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Movements can inform us about what people are doing and also about how they feel. This phenomenologically evident distinction has been suggested to correspond functionally with differential neural correlates denoted as mirror neuron system (MNS) and mentalizing system (MENT). To separate out the roles of the underlying systems we presented identical stimuli under different task demands: character animations showing everyday activities (mopping, sweeping) performed in different moods (angry, happy). Thirty-two participants were undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while asked to identify either the performed movement or the displayed mood. Univariate GLM analysis revealed the expected activation of either in MNS or MENT depending on the task. A complementary multivariate pattern-learning analysis based on the "social brain atlas" confirmed the expected recruitment of both systems. In conclusion, both approaches converge onto clearly distinct functional roles of both social neural networks in a novel dynamic social perception paradigm., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

People are motivated to adopt the most favorable beliefs about their future because positive beliefs are experienced as rewarding. However, it is so far inconclusive whether brain regions known to represent reward values are involved in the generation of optimistically biased belief updates. To address this question, we investigated neural correlates of belief updates that result in relatively better future outlooks, and therefore imply a positive subjective value of the judgment outcome. Participants estimated the probability of experiencing different adverse future events. After being provided with population base rates of these events, they had the opportunity to update their initial estimates. Participants made judgments concerning themselves or a similar other, and were confronted with desirable or undesirable base rates (i.e., lower or higher than their initial estimates). Belief updates were smaller following undesirable than desirable information, and this optimism bias was stronger for judgments regarding oneself than others. During updating, the positive value of self-related updates was reflected by neural activity in the subgenual ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) that increased both with increasing sizes of favorable updates, and with decreasing sizes of unfavorable updates. During the processing of self-related undesirable base rates, increasing activity in a network including the dorsomedial PFC, hippocampus, thalamus and ventral striatum predicted decreasing update sizes. Thus, key regions of the neural reward circuitry contributed to the generation of optimistically biased self-referential belief updates. While the vmPFC tracked subjective values of belief updates, a network including the ventral striatum was involved in neglecting information calling for unfavorable updates., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

There is ample evidence that human primates strive for social contact and experience interactions with conspecifics as intrinsically rewarding. Focusing on gaze behavior as a crucial means of human interaction, this study employed a unique combination of neuroimaging, eye-tracking, and computer-animated virtual agents to assess the neural mechanisms underlying this component of behavior. In the interaction task, participants believed that during each interaction the agent's gaze behavior could either be controlled by another participant or by a computer program. Their task was to indicate whether they experienced a given interaction as an interaction with another human participant or the computer program based on the agent's reaction. Unbeknownst to them, the agent was always controlled by a computer to enable a systematic manipulation of gaze reactions by varying the degree to which the agent engaged in joint attention. This allowed creating a tool to distinguish neural activity underlying the subjective experience of being engaged in social and non-social interaction. In contrast to previous research, this allows measuring neural activity while participants experience active engagement in real-time social interactions. Results demonstrate that gaze-based interactions with a perceived human partner are associated with activity in the ventral striatum, a core component of reward-related neurocircuitry. In contrast, interactions with a computer-driven agent activate attention networks. Comparisons of neural activity during interaction with behaviorally naïve and explicitly cooperative partners demonstrate different temporal dynamics of the reward system and indicate that the mere experience of engagement in social interaction is sufficient to recruit this system., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

