scholarly journals Dissociating affective evaluation and social cognitive processes in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 337-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wouter van den Bos ◽  
Samuel M. McClure ◽  
Lasana T. Harris ◽  
Susan T. Fiske ◽  
Jonathan D. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Affective Evaluation ◽  
Ventral Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Social Cognitive Processes

Acupuncture – Self-Appraisal and the Reward System

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Lundeberg ◽  
Iréne Lund ◽  
Jan Näslund
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Acupuncture Treatment ◽  
Reward System ◽  
Patellofemoral Pain ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Limbic Structures ◽  
Ventral Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Acupuncture is an ancient therapy with a variety of different explanatory models. A cascade of physiological effects has been reported, both in the peripheral and the central nervous system, following the insertion of a needle or light tapping of the skin. Clinical trials testing the specific claims of acupuncture have generally tried to focus on testing the efficacy of applying specific techniques and/or specified points. However, different conditions may respond differently to different modes of stimulation. Recently, it was demonstrated that both superficial and deep needling (with de qi/Hibiki) resulted in amelioration of patellofemoral pain and unpleasantness. The pleasurable aspect of the acupuncture experience has largely been ignored as it has been considered secondary to its pain alleviating effects. This aspect of acupuncture treatment is likely to be related to activation of self-appraisal and the reward system. When a patient seeks a therapist there are expectations of a specific effect. These expectations are partly based on self-relevant phenomena and self-referentia introspection and constitute the preference. Also, when asked about the effect of the treatment, processes that orientate pre-attentive anticipatory or mnemonic information and processes that mediate self-reflection and recollection are integrated together with sensory detection to enable a decision about the patient's perception of the effect of acupuncture treatment. These ‘self-appraisal’ processes are dependent on two integrated networks: a ventral medial prefrontal cortex paralimbic limbic ‘affective’ pathway and a dorsal medial prefrontal cortex cortical hippocampal ‘cognitive’ pathway. The limbic structures are implicated in the reward system and play a key role in most diseases and illness responses including chronic pain and depression, regulating mood and neuromodulatory responses (eg sensory, autonomic, and endocrine). The pleasurable and neuromodulatory aspects of acupuncture as well as ‘placebo needling’ may partly be explained by the activation or deactivation of limbic structures including the hippocampus, amygdala, and their connections with the hypothalamus. In patients with patellofemoral pain, the effects of superficial and deep needling remained for six months. These long term pain-alleviating effects have been attributed to activation of pain inhibiting systems in cortical and subcortical pathways. When considering long term effects the cortical cerebellar system needs to be taken into account. The cortical cerebellar system is probably central to the development of neural models that learn and eventually stimulate routinely executed (eg motor skills) and long term (eg pain alleviation) cognitive processes. These higher order cognitive processes are initially mediated in prefrontal cortical loci but later shift control iteratively to internal cerebellar representations of these processes. Possibly part of the long term healing effects of acupuncture may be attributed to changes in the cerebellar system thereby sparing processing load in cortical and subcortical areas. As cortical and subcortical structures are activated and/or de-activated following stimulation of receptors in the skin, disregarding site, ‘placebo or sham needling’ does not exist and conclusions drawn on the basis that it is an inert control are invalid. ‘Self’ may be seen as a shifting illusion, ceaselessly constructed and deconstructed, and the effect of acupuncture may reflect its status (as well as that of the therapist).

scholarly journals Seeing minds in others: Mind perception modulates social-cognitive performance and relates to ventromedial prefrontal structures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Wiese ◽  
George Buzzell ◽  
Aziz Abubshait ◽  
Paul Beatty
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Perception Task ◽  
Gaze Cueing ◽  
Mind Perception ◽  
Internal States ◽  
Social Cognitive Processes

In social interactions, we rely on nonverbal cues like gaze direction to understand the behavior of others. How we react to these cues is affected by whether they are believed to originate from an entity with a mind, capable of having internal states (i.e., mind perception). While prior work has established a set of neural regions linked to social-cognitive processes like mind perception, the degree to which activation within this network relates to performance in subsequent social-cognitive tasks remains unclear. In the current study, participants performed a mind perception task (i.e. judging the likelihood that faces, varying in physical human-likeness, have internal states) while event-related fMRI was collected. Afterwards, participants performed a social-cognitive task outside the scanner, during which they were cued by the gaze of the same faces that they previously judged within the mind perception task. Parametric analyses of the fMRI data revealed activity within ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) to be related to both mind ratings inside the scanner and gaze-cueing performance outside the scanner. In addition, other social brain regions were related to gaze-cueing performance, including frontal areas like the left insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus, as well as temporal areas like the left temporo-parietal junction and bilateral temporal gyri. The findings suggest that functions subserved by the vmPFC are relevant to both mind perception and social attention, implicating a role of vmPFC in the top-down modulation of low-level social-cognitive processes.

Social-cognitive processes in preschoolers' selective trust: Three cultures compared.

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 579-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda J. Lucas ◽  
Charlie Lewis ◽  
F. Cansu Pala ◽  
Katie Wong ◽  
Damon Berridge
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Selective Trust ◽  
Social Cognitive Processes

Initial Impressions of Others

2012 ◽  
pp. 336-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
James S. Uleman ◽  
S. Adil Saribay
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Attribution Theory ◽  
Impression Formation ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Controlled Attention ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Cognitive Processes ◽  
The Many ◽  
And Control ◽  
Initial Impressions

“Initial impressions” bring together personality and social psychology like no other field of study—“personality” because (1) impressions are about personalities, and (2) perceivers’ personalities affect these impressions; and “social” because (3) social cognitive processes of impression formation, and (4) sociocultural contexts have major effects on impressions. To make these points, we first review how people explicitly describe others: the terms we use, how these descriptions reveal our theories about others, the important roles of traits and types (including stereotypes) in these descriptions, and other prominent frameworks (e.g., narratives and social roles). Then we highlight recent research on the social cognitive processes underlying these descriptions: automatic and controlled attention, the many effects of primes (semantic and affective) and their dependence on contexts, the acquisition of valence, spontaneous inferences about others, and the interplay of automatic and control processes. Third, we examine how accurate initial impressions are, and what accuracy means, as well as deception and motivated biases and distortions. Fourth, we review recent research on effects of target features, perceiver features, and relations between targets and perceivers. Finally, we look at frameworks for understanding explanations, as distinct from descriptions: attribution theory, theory of mind, and simulation theory.

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