The proximate mechanisms and ultimate functions of smiles

Niedenthal et al's classification of smiles erroneously conflates psychological mechanisms and adaptive functions. This confusion weakens the rationale behind the types of smiles they chose to individuate, and it obfuscates the distinction between the communicative versus denotative nature of smiles and the role of perceived-gaze direction in emotion recognitio

@ve: A Chatbot for Latin

Dead, extinct, and endangered languages have been preserved primarily through audio conservation and the collection and digitization of scripts and have been promoted through targeted language acquisition efforts. Another possibility would be to build conversational agents that can master these languages. This would provide an artificial, active conversational partner which has knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar, and one learns with it in a different way. The chatbot @ve, with which one can communicate in Latin, was developed in 2022/2023 based on GPT-3.0. It was additionally equipped with a manually created knowledge base. After conceptual groundwork, this paper presents the preparation and implementation of the project. In addition, it summarizes the test that a Latin expert conducted with the chatbot. A critical discussion elaborates advantages and disadvantages. @ve could be a new tool for teaching Latin in a memorable and entertaining way through dialogue. However, the present implementation is still too prone to glitches for stand-alone use - i.e., without the accompaniment of a teacher. The use of GPT-4 could be a solution as well as the extension of the knowledge base. In conclusion, it can be argued that conversational agents are an innovative approach to promoting and preserving languages.Comment: 15 page

Guilt-Specific Processing in the Prefrontal Cortex

Guilt is a central moral emotion due to its inherent link to norm violations, thereby affecting both individuals and society. Furthermore, the nature and specificity of guilt is still debated in psychology and philosophy, particularly with regard to the differential involvement of self-referential representations in guilt relative to shame. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in healthy volunteers, we identified specific brain regions associated with guilt by comparison with the 2 most closely related emotions, shame and sadness. To induce high emotional intensity, we used an autobiographical memory paradigm where participants relived during fMRI scanning situations from their own past that were associated with strong feelings of guilt, shame, or sadness. Compared with the control emotions, guilt episodes specifically recruited a region of right orbitofrontal cortex, which was also highly correlated with individual propensity to experience guilt (Trait Guilt). Guilt-specific activity was also observed in the paracingulate dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, a critical "Theory of Mind” region, which overlapped with brain areas of self-referential processing identified in an independent task. These results provide new insights on the unique nature of guilt as a "self-conscious” moral emotion and the neural bases of antisocial disorders characterized by impaired guilt processin

Integration of gaze direction and facial expression in patients with unilateral amygdala damage

Affective and social processes play a major role in everyday life, but appropriate methods to assess disturbances in these processes after brain lesions are still lacking. Past studies have shown that amygdala damage can impair recognition of facial expressions, particularly fear, as well as processing of gaze direction; but the mechanisms responsible for these deficits remain debated. Recent accounts of human amygdala function suggest that it is a critical structure involved in self-relevance appraisal. According to such accounts, responses to a given facial expression may vary depending on concomitant gaze direction and perceived social meaning. Here we investigated facial emotion recognition and its interaction with gaze in patients with unilateral amygdala damage (n = 19), compared to healthy controls (n = 10), using computer-generated dynamic face stimuli expressing variable intensities of fear, anger or joy, with different gaze directions (direct versus averted). If emotion perception is influenced by the self-relevance of expression based on gaze direction, a fearful face with averted gaze should be more relevant than the same expression with direct gaze because it signals danger near the observer; whereas anger with direct gaze should be more relevant than with averted gaze because it directly threatens the observer. Our results confirm a critical role for the amygdala in self-relevance appraisal, showing an interaction between gaze and emotion in healthy controls, a trend for such interaction in left-damaged patients but not in right-damaged patients. Impaired expression recognition was generally more severe for fear, but with a greater deficit for right versus left damage. These findings do not only provide new insights on human amygdala function, but may also help design novel neuropsychological tests sensitive to amygdala dysfunction in various patient population

Dynamique et topographie des réseaux neuronaux corticaux impliqués dans la perception du temps

L'objectif de ce travail a été d'explorer les bases neurales de la perception du temps chez l'humain en analysant les corrélats électromagnétiques du jugement temporel par reconstruction des générateurs corticaux du signal de scalp électroencéphalographique et magnétoencéphalographique. Dans deux articles expérimentaux, nous montrons qu indépendamment de la modalité sensorielle, un réseau étendu d'aires corticales est impliqué dans la discrimination de durées circaseconde et que le décours temporel de l'activité au sein de ce réseau s'accorde mal avec le mécanisme de pacemaker-accumulateur du modèle de temps scalaire. Nous proposons donc dans un article théorique, co-écrit avec Warren Meck, de montrer en quoi le modèle Striatal Beat Frequency offre un cadre biologiquement plus réaliste permettant de rapprocher les mécanismes à l'oeuvre dans la mémoire de travail et dans le traitement temporel.PARIS-BIUSJ-Thèses (751052125) / SudocPARIS-BIUSJ-Physique recherche (751052113) / SudocSudocFranceF

Joint contributions of metacognition and self-beliefs to uncertainty-guided checking behavior

Checking behavior is a natural and adaptive strategy for resolving uncertainty in everyday situations. Here, we aimed at investigating the psychological drivers of checking and its regulation by uncertainty, in non-clinical participants and controlled experimental settings. We found that the sensitivity of participants’ explicit confidence judgments to actual performance (explicit metacognition) predicted the extent to which their checking strategy was regulated by uncertainty. Yet, a more implicit measure of metacognition (derived from asking participants to opt between trials) did not contribute to the regulation of checking behavior. Meanwhile, how participants scaled on questionnaires eliciting self-beliefs such as self-confidence and self-reported obsessive-compulsive symptoms also predicted participants’ uncertainty-guided checking tendencies. Altogether, these findings demonstrate that checking behavior is likely the outcome of a core explicit metacognitive process operating at the scale of single decisions, while remaining influenced by general self-beliefs. Our findings are thus consistent with two mechanisms (micro vs. macro) through which this otherwise adaptive behavior could go awry in certain psychiatric disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder