scholarly journals Inter-brain amplitude correlation differentiates cooperation from competition in a motion-sensing sports game

Author(s):  
Huashuo Liu ◽  
Chenying Zhao ◽  
Fei Wang ◽  
Dan Zhang

Abstract Cooperation and competition are two basic modes of human interaction. Their underlying neural mechanisms, especially from an interpersonal perspective, have not been fully explored. Using the electroencephalograph-based hyperscanning technique, the present study investigated the neural correlates of both cooperation and competition within the same ecological paradigm using a classic motion-sensing tennis game. Both the inter-brain coupling (the inter-brain amplitude correlation and inter-brain phase-locking) and the intra-brain spectral power were analyzed. Only the inter-brain amplitude correlation showed a significant difference between cooperation and competition, with different spatial patterns at theta, alpha and beta frequency bands. Further inspection revealed distinct inter-brain coupling patterns for cooperation and competition; cooperation elicited positive inter-brain amplitude correlation at the delta and theta bands in extensive brain regions, while competition was associated with negative occipital inter-brain amplitude correlation at the alpha and beta bands. These findings add to our knowledge of the neural mechanisms of cooperation and competition and suggest the significance of adopting an inter-brain perspective in exploring the neural underpinnings of social interaction in ecological contexts.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Bitsch ◽  
Philipp Berger ◽  
Andreas Fink ◽  
Arne Nagels ◽  
Benjamin Straube ◽  
...  

AbstractThe ability to generate humor gives rise to positive emotions and thus facilitate the successful resolution of adversity. Although there is consensus that inhibitory processes might be related to broaden the way of thinking, the neural underpinnings of these mechanisms are largely unknown. Here, we use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a humorous alternative uses task and a stroop task, to investigate the brain mechanisms underlying the emergence of humorous ideas in 24 subjects. Neuroimaging results indicate that greater cognitive control abilities are associated with increased activation in the amygdala, the hippocampus and the superior and medial frontal gyrus during the generation of humorous ideas. Examining the neural mechanisms more closely shows that the hypoactivation of frontal brain regions is associated with an hyperactivation in the amygdala and vice versa. This antagonistic connectivity is concurrently linked with an increased number of humorous ideas and enhanced amygdala responses during the task. Our data therefore suggests that a neural antagonism previously related to the emergence and regulation of negative affective responses, is linked with the generation of emotionally positive ideas and may represent an important neural pathway supporting mental health.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Bitsch ◽  
Philipp Berger ◽  
Andreas Fink ◽  
Arne Nagels ◽  
Benjamin Straube ◽  
...  

AbstractThe ability to generate humor gives rise to positive emotions and thus facilitate the successful resolution of adversity. Although there is consensus that inhibitory processes might be related to broaden the way of thinking, the neural underpinnings of these mechanisms are largely unknown. Here, we use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a humorous alternative uses task and a stroop task, to investigate the brain mechanisms underlying the emergence of humorous ideas in 24 subjects. Neuroimaging results indicate that greater cognitive control abilities are associated with increased activation in the amygdala, the hippocampus and the superior and medial frontal gyrus during the generation of humorous ideas. Examining the neural mechanisms more closely shows that the downregulation of frontal brain regions is associated with an upregulation in the amygdala, which is concurrently linked with an increased number of humorous ideas and enhanced amygdala responses during the task. Our data therefore suggests that a neural antagonism previously related to the emergence and regulation of negative affective responses, is linked with the generation of emotionally positive ideas and may represent an important neural pathway supporting mental health.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Hawes ◽  
H Moriah Sokolowski ◽  
Chuka Bosah Ononye ◽  
Daniel Ansari

Where and under what conditions do spatial and numerical skills converge and diverge in the brain? To address this question, we conducted a meta-analysis of brain regions associated with basic symbolic number processing, arithmetic, and mental rotation. We used Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) to construct quantitative meta-analytic maps synthesizing results from 86 neuroimaging papers (~ 30 studies/cognitive process). All three cognitive processes were found to activate bilateral parietal regions in and around the intraparietal sulcus (IPS); a finding consistent with shared processing accounts. Numerical and arithmetic processing were associated with overlap in the left angular gyrus, whereas mental rotation and arithmetic both showed activity in the middle frontal gyri. These patterns suggest regions of cortex potentially more specialized for symbolic number representation and domain-general mental manipulation, respectively. Additionally, arithmetic was associated with unique activity throughout the fronto-parietal network and mental rotation was associated with unique activity in the right superior parietal lobe. Overall, these results provide new insights into the intersection of numerical and spatial thought in the human brain.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 205920432110101
Author(s):  
Gonçalo T. Barradas ◽  
Patrik N. Juslin ◽  
Sergi Bermúdez i Badia

