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Processing facial expressions of emotion draws on a distributed brain network. In particular, judging ambiguous facial emotions involves coordination between multiple brain areas. Here, we applied multimodal functional connectivity analysis to achieve network-level understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying perceptual ambiguity in facial expressions. We found directional effective connectivity between the amygdala, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), and ventromedial PFC, supporting both bottom-up affective processes for ambiguity representation/perception and top-down cognitive processes for ambiguity resolution/decision. Direct recordings from the human neurosurgical patients showed that the responses of amygdala and dmPFC neurons were modulated by the level of emotion ambiguity, and amygdala neurons responded earlier than dmPFC neurons, reflecting the bottom-up process for ambiguity processing. We further found parietal-frontal coherence and delta-alpha cross-frequency coupling involved in encoding emotion ambiguity. We replicated the EEG coherence result using independent experiments and further showed modulation of the coherence. EEG source connectivity revealed that the dmPFC top-down regulated the activities in other brain regions. Lastly, we showed altered behavioral responses in neuropsychiatric patients who may have dysfunctions in amygdala-PFC functional connectivity. Together, using multimodal experimental and analytical approaches, we have delineated a neural network that underlies processing of emotion ambiguity.

Humans adjust their behavioral strategies based on feedback, a process that may depend on intrinsic preferences and contextual factors such as visual salience. In this study, we hypothesized that decision-making based on visual salience is influenced by habitual and goal-directed processes, which can be evidenced by changes in attention and subjective valuation systems. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a series of studies to investigate the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying visual salience-driven decision-making. We first established the baseline behavioral strategy without salience in Experiment 1 (n = 21). We then highlighted the utility or performance dimension of the chosen outcome using colors in Experiment 2 (n = 30). We demonstrated that the difference in staying frequency increased along the salient dimension, confirming a salience effect. Furthermore, the salience effect was abolished when directional information was removed in Experiment 3 (n = 28), suggesting that the salience effect is feedback-specific. To generalize our findings, we replicated the feedback-specific salience effects using eye-tracking and text emphasis. The fixation differences between the chosen and unchosen values were enhanced along the feedback-specific salient dimension in Experiment 4 (n = 48) but unchanged after removing feedback-specific information in Experiment 5 (n = 32). Moreover, the staying frequency was correlated with fixation properties, confirming that salience guides attention deployment. Lastly, our neuroimaging study (Experiment 6, n = 25) showed that the striatum subregions encoded salience-based outcome evaluation, while the vmPFC encoded salience-based behavioral adjustments. The connectivity of the vmPFC-ventral striatum accounted for individual differences in utility-driven, whereas the vmPFC-dmPFC for performance-driven behavioral adjustments. Together, our results provide a neurocognitive account of how task-irrelevant visual salience drives decision-making by involving attention and the frontal-striatal valuation systems. PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Humans may use the current outcome to make behavior adjustments. How this occurs may depend on stable individual preferences and contextual factors, such as visual salience. Under the hypothesis that visual salience determines attention and subsequently modulates subjective valuation, we investigated the underlying behavioral and neural bases of visual-context-guided outcome evaluation and behavioral adjustments. Our findings suggest that the reward system is orchestrated by visual context and highlight the critical role of attention and the frontal-striatal neural circuit in visual-context-guided decision-making that may involve habitual and goal-directed processes.

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show abnormal face perception and emotion recognition. However, it remains largely unknown whether these differences are associated with abnormal physiological responses when viewing faces. In this study, we employed a sensitive emotion judgment task and conducted a detailed investigation of pupil dilation/constriction and oscillation in high-functioning adult participants with ASD and matched controls. We found that participants with ASD showed normal pupil constriction to faces; however, they demonstrated reduced pupil oscillation, which was independent of stimulus properties and participants' perception of the emotion. Together, our results have revealed an abnormal physiological response to faces in people with ASD, which may in turn be associated with impaired face perception previously found in many studies.

