Brain circuits signaling the absence of emotion in body language

Adaptive social behavior and mental well-being depend on not only recognizing emotional expressions but also, inferring the absence of emotion. While the neurobiology underwriting the perception of emotions is well studied, the mechanisms for detecting a lack of emotional content in social signals remain largely unknown. Here, using cutting-edge analyses of effective brain connectivity, we uncover the brain networks differentiating neutral and emotional body language. The data indicate greater activation of the right amygdala and midline cerebellar vermis to nonemotional as opposed to emotional body language. Most important, the effective connectivity between the amygdala and insula predicts people’s ability to recognize the absence of emotion. These conclusions extend substantially current concepts of emotion perception by suggesting engagement of limbic effective connectivity in recognizing the lack of emotion in body language reading. Furthermore, the outcome may advance the understanding of overly emotional interpretation of social signals in depression or schizophrenia by providing the missing link between body language reading and limbic pathways. The study thus opens an avenue for multidisciplinary research on social cognition and the underlying cerebrocerebellar networks, ranging from animal models to patients with neuropsychiatric conditions.

Distinct cerebellar regions for body motion discrimination

Visual processing of human movements is critical for adaptive social behavior. Cerebellar activations have been observed during biological motion discrimination in prior neuroimaging studies, and cerebellar lesions may be detrimental for this task. However, whether the cerebellum plays a causal role in biological motion discrimination has never been tested. Here, we addressed this issue in three different experiments by interfering with the posterior cerebellar lobe using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during a biological discrimination task. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found that TMS delivered at onset of the visual stimuli over the vermis (vermal lobule VI), but not over the left cerebellar hemisphere (left lobule VI/Crus I), interfered with participants’ ability to distinguish biological from scrambled motion compared to stimulation of a control site (vertex). Interestingly, when stimulation was delivered at a later time point (300 ms after stimulus onset), participants performed worse when TMS was delivered over the left cerebellar hemisphere compared to the vermis and the vertex (Experiment 3). Our data show that the posterior cerebellum is causally involved in biological motion discrimination and suggest that different sectors of the posterior cerebellar lobe may contribute to the task at different time points.

Issues and Recent Trends in the Assessment and Management of ID in Childhood

The Chapter begins with an attempt to understand disability aspect in general and assessment aspect extensively. This chapter would attempt to observe both classic and latest trends of assessment techniques. Since it was observed that the recent trends concentrate extensively on global concept, the present chapter would include assessment categories on different dimensions of ability, emotions and behaviors such as intelligence, achievement, adaptive, social behavior and emotional adjustment, communication/language, sensory status, motor skills, and health status. The adaptivity skills will be emphasized more since it was observed adaptive skills plays a crucial role in the children with intellectual disability. in this current chapter a number of critical issues concerning the assessment of children with intellectual disabilities, including definitional problems, psychometric factors, and practical difficulties would be proposed to help students, counselors, teachers and psychologists.

Striatal Associative Learning Signals Are Tuned to In-groups

An important feature of adaptive social behavior is the ability to flexibly modify future actions based on the successes or failures of past experiences. The ventral striatum (VS) occupies a central role in shaping behavior by using feedback to evaluate actions and guide learning. The current studies tested whether feedback indicating the need to update social knowledge would engage the VS, thereby facilitating subsequent learning. We also examined the sensitivity of these striatal signals to the value associated with social group membership. Across two fMRI studies, participants answered questions testing their knowledge about the preferences of personally relevant social groups who were high (in-group) or low (out-group) in social value. Participants received feedback indicating whether their responses were correct or incorrect on a trial-by-trial basis. After scanning, participants were given a surprise memory test examining memory for the different types of feedback. VS activity in response to social feedback correlated with subsequent memory, specifying a role for the VS in encoding and updating social knowledge. This effect was more robust in response to in-group than out-group feedback, indicating that the VS tracks variations in social value. These results provide novel evidence of a neurobiological mechanism adaptively tuned to the motivational relevance of the surrounding social environment that focuses learning efforts on the most valuable social outcomes and triggers adjustments in behavior when necessary.

Issues and Recent Trends in the Assessment and Management of ID in Childhood

The Chapter begins with an attempt to understand disability aspect in general and assessment aspect extensively. This chapter would attempt to observe both classic and latest trends of assessment techniques. Since it was observed that the recent trends concentrate extensively on global concept, the present chapter would include assessment categories on different dimensions of ability, emotions and behaviors such as intelligence, achievement, adaptive, social behavior and emotional adjustment, communication/language, sensory status, motor skills, and health status. The adaptivity skills will be emphasized more since it was observed adaptive skills plays a crucial role in the children with intellectual disability. in this current chapter a number of critical issues concerning the assessment of children with intellectual disabilities, including definitional problems, psychometric factors, and practical difficulties would be proposed to help students, counselors, teachers and psychologists.