First impressions profoundly influence our attitudes and behavior toward others. However, little is known about whether and to what degree the cognitive processes that underlie impression formation depend on the domain of the available information about the target person. To investigate the neural bases of the influence of verbal as compared to nonverbal information on interpersonal judgments, we identified brain regions where the BOLD signal parametrically increased with increasing strength of evaluation based on either short text vignettes or mimic and gestural behavior. While for verbal stimuli the increasing strength of subjective evaluation was correlated with increased neural activation of precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex (PC/PCC), a similar effect was observed for nonverbal stimuli in the amygdala. These findings support the assumption that qualitatively different cognitive operations underlie person evaluation depending upon the stimulus domain: while the processing of nonverbal person information may be more strongly associated with affective processing as indexed by recruitment of the amygdala, verbal person information engaged the PC/PCC that has been related to social inferential processing., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Cortical thickness (CT) changes possibly contribute to the complex symptomatology of autism. The aberrant developmental trajectories underlying such differences in certain brain regions and their continuation in adulthood are a matter of intense debate. We studied 28 adults with high-functioning autism (HFA) and 28 control subjects matched for age, gender, IQ and handedness. A surface-based whole brain analysis utilizing FreeSurfer was employed to detect CT differences between the two diagnostic groups and to investigate the time course of age-related changes. Direct comparison with control subjects revealed thinner cortex in HFA in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) of the left hemisphere. Considering the time course of CT development we found clusters around the pSTS and cuneus in the left and the paracentral lobule in the right hemisphere to be thinner in HFA with comparable age-related slopes in patients and controls. Conversely, we found clusters around the supramarginal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in the left and the precentral and postcentral gyrus in the right hemisphere to be thinner in HFA, but with different age-related slopes in patients and controls. In the latter regions CT showed a steady decrease in controls but no analogous thinning in HFA. CT analyses contribute in characterizing neuroanatomical correlates of HFA. Reduced CT is present in brain regions involved in social cognition. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that aberrant brain development leading to such differences is proceeding throughout adulthood. Discrepancies in prior morphometric studies may be induced by the complex time course of cortical changes., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The interpretation of interpersonal gaze behavior requires the use of complex cognitive processes and guides social interactions. Among a variety of different gaze characteristics, gaze direction and gaze duration modulate crucially the meaning of the "social gaze". Nevertheless, prior neuroimaging studies disregarded the relevance of gaze duration by focusing on gaze direction only. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study focused on the differentiation of these two gaze parameters. Therefore direct gaze displayed by virtual characters was contrasted with averted gaze and, additionally, systematically varied with respect to gaze duration (i.e., 1, 2.5 or 4 s). Consistent with prior findings, behavioral data showed that likeability was higher for direct than for averted gaze and increased linearly with increasing direct gaze duration. On the neural level, distinct brain regions were associated with the processing of gaze direction and gaze duration: (i) the comparison between direct and averted gaze revealed activations in bilateral occipito-temporal regions including the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS); (ii) whereas increasing duration of direct gaze evoked differential neural responses in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) including orbitofrontal and paracingulate regions. The results suggest two complementary cognitive processes related to different gaze parameters. On the one hand, the recruitment of multimodal sensory regions in the pSTS indicates detection of gaze direction via complex visual analysis. On the other hand, the involvement of the MPFC associated with outcome monitoring and mentalizing indicates higher-order social cognitive processes related to evaluation of the ongoing communicational input conveyed by direct gaze duration.

The corpus callosum (CC) is of great interest for pathophysiological models of schizophrenia. Volume and structural integrity of the CC have been examined by volumetric and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies, but results were not consistent across methods or studies. A possible explanation may be varying methodologies and accuracy of measurements based on a single slice or small regions of interest. In addition, none of the studies examined volume and diffusion values in the same group of patients, and thus the relationship between these anatomical measures is not clear. We used an automatic algorithm to segment seven midline slices of the CC from DTI images. We compared volume and the DTI measures fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) in the CC and its subdivisions in the schizophrenia patients and matched controls. Patients had decreased volume, decreased FA and increased MD of the whole CC. The important novel finding is, however, that not all regions were equally affected by anatomical changes. The results emphasize the importance of using different methods in evaluation of white matter (WM) in schizophrenia to avoid false negative findings. In addition, the measures were highly correlated with each other, implying a common pathological process influencing FA, MD and volume of the CC. Although we cannot rule out other mechanisms affecting volume, FA and MD, converging evidence from cytoarchitectonic and genetic studies suggests that WM changes observed in schizophrenia may involve disintegration of healthy, functional axons and strengthening of aberrant connections resulting in increased severity of clinical symptoms.

Daily-life decisions and judgments are often made "intuitively", i.e., without an explicit explanation or verbal justification. We conceive of intuition as the capacity for an effortless evaluation of complex situations on the basis of information being activated, but at the moment of decision not being consciously retrieved. Little is known about which neural processes mediate intuitive judgments and whether these are distinct from those neural processes underlying explicit judgments. Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we show that intuitive compared to explicit judgments in a semantic coherence judgment task are associated with increased neural activity in heteromodal association areas in bilateral inferior parietal and right superior temporal cortex. These results indicate that intuitive coherence judgments activate neural systems that are involved in the integration of remote associates into a coherent representation and, thus, support the assumption that intuitive judgments are based on an activation of widespread semantic networks sparing a conscious representation.

The extrastriate body area (EBA) is traditionally considered a category-selective region for the visual processing of static images of the human body. Recent evidence challenges this view by showing motor-related modulations of EBA activity during self-generated movements. Here, we used functional MRI to investigate whether the EBA distinguishes self- from other-generated movements, a prerequisite for the sense of agency. Subjects performed joystick movements while the visual feedback was manipulated on half of the trials. The EBA was more active when the visual feedback was incongruent to the subjects' own executed movements. Furthermore, during correct feedback evaluation, the EBA showed enhanced functional connectivity to posterior parietal cortex, which has repeatedly been implicated in the detection of sensorimotor incongruence and the sense of agency. Our results suggest that the EBA represents the human body in a more integrative and dynamic manner, being able to detect an incongruence of internal body or action representations and external visual signals. In this way, the EBA might be able to support the disentangling of one's own behavior from another's.