Social Self-Regulation and the Feedback-Related Negativity

The purpose of this study is to examine how the error-monitoring system in the brain, as indexed\ud by the feedback-related negativity (FRN), which has been researched in objective cognitive tasks,\ud extends to a subjective rating task that involves social stimuli as well as social feedback.\ud Participants rated the perceived trustworthiness of a set of faces and voices and received either\ud social or non-social feedback about how their ratings compared to ratings made by a perceived group of peers. We hypothesized that feedback indicating social deviance would elicit larger FRNs when it was delivered through a social medium (a face or voice) versus a non-social symbol. We also anticipated that individuals high in fear of negative evaluation as well as empathy would produce larger FRNs than individuals with low levels of those traits. Results partially supported the main hypothesis in that voice feedback elicited the largest FRNs. However, no effect was found for face feedback, and in the symbol feedback condition\ud participants responded more positively to feedback indicating social deviance than feedback showing social conformity. There was a pervasive pattern in the data such that participants responded more positively to voice stimuli and feedback than to faces or symbols. There were no significant effects of individual differences. These results suggest that individuals self-regulate\ud differently based on the presence or absence of social stimuli and feedback during social\ud judgment tasks

Impact of autism genetic risk on brain connectivity: a mechanism for the female protective effect.

The biological mechanisms underlying the greater prevalence of autism spectrum disorder in males than females remain poorly understood. One hypothesis posits that this female protective effect arises from genetic load for autism spectrum disorder differentially impacting male and female brains. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the impact of cumulative genetic risk for autism spectrum disorder on functional brain connectivity in a balanced sample of boys and girls with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing boys and girls (127 youth, ages 8-17). Brain connectivity analyses focused on the salience network, a core intrinsic functional connectivity network which has previously been implicated in autism spectrum disorder. The effects of polygenic risk on salience network functional connectivity were significantly modulated by participant sex, with genetic load for autism spectrum disorder influencing functional connectivity in boys with and without autism spectrum disorder but not girls. These findings support the hypothesis that autism spectrum disorder risk genes interact with sex differential processes, thereby contributing to the male bias in autism prevalence and proposing an underlying neurobiological mechanism for the female protective effect