Commentary: Altered learning under uncertainty in unmedicated mood and anxiety disorders

Understanding how anxious and depressed individuals process information is a central topic in the field of psychiatry. In this regard, Aylward et al. (2019) utilized computational models of learning to better understand and describe how anxious and/or depressed individuals behave from moment to moment when faced with uncertain situations. Participants performed decision-making tasks characterized by fluctuating rewards and punishment. The authors fit computational models to the collected data from participants in the anxiety and healthy groups using the hierarchical Bayesian estimation with two levels of priors, at individual and group levels, where they set the group prior separately for each group. The three parameters of the winning model (punishment learning rate, lapse parameter, and decay rate) were higher in the symptomatic group than in the healthy group. In short, the authors found that anxious individuals quickly learned about negative phenomena but not about positive phenomena. Notwithstanding, we believe we have identified two methodological issues regarding the statistical analysis of the cited study, shrinkage and a ‘two-step approach’

Emotions surrounding friendships of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder in Japan: A qualitative interview study

<div><p>Emotions are embedded in culture and play a pivotal role in making friends and interacting with peers. To support the social participation of students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) it is essential to understand their emotional life in the context of ethnic and school cultures. We are particularly interested in how anxiety and loneliness are experienced in developing and maintaining friendships in the daily encounters of adolescents with ASD in the specific context of Japanese schools, because these emotions could serve either as facilitators or barriers to social interaction, depending on how individuals manage them. The present qualitative study investigated perceptions of emotions related to friendship in the everyday school life of 11 adolescents with ASD in Japan. Data were collected by means of semi-structured individual interviews, which revealed a wide range of motivations for socialization, limited future prospects to deepen friendships, robust self-awareness of one’s own social challenges, and conscious efforts to cope with these challenges. An inductive approach to data analysis resulted in four themes: social motivation, loneliness, anxiety, and distress. To our knowledge this is the first study to uncover the rich emotional life of adolescents with ASD in the context of their friendships in an Asian culture.</p></div

Demographic information and clinical characteristics of the participants.

<p>Demographic information and clinical characteristics of the participants.</p

TMS motor thresholds correlate with TDCS electric field strengths in hand motor area

Transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) modulates cortical activity and influences motor and cognitive functions in both healthy and clinical populations. However, there is large inter-individual variability in the responses to TDCS. Computational studies have suggested that inter-individual differences in cranial and brain anatomy may contribute to this variability via creating varying electric fields in the brain. This implies that the electric fields or their strength and orientation should be considered and incorporated when selecting the TDCS dose. Unfortunately, electric field modeling is difficult to perform; thus, a more-robust and practical method of estimating the strength of TDCS electric fields for experimental use is required. As recent studies have revealed a relationship between the sensitivity to TMS and motor cortical TDCS after-effects, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether the resting motor threshold (RMT), a simple measure of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)sensitivity, would be useful for estimating TDCS electric field strengths in the hand area of primary motor cortex (M1). To achieve this, we measured the RMT in 28 subjects. We also obtained magnetic resonance images from each subject to build individual three-dimensional anatomic models, which were used in solving the TDCS and TMS electric fields using the finite element method (FEM). Then, we calculated the correlation between the measured RMT and the modeled TDCS electric fields. We found that the RMT correlated with the TDCS electric fields in hand M1 (R2 = 0.58), but no obvious correlations were identified in regions outside M1. The found correlation was mainly due to a correlation between the TDCS and TMS electric fields, both of which were affected by individual's anatomic features. In conclusion, the RMT could provide a useful tool for estimating cortical electric fields for motor cortical TDCS.Peer reviewe

The Role of the Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus in Introspection during Verbal Communication

Conversation enables the sharing of our subjective experiences through verbalizing introspected thoughts and feelings. The mentalizing network represents introspection, and successful conversation is characterized by alignment through imitation mediated by the mirror neuron system (MNS). Therefore, we hypothesized that the interaction between the mentalizing network and MNS mediates the conversational exchange of introspection. To test this, we performed hyperscanning functional magnetic resonance imaging during structured real-time conversations between 19 pairs of healthy participants. The participants first evaluated their preference for and familiarity with a presented object and then disclosed it. The control was the object feature identification task. When contrasted with the control, the preference/familiarity evaluation phase activated the dorso-medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, left hippocampus, right cerebellum, and orbital portion of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which represents introspection. The left IFG was activated when the two participants’ statements of introspection were mismatched during the disclosure. Disclosing introspection enhanced the functional connectivity of the left IFG with the bilateral superior temporal gyrus and primary motor cortex, representing the auditory MNS. Thus, the mentalizing system and MNS are hierarchically linked in the left IFG during a conversation, allowing for the sharing of introspection of the self and others