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show abnormal face perception and emotion recognition. However, it remains largely unknown whether these differences are associated with abnormal physiological responses when viewing faces. In this study, we employed a sensitive emotion judgment task and conducted a detailed investigation of pupil dilation/constriction and oscillation in high-functioning adult participants with ASD and matched controls. We found that participants with ASD showed normal pupil constriction to faces; however, they demonstrated reduced pupil oscillation, which was independent of stimulus properties and participants' perception of the emotion. Together, our results have revealed an abnormal physiological response to faces in people with ASD, which may in turn be associated with impaired face perception previously found in many studies., Author(s): Sai Sun [sup.1] [sup.2] , Paula J. Webster [sup.3] , Yu Wang [sup.4] , Hongbo Yu [sup.5] , Rongjun Yu [sup.6] , Shuo Wang [sup.3] [sup.7] Author Affiliations: (1) [...]

Judgments of learning (JOLs) play a fundamental role in helping learners regulate their study strategies but are susceptible to various kinds of illusions and biases. These can potentially impair learning efficiency, and hence understanding the mechanisms underlying the formation of JOLs is important. Many studies have suggested that both processing fluency and metamemory beliefs can contribute substantially to the construction of JOLs. However, in recent years another body of evidence has accumulated apparently demonstrating that beliefs play a dominant role, whereas processing fluency plays little or even no role in JOL formation. In the current article, we review the experimental and analytic methods employed in this field to measure the contributions of processing fluency and beliefs to the formation of JOLs. We then illustrate several potential disadvantages and pitfalls of those research methods. Suggestions about how to solve or avoid such problems are discussed. We make several proposals for future research to shed additional light on the illusions and biases that have been documented in JOLs.

BackgroundThe small transportable nuclear power system designed with the solid block heat pipe stack as the core has the advantages of good environmental adaptability, system safety and reliability, deployment flexibility, and resistance to external events. In order to control the sharp rise in reactivity under the water flooding accidents, a spectral shift absorber Gd2O3 is added to its core fuel. During the process of power flatten by adjusting fuel enrichment and Gd2O3 mass fraction at different locations in the core, it is necessary to ensure that the core solution meets a series of objectives such as refueling cycle and critical safety in both the conditions of normal operation and the accident. It makes the power flattening problem of small transportable nuclear reactor with high dimensional decision variables, multiple objectives and constraints, and multiple operating conditions.PurposeThis study aims to develop a core power flattening algorithm for small transportable nuclear power supply to reduce the computational cost.MethodsBased on a co-evolutionary algorithm framework and the laws of physics, a power flattening algorithm was developed to reduce the dimensionality through clustering algorithms. Convergence acceleration was achieved through the collaboration between sub-populations. The agent model based on Gaussian process regression (GPR) was used to predict and screen a large number of core schemes, so as to effectively reduce computational costs.ResultsComputation results show that the power peak factor of the initial scheme is decreased from original 1.30 to 1.14 after the core optimization.ConclusionsCompared with the traditional differential evolutionary algorithms and differential evolution algorithms embedded with clustering, the co-evolutionary based power flattening algorithm has significant advantages in terms of optimization quality and efficiency. The use of the clustering method and the surrogate model in the framework of co-evolutionary algorithms can effectively deal with the optimization of the complex reactor core.

Objective: The current study aims to assess, for the first time, whether vaccination is predicted by different behavioral and cognitive aspects of moral decision‐making. Background: Studies linking moral factors to vaccination have largely examined whether vaccination decisions can be explained by individual differences in the endorsement of various principles and norms central to deontology‐based arguments in vaccination ethics. However, these studies have overlooked whether individuals prioritize norms over other considerations when making decisions, such as maximizing consequences (utilitarianism). Method: In a sample of 1492 participants, the current study assessed whether vaccination is explained by individual differences in three aspects of moral decision‐making (consequence sensitivity, norm sensitivity, and action tendency), while also considering ethics position (idealism, relativism) and moral identity. Results: Supportive vaccination (vaccine uptake accompanied by a positive attitude toward vaccines) was associated with utilitarianism (increased consequence sensitivity) and increased tolerance to risks and harm toward others. Meanwhile, although those in the non‐vaccinated group was associated with higher harm sensitivities, they neither supported nor received the COVID vaccines (when vaccines prevent harm from infection). Conclusion: Pro‐vaccination messages may be made more effective by addressing perceptions of harms associated with vaccines and infections, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]