A Short Functional Neuroimaging Assay Using Attachment Scenes to Recruit Neural Correlates of Social Cognition—A Replication Study

Attachment theory provides a conceptual framework to understand the impact of early child–caregiver experiences, such as loss or separation, on adult functioning and psychopathology. In the current study, scenes from the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP), a validated, commonly used standardized diagnostic instrument to assess adult attachment representations, were used to develop a short fMRI assay eliciting the neural correlates of encoding of potentially hurtful and threatening social situations such as social losses, rejections or loneliness. Data from healthy participants (N = 19) showed activations in brain areas associated with social cognition and semantic knowledge during exposure to attachment-related scenes compared to control scenes. Extensive activation of the temporal poles was observed, suggesting the use of semantic knowledge for generating social concepts and scripts. This knowledge may underlie our ability to explain and predict social interactions, a specific aspect of theory of mind or mentalization. In this replication study, we verified the effectiveness of a modified fMRI assay to assess the external validity of a previously used imaging paradigm to investigate the processing of emotionally negatively valenced and painful social interactions. Our data confirm the recruitment of brain areas associated with social cognition with our very short neuroimaging assay

A Computerized Version of the Scrambled Sentences Test

The scrambled sentences test (SST), an experimental procedure that involves participants writing down their cognitions, has been used to elicit individual differences in depressiveness and vulnerability to depression. We describe here a modification of the SST to adapt it to computerized administration, with a particular view of its use in large samples and functional neuroimaging applications. In a first study with the computerized version, we reproduce the preponderance of positive cognitions in the healthy and the inverse association of these cognitions with individual measures of depressiveness. We also report a tendency of self-referential cognitions to elicit higher positive cognition rates. In a second study, we describe the patterns of neural activations elicited by emotional and neutral sentences in a functional neuroimaging study, showing that it replicates and extends previous findings obtained with the original version of the SST. During the formation of emotional cognitions, ventral areas such as the ventral anterior cingulus and the supramarginal gyrus were relatively activated. This activation pattern speaks for the recruitment of mechanisms coordinating motivational and associative processes in the formation of value-based decisions

Mirror neuron activations in encoding of psychic pain in borderline personality disorder

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by pronounced emotional instability in interpersonal relations. Previous studies have shown increased activity in the amygdala, an imaging phenotype of negative affect. However, clinical accounts of BPD have drawn attention to deficits in social cognition and their likely role in engendering emotional instability. BPD patients show enhanced sensitivity to other people's emotions, while being less proficient in reading motives and reasons. In the present functional imaging study, we exposed BPD participants to stylized scenes of individuals affected by loss or separation, an issue to which these patients are particularly sensitive. Previously shown to activate the mirror neuron system, these mourning scenes were here also used to assess differential amygdala activity in stimuli of negative valence, but low arousal. Relative to controls, BPD patients were found to activate sensorimotor areas, a part of the mirror neuron system thought to encode basic aspects of the perception of motoric activity and pain. This contrasted with the activity of areas related to more complex aspects of social cognition, such as the inferior frontal gyrus. The amygdala was more active in patients when viewing these scenes, but this effect also showed a strong association with levels of depressiveness and neuroticism. After adjusting for these covariates, differences in amygdala activation were no longer significant. These findings are consistent with models of social cognition in BPD that attribute emotional sensitivity to emotional contagion through the mirror neuron system, in contrast to areas associated with more sophisticated forms of social cognition. These effects were accompanied by increased amygdala reactivity, consistently with the common occurrence of affective symptoms in these patients. Keywords: Borderline personality disorder, Mirror neuron system, Empathy, Neurobiological models of borderline personality disorder, Neuroimaging of borderline personality disorde

Decreases in activation from first to second measurement.

<p>Decreases in activation from first to second measurement.</p

Effect of faces.

<p>Statistical parametric map of the main effect of the contrast images faces vs. control, overlaid on a template brain, assessing the average effect of passive exposure to faces at both measurements. Color represents <i>t</i> values computed voxelwise, thresholded for illustration at <i>p</i> = .05, FWE-corrected. The blue circles indicate the location of the amygdala. L, R: left, right.</p

Habituation effect.

<p>A: Statistical parametric maps of the reduction in activity from the first and second measurement, overlaid on a template brain. Color represents <i>t</i> values computed voxelwise, thresholded for illustration at <i>p</i> = .001, uncorrected. The inset shows the amygdala region at the uncorrected threshold <i>p</i> = .05. The blue circles indicate the location of the amygdala. L, R: left, right. B: box-plots of the estimated habituation effect in the ROI-averaged signal (negative values represent decrements at the second measurement). Data available in the <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0198244#pone.0198244.s001" target="_blank">S1 Supplementary Information</a>.</p