Music is frequently regarded as a unique way to connect with dementia patients. Yet little is known about how persons with dementia respond emotionally to music. Are their responses different from those of healthy listeners? If so, why? The present study makes a first attempt to tackle these issues in a Portuguese context, with a focus on psychological mechanisms. In Experiment 1, featuring 20 young and healthy adults, we found that musical excerpts which have previously been shown to activate specific emotion induction mechanisms (brain stem reflex, contagion, episodic memory, musical expectancy) in Sweden were valid and yielded predicted emotions also in Portugal, as indexed by self-reported feelings, psychophysiology, and post hoc mechanism indices. In Experiment 2, we used the same stimuli to compare the responses of 20 elderly listeners diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) with those of 20 healthy listeners. We controlled for cognitive functioning (Mini-Mental State Examination) and depression (Geriatric Depression Scale). Our predictions about how mechanisms would be differentially affected by decline in brain regions associated with AD received support in that AD patients reported significantly lower levels of (a) sadness in the contagion condition, (b) happiness and nostalgia in the episodic memory condition, and (c) anxiety in the musical expectancy condition. By contrast, no significant difference in reported surprise was found in the brain stem reflex condition. Implications for musical interventions aimed at dementia are discussed, highlighting the key role that basic research may play in developing applications.


2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 931-937 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Nathan DeWall ◽  
Geoff MacDonald ◽  
Gregory D. Webster ◽  
Carrie L. Masten ◽  
Roy F. Baumeister ◽  
...  

Pain, whether caused by physical injury or social rejection, is an inevitable part of life. These two types of pain—physical and social—may rely on some of the same behavioral and neural mechanisms that register pain-related affect. To the extent that these pain processes overlap, acetaminophen, a physical pain suppressant that acts through central (rather than peripheral) neural mechanisms, may also reduce behavioral and neural responses to social rejection. In two experiments, participants took acetaminophen or placebo daily for 3 weeks. Doses of acetaminophen reduced reports of social pain on a daily basis (Experiment 1). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure participants’ brain activity (Experiment 2), and found that acetaminophen reduced neural responses to social rejection in brain regions previously associated with distress caused by social pain and the affective component of physical pain (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula). Thus, acetaminophen reduces behavioral and neural responses associated with the pain of social rejection, demonstrating substantial overlap between social and physical pain.


2007 ◽  
Vol 362 (1481) ◽  
pp. 761-772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D'Esposito

Working memory refers to the temporary retention of information that was just experienced or just retrieved from long-term memory but no longer exists in the external environment. These internal representations are short-lived, but can be stored for longer periods of time through active maintenance or rehearsal strategies, and can be subjected to various operations that manipulate the information in such a way that makes it useful for goal-directed behaviour. Empirical studies of working memory using neuroscientific techniques, such as neuronal recordings in monkeys or functional neuroimaging in humans, have advanced our knowledge of the underlying neural mechanisms of working memory. This rich dataset can be reconciled with behavioural findings derived from investigating the cognitive mechanisms underlying working memory. In this paper, I review the progress that has been made towards this effort by illustrating how investigations of the neural mechanisms underlying working memory can be influenced by cognitive models and, in turn, how cognitive models can be shaped and modified by neuroscientific data. One conclusion that arises from this research is that working memory can be viewed as neither a unitary nor a dedicated system. A network of brain regions, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is critical for the active maintenance of internal representations that are necessary for goal-directed behaviour. Thus, working memory is not localized to a single brain region but probably is an emergent property of the functional interactions between the PFC and the rest of the brain.


