guide for the Perplexed

It has become increasingly common for brain images to be proffered as evidence in criminal and civil litigation. This Article - the collaborative product of scholars in law and neuroscience - provides three things. First, it provides the first introduction, specifically for legal thinkers, to brain imaging. It describes in accessible ways the new techniques and methods that the legal system increasingly encounters. Second, it provides a tutorial on how to read and understand a brain-imaging study. It does this by providing an annotated walk-through of the recently-published work (by three of the authors - Buckholtz, Jones, and Marois) that discovered the brain activity underlying a person\u27s decisions: a) whether to punish someone; and b) how much to punish. The annotation uses the \u27Comment\u27 feature of the Word software to supply contextual and step-by-step commentary on what unfamiliar terms mean, how and why brain imaging experiments are designed as they are, and how to interpret the results. Third, the Article offers some general guidelines about how to avoid misunderstanding brain images in legal contexts and how to identify when others are misusing brain images. The Article is a product of the \u27Law and Neuroscience Project\u27, supported by the MacArthur Foundation

Brain Imaging for Judges: An Introduction to Law and Neuroscience

It has become increasingly common for brain images to be proffered as evidence in civil and criminal litigation.1 This article offers some general guidelines to judges about how to understand brain-imaging studies—or at least avoid misunderstanding them. (An appendix annotating a published brain imaging study, in order to illustrate and explain, with step-by step commentary, is available in the full text online.2) Brain images are offered in legal proceedings for a variety of purposes, as Professors Carter Snead and Gary Marchant have usefully surveyed.3 On the civil side, neuro imaging has been offered in constitutional, personal injury, disability benefit, and contract cases, among others. For example, in Entertainment Software Ass’n v. Blagojevich,4 the court considered whether a brain-imaging study could be used to show that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thinking and behavior in adolescents. In Fini v. General Motors Corp.,5 brain scans were proffered to help determine the extent of head injuries from a car accident. In Boyd v. Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Players Retirement Plan,6 a former professional football player proffered brain scans in an effort to prove entitlement to neuro-degenerative disability benefits. And in Van Middlesworth v. Century Bank & Trust Co.,7 involving a dispute over the sale of land, the defendant introduced brain images to prove mental incompetency, resulting in a voidable contract

Worth the ‘EEfRT’? The Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task as an Objective Measure of Motivation and Anhedonia

Background: Of the putative psychopathological endophenotypes in major depressive disorder (MDD), the anhedonic subtype is particularly well supported. Anhedonia is generally assumed to reflect aberrant motivation and reward responsivity. However, research has been limited by a lack of objective measures of reward motivation. We present the Effort-Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT or ‘‘effort’’), a novel behavioral paradigm as a means of exploring effort-based decision-making in humans. Using the EEfRT, we test the hypothesis that effort-based decision-making is related to trait anhedonia. Methods/Results: 61 undergraduate students participated in the experiment. Subjects completed self-report measures of mood and trait anhedonia, and completed the EEfRT. Across multiple analyses, we found a significant inverse relationship between anhedonia and willingness to expend effort for rewards. Conclusions: These findings suggest that anhedonia is specifically associated with decreased motivation for rewards, and provide initial validation for the EEfRT as a laboratory-based behavioral measure of reward motivation and effort-base

The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson's disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Perceived stress predicts altered reward and loss feedback processing in medial prefrontal cortex

Stress is significant risk factor for the development of psychopathology, particularly symptoms related to reward processing. Importantly, individuals display marked variation in how they perceive and cope with stressful events, and such differences are strongly linked to risk for developing psychiatric symptoms following stress exposure. However, many questions remain regarding the neural architecture that underlies inter-subject variability in perceptions of stressors. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a monetary incentive delay paradigm, we examined the effects of self-reported perceived stress levels on neural activity during reward anticipation and feedback in a sample of healthy individuals. We found that subjects reporting more uncontrollable and overwhelming stressors displayed blunted neural responses in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) following feedback related to monetary gains as well monetary losses. This is consistent with preclinical models that implicate the mPFC as a key site of vulnerability to the noxious effects of uncontrollable stressors. Our data help translate these findings to humans, and elucidate some of the neural mechanisms that may underlie stress-linked risk for developing reward-related psychiatric symptoms

Brain Imaging for Judges: An Introduction to Law and Neuroscience

It has become increasingly common for brain images to be proffered as evidence in civil and criminal litigation.1 This article offers some general guidelines to judges about how to understand brain-imaging studies—or at least avoid misunderstanding them. (An appendix annotating a published brain imaging study, in order to illustrate and explain, with step-by step commentary, is available in the full text online.2) Brain images are offered in legal proceedings for a variety of purposes, as Professors Carter Snead and Gary Marchant have usefully surveyed.3 On the civil side, neuro imaging has been offered in constitutional, personal injury, disability benefit, and contract cases, among others. For example, in Entertainment Software Ass’n v. Blagojevich,4 the court considered whether a brain-imaging study could be used to show that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thinking and behavior in adolescents. In Fini v. General Motors Corp.,5 brain scans were proffered to help determine the extent of head injuries from a car accident. In Boyd v. Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Players Retirement Plan,6 a former professional football player proffered brain scans in an effort to prove entitlement to neuro-degenerative disability benefits. And in Van Middlesworth v. Century Bank & Trust Co.,7 involving a dispute over the sale of land, the defendant introduced brain images to prove mental incompetency, resulting in a voidable contract