Disentangling self- and fairness-related neural mechanisms involved in the ultimatum game: an fMRI study

Rejections of unfair offers in the ultimatum game (UG) are commonly assumed to reflect negative emotional arousal mediated by the anterior insula and medial prefrontal cortex. We aimed to disentangle those neural mechanisms associated with direct personal involvement (I have been treated unfairly) from those associated with fairness considerations, such as the wish to discourage unfair behavior or social norm violations (this person has been treated unfairly). For this purpose, we used fMRI and asked participants to play the UG as responders either for themselves (myself) or on behalf of another person (third party). Unfair offers were equally often rejected in both conditions. Neuroimaging data revealed a dissociation between the medial prefrontal cortex, specifically associated with rejections in the myself condition, thus confirming its role in self-related emotional responses, and the left anterior insula, associated with rejections in both myself and third-party conditions, suggesting a role in promoting fair behavior also toward third parties. Our data extend the current understanding of the neural substrate of social decision making, by disentangling the structures sensitive to direct emotional involvement of the self from those implicated in pure fairness consideration

Subanesthetic ketamine treatment promotes abnormal interactions between neural subsystems and alters the properties of functional brain networks

Acute treatment with subanesthetic ketamine, a non-competitive N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptor antagonist, is widely utilized as a translational model for schizophrenia. However, how acute NMDA receptor blockade impacts on brain functioning at a systems level, to elicit translationally relevant symptomatology and behavioral deficits, has not yet been determined. Here, for the first time, we apply established and recently validated topological measures from network science to brain imaging data gained from ketamine-treated mice to elucidate how acute NMDA receptor blockade impacts on the properties of functional brain networks. We show that the effects of acute ketamine treatment on the global properties of these networks are divergent from those widely reported in schizophrenia. Where acute NMDA receptor blockade promotes hyperconnectivity in functional brain networks, pronounced dysconnectivity is found in schizophrenia. We also show that acute ketamine treatment increases the connectivity and importance of prefrontal and thalamic brain regions in brain networks, a finding also divergent to alterations seen in schizophrenia. In addition, we characterize how ketamine impacts on bipartite functional interactions between neural subsystems. A key feature includes the enhancement of prefrontal cortex (PFC)-neuromodulatory subsystem connectivity in ketamine-treated animals, a finding consistent with the known effects of ketamine on PFC neurotransmitter levels. Overall, our data suggest that, at a systems level, acute ketamine-induced alterations in brain network connectivity do not parallel those seen in chronic schizophrenia. Hence, the mechanisms through which acute ketamine treatment induces translationally relevant symptomatology may differ from those in chronic schizophrenia. Future effort should therefore be dedicated to resolve the conflicting observations between this putative translational model and schizophrenia

Know Thyself: Behavioral Evidence for a Structural Representation of the Human Body

Background: Representing one's own body is often viewed as a basic form of self-awareness. However, little is known about structural representations of the body in the brain.Methods and Findings: We developed an inter-manual version of the classical "in-between'' finger gnosis task: participants judged whether the number of untouched fingers between two touched fingers was the same on both hands, or different. We thereby dissociated structural knowledge about fingers, specifying their order and relative position within a hand, from tactile sensory codes. Judgments following stimulation on homologous fingers were consistently more accurate than trials with no or partial homology. Further experiments showed that structural representations are more enduring than purely sensory codes, are used even when number of fingers is irrelevant to the task, and moreover involve an allocentric representation of finger order, independent of hand posture.Conclusions: Our results suggest the existence of an allocentric representation of body structure at higher stages of the somatosensory processing pathway, in addition to primary sensory representation

How We Know It Hurts: Item Analysis of Written Narratives Reveals Distinct Neural Responses to Others' Physical Pain and Emotional Suffering

People are often called upon to witness, and to empathize with, the pain and suffering of others. In the current study, we directly compared neural responses to others' physical pain and emotional suffering by presenting participants (n = 41) with 96 verbal stories, each describing a protagonist's physical and/or emotional experience, ranging from neutral to extremely negative. A separate group of participants rated “how much physical pain”, and “how much emotional suffering” the protagonist experienced in each story, as well as how “vivid and movie-like” the story was. Although ratings of Pain, Suffering and Vividness were positively correlated with each other across stories, item-analyses revealed that each scale was correlated with activity in distinct brain regions. Even within regions of the “Shared Pain network” identified using a separate data set, responses to others' physical pain and emotional suffering were distinct. More broadly, item analyses with continuous predictors provided a high-powered method for identifying brain regions associated with specific aspects of complex stimuli – like verbal descriptions of physical and emotional events.United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Office of Naval Research, grant number N000140910845

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011

Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements are presented of production properties and couplings of the recently discovered Higgs boson using the decays into boson pairs, H →γ γ, H → Z Z∗ →4l and H →W W∗ →lνlν. The results are based on the complete pp collision data sample recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 25 fb−1. Evidence for Higgs boson production through vector-boson fusion is reported. Results of combined fits probing Higgs boson couplings to fermions and bosons, as well as anomalous contributions to loop-induced production and decay modes, are presented. All measurements are consistent with expectations for the Standard Model Higgs boson

Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment - Detector, Trigger and Physics

A detailed study is presented of the expected performance of the ATLAS detector. The reconstruction of tracks, leptons, photons, missing energy and jets is investigated, together with the performance of b-tagging and the trigger. The physics potential for a variety of interesting physics processes, within the Standard Model and beyond, is examined. The study comprises a series of notes based on simulations of the detector and physics processes, with particular emphasis given to the data expected from the first years of operation of the LHC at CERN

Measurement of the top quark pair cross section with ATLAS in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV using final states with an electron or a muon and a hadronically decaying τ lepton

A measurement of the cross section of top quark pair production in proton-proton collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is reported. The data sample used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.05 fb -1. Events with an isolated electron or muon and a τ lepton decaying hadronically are used. In addition, a large missing transverse momentum and two or more energetic jets are required. At least one of the jets must be identified as originating from a b quark. The measured cross section, σtt-=186±13(stat.)±20(syst.)±7(lumi.) pb, is in good agreement with the Standard Model prediction

Measurement of the top quark-pair production cross section with ATLAS in pp collisions at \sqrt{s}=7\TeV

A measurement of the production cross-section for top quark pairs(\ttbar) in $pp$ collisions at \sqrt{s}=7 \TeV is presented using data recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Events are selected in two different topologies: single lepton (electron $e$ or muon $\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least four jets, and dilepton ($ee$, $\mu\mu$ or $e\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least two jets. In a data sample of 2.9 pb-1, 37 candidate events are observed in the single-lepton topology and 9 events in the dilepton topology. The corresponding expected backgrounds from non-\ttbar Standard Model processes are estimated using data-driven methods and determined to be $12.2 \pm 3.9$ events and $2.5 \pm 0.6$ events, respectively. The kinematic properties of the selected events are consistent with SM \ttbar production. The inclusive top quark pair production cross-section is measured to be \sigmattbar=145 \pm 31 ^{+42}_{-27} pb where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. The measurement agrees with perturbative QCD calculations.Comment: 30 pages plus author list (50 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, CERN-PH number and final journal adde