1989 ◽  
Vol 155 (S7) ◽  
pp. 93-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy C. Andreasen

When Kraepelin originally defined and described dementia praecox, he assumed that it was due to some type of neural mechanism. He hypothesised that abnormalities could occur in a variety of brain regions, including the prefrontal, auditory, and language regions of the cortex. Many members of his department, including Alzheimer and Nissl, were actively involved in the search for the neuropathological lesions that would characterise schizophrenia. Although Kraepelin did not use the term ‘negative symptoms', he describes them comprehensively and states explicitly that he believes the symptoms of schizophrenia can be explained in terms of brain dysfunction:“If it should be confirmed that the disease attacks by preference the frontal areas of the brain, the central convolutions and central lobes, this distribution would in a certain measure agree with our present views about the site of the psychic mechanisms which are principally injured by the disease. On various grounds, it is easy to believe that the frontal cortex, which is specially well developed in man, stands in closer relation to his higher intellectual abilities, and these are the faculties which in our patients invariably suffer profound loss in contrast to memory and acquired ability.” Kraepelin (1919, p. 219)


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmina Wallace ◽  
Lydia Yahia-Cherif ◽  
Christophe Gitton ◽  
Laurent Hugueville ◽  
Jean-Didier Lemaréchal ◽  
...  

AbstractSeveral studies reported changes in spontaneous electroencephalogram alpha band activity related to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, but findings showed both an increase and a decrease of its spectral power or no effect. Here, we studied the alpha band modulation after 900 MHz mobile phone radiofrequency exposure and localized cortical regions involved in these changes, via a magnetoencephalography (MEG) protocol with healthy volunteers in a double-blind, randomized, counterbalanced crossover design. MEG was recorded during eyes open and eyes closed resting-state before and after radiofrequency exposure. Potential confounding factors, known to affect alpha band activity, were assessed as control parameters to limit bias. Entire alpha band, lower and upper alpha sub-bands MEG power spectral densities were estimated in sensor and source space. Biochemistry assays for salivary biomarkers of stress (cortisol, chromogranin-A, alpha amylase), heart rate variability analysis and high-performance liquid chromatography for salivary caffeine concentration were realized. Results in sensor and source space showed a significant modulation of MEG alpha band activity after the radiofrequency exposure, with different involved cortical regions in relation to the eyes condition, probably because of different attention level with open or closed eyes. None of the control parameters reported a statistically significant difference between experimental sessions.


Author(s):  
Reza Dashtestani

This study focused on the acceptance level of higher education stakeholders of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) of online courses in Iran and pre-service teachers’ learning achievement in online courses. Three cohorts of participants who were teaching or learning in online courses included pre-service teachers of TEFL (n=104), TEFL university instructors (n=23), and heads of TEFL departments (n=10). A questionnaire was designed. The Kruskal Wallis test was used to detect differences among the perspectives of the participants. Semi-structured interviews were also utilized. Results indicated that there were significant differences among the perspectives of the three groups of participants about online courses. The pre-service teachers appeared to be relatively positive about online learning, while the university instructors and heads of departments showed a lower level of satisfaction. The participants pointed out several challenges, including the lack of rigor of online courses, the incredibility of the certificates, the lack of technological infrastructures, technical problems, the impractical content of the lessons, the lack of human interaction, the low competence levels of online learning students, and employers’ lack of interest in employing graduates of online courses. The participants also mentioned that pedagogical and technological training was required for both university instructors and pre-service teachers of TEFL. The comparison of pre-service teachers’ mid-term and final scores in the online courses showed a significant difference and improvement of students’ learning achievement in online courses with medium to large effect sizes. In the interviews, the participants also confirmed that online courses could improve student learning.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Siti Khodijah ◽  
Labibah Labibah

Language is the most important aspect in human interaction. People communicate and interact with other using the language. In global community, English has become an international language that is used by many people around the world. Reading is one of English language skills and it is one of the ways to learn English. Reading activity should get more attention. It is because there are many students who get some difficulties in understanding a text. In this research inform the using of talking stick in teaching reading. The objective of this research was to find out whether there was any significant difference in improvement the reading ability of recount text of the tenth grade students of SMK Rosma Karawang in academic year 2018/2019 by using talking stick method. The method used was quantitative method. In this research the writer used pre-experimental design of one group pretest and posttest. The data were analyzed by using paired sample test and processed by using SPSS 23 for windows. The results of the research showed there was significant increase of student’s reading ability.Keywords: Teaching, Reading, Talking Stick


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