Effects of social context and predictive relevance on action outcome monitoring

Outcome monitoring is crucial for subsequent adjustments in behavior and is associated with a specific electrophysiological response, the feedback-related negativity (FRN). Besides feedback generated by one's own action, the performance of others may also be relevant for oneself, and the observation of outcomes for others' actions elicits an observer FRN (oFRN). To test how these components are influenced by social setting and predictive value of feedback information, we compared event-related potentials, as well as their topographies and neural generators, for performance feedback generated by oneself and others in a cooperative versus competitive context. Our results show that (1) the predictive relevance of outcomes is crucial to elicit an FRN in both players and observers, (2) cooperation increases FRN and P300 amplitudes, especially in individuals with high traits of perspective taking, and (3) contrary to previous findings on gambling outcomes, oFRN components are generated for both cooperating and competing observers, but with smaller amplitudes in the latter. Neural source estimation revealed medial prefrontal activity for both FRN and oFRN, but with additional generators for the oFRN in the dorsolateral and ventral prefrontal cortex, as well as the temporoparietal junction. We conclude that the latter set of brain regions could mediate social influences on action monitoring by representing agency and social relevance of outcomes and are, therefore, recruited in addition to shared prediction error signals generated in medial frontal areas during action outcome observatio

Processing of emotional words measured simultaneously with steady-state visually evoked potentials and near-infrared diffusing-wave spectroscopy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Emotional stimuli are preferentially processed compared to neutral ones. Measuring the magnetic resonance blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response or EEG event-related potentials, this has also been demonstrated for emotional versus neutral words. However, it is currently unclear whether emotion effects in word processing can also be detected with other measures such as EEG steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) or optical brain imaging techniques. In the present study, we simultaneously performed SSVEP measurements and near-infrared diffusing-wave spectroscopy (DWS), a new optical technique for the non-invasive measurement of brain function, to measure brain responses to neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant nouns flickering at a frequency of 7.5 Hz.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The power of the SSVEP signal was significantly modulated by the words' emotional content at occipital electrodes, showing reduced SSVEP power during stimulation with pleasant compared to neutral nouns. By contrast, the DWS signal measured over the visual cortex showed significant differences between stimulation with flickering words and baseline periods, but no modulation in response to the words' emotional significance.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study is the first investigation of brain responses to emotional words using simultaneous measurements of SSVEPs and DWS. Emotional modulation of word processing was detected with EEG SSVEPs, but not by DWS. SSVEP power for emotional, specifically pleasant, compared to neutral words was reduced, which contrasts with previous results obtained when presenting emotional pictures. This appears to reflect processing differences between symbolic and pictorial emotional stimuli. While pictures prompt sustained perceptual processing, decoding the significance of emotional words requires more internal associative processing. Reasons for an absence of emotion effects in the DWS signal are discussed.</p

Different brain networks mediate the effects of social and conditioned expectations on pain.

Information about others' experiences can strongly influence our own feelings and decisions. But how does such social information affect the neural generation of affective experience, and are the brain mechanisms involved distinct from those that mediate other types of expectation effects? Here, we used fMRI to dissociate the brain mediators of social influence and associative learning effects on pain. Participants viewed symbolic depictions of other participants' pain ratings (social information) and classically conditioned pain-predictive cues before experiencing painful heat. Social information and conditioned stimuli each had significant effects on pain ratings, and both effects were mediated by self-reported expectations. Yet, these effects were mediated by largely separable brain activity patterns, involving different large-scale functional networks. These results show that learned versus socially instructed expectations modulate pain via partially different mechanisms-a distinction that should be accounted for by theories of predictive coding and related top-down influences

Group-regularized individual prediction: theory and application to pain

Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) has become an important tool for identifying brain representations of psychological processes and clinical outcomes using fMRI and related methods. Such methods can be used to predict or ‘decode’ psychological states in individual subjects. Single-subject MVPA approaches, however, are limited by the amount and quality of individual-subject data. In spite of higher spatial resolution, predictive accuracy from single-subject data often does not exceed what can be accomplished using coarser, group-level maps, because single-subject patterns are trained on limited amounts of often-noisy data. Here, we present a method that combines population-level priors, in the form of biomarker patterns developed on prior samples, with single-subject MVPA maps to improve single-subject prediction. Theoretical results and simulations motivate a weighting based on the relative variances of biomarker-based prediction—based on population-level predictive maps from prior groups—and individual-subject, cross-validated prediction. Empirical results predicting pain using brain activity on a trial-by-trial basis (single-trial prediction) across 6 studies (N = 180 participants) confirm the theoretical predictions. Regularization based on a population-level biomarker—in this case, the Neurologic Pain Signature (NPS)—improved single-subject prediction accuracy compared with idiographic maps based on the individuals' data alone. The regularization scheme that we propose, which we term group-regularized individual prediction (GRIP), can be applied broadly to within-person MVPA-based prediction. We also show how GRIP can be used to evaluate data quality and provide benchmarks for the appropriateness of population-level maps like the NPS for a given individual or study

Social influences on pain beyond the here and now, commentary on Bajcar et al.

International audienc

Social cues influence perception of others' pain

International audienceBackground Accurately perceiving other people's pain is important in both daily life and healthcare settings. However, judging other's pain is inherently difficult and can be biased by various social and cultural factors. Here, we examined whether perception of others' pain and pain management recommendations are socially influenced by seeing the opinions of other raters. Methods In Experiment 1 ( N = 50), participants rated pictures depicting injured hands or feet of pre‐selected high, medium and low intensities. Each picture was preceded by cues indicating ratings of 10 previous participants. Cues were randomized to indicate low (Social LOW ) or high (Social HIGH ) pain judgements and were not predictive of actual normative pain intensity. In Experiment 2 ( N = 209), participants viewed facial video clips of patients with chronic shoulder pain making painful movements. They estimated patients' pain intensity and provided pain management recommendations. Results Experiment 1 revealed that perceivers' pain estimates were significantly and substantially higher for stimuli following Social HIGH than Social LOW cues (Cohen's d = 1.26, p < 0.001) and paralleled by increased skin conductance responses. Experiment 2 replicated the effect of social cues on pain judgements ( d = 0.58, p < 0.001). However, social cues did not influence post‐study pain management recommendations, potentially due to memory limitations. Conclusions Together, these studies reveal that judgements of others' pain are robustly modulated by information about others' opinions. Future research could test the prevalence and strength of such effects in clinical settings. Significance The present study shows that even arbitrary opinions of other raters influence the perception of others' pain. This finding adds new insight into the growing evidence of social and cultural biases in pain estimation

Generalization of learned pain modulation depends on explicit learning

International audienceThe experience of pain is strongly influenced by contextual and socio-affective factors, including learning from previous experiences. Pain is typically perceived as more intense when preceded by a conditioned cue (CSHIGH) that has previously been associated with higher pain intensities, compared to cues associated with lower intensities (CSLOW). In three studies (total N=134), we tested whether this learned pain modulation generalizes to perceptually similar cues (Studies 1 and 2) and conceptually similar cues (Study 3). The results showed that participants report higher pain when heat stimulation was preceded by novel stimuli that were either perceptually (Studies 1 and 2) or conceptually (Study 3) similar to the previously conditioned CSHIGH. In all three studies, the strength of this generalization effect was strongly correlated with individual differences in explicitly learned expectations. Together, these findings suggest an important role of conscious expectations and higher-order conceptual inference during generalization of learned pain modulation. We discuss implications for the understanding of placebo and nocebo effects as well as for chronic pain and anxiety