Electrophysiological responses to violations of expectation from eye gaze and arrow cues

Isolating processes within the brain that are specific to human behavior is a key goal for social neuroscience. The current research was an attempt to test whether recent findings of enhanced negative ERPs in response to unexpected human gaze are unique to eye gaze stimuli by comparing the effects of gaze cues with the effects of an arrow cue. ERPs were recorded while participants (N = 30) observed a virtual actor or an arrow that gazed (or pointed) either toward (object congruent) or away from (object incongruent) a flashing checkerboard. An enhanced negative ERP (N300) in response to object incongruent compared to object congruent trials was recorded for both eye gaze and arrow stimuli. The findings are interpreted as reflecting a domain general mechanism for detecting unexpected events.     

Episodic memory and self-awareness in Asperger Syndrome: Analysis of memory narratives

Previous findings from researchers on individuals with Asperger Syndrome (AS) suggest peculiarities of autobiographical memory (AM). They have shown a personal episodic memory deficit in the absence of a personal semantic memory impairment. The primary aim of this study was to explore AM in individuals with AS, and more specifically to investigate the link between episodic memory, self-awareness, and autonoetic consciousness through language analysis. We asked fifteen adults with AS and fifteen age- and IQ-matched controls to recall autobiographical memories from three life periods. Recorded interviews were processed using Alceste software. We found that participants with AS recalled fewer and less-detailed episodic memories than did controls. A content analysis revealed that family-related vocabulary as well as possessive pronouns was significantly less frequent in AS interviews than in those of controls. In conclusion, our results support the hypothesis that a deficiency of episodic memory may be due to poor awareness of the self in social relationships. Reduced use of possessive pronouns may also indicate less self-investment in life experiences, which would in turn impact recall.     

Somatics: Investigating the common ground of western body–mind disciplines

Western body–mind disciplines (known by the name of somatics) encompass ways of working with the body that are therapeutic, educational, creative and physically expressive. This literature review uses a ‘bird's eye view’ meant to provide a comprehensive synthesis of somatic theory. This brief analysis of somatic theory examines common principles behind somatic work rather than necessarily differentiating between the wide variety of available practices. This review aims to consolidate somatic theory by drawing from key theorists within the field of somatic movement education and therapy. In addition, this review also investigates an interdisciplinary approach exploring somatic work in relation to the fields of dance and body psychotherapy in an attempt to include related fields of knowledge. Furthermore, this review explores a new avenue of research looking at the historical roots of Western body–mind methods within the physical culture of the nineteenth century. Somatics and body psychotherapy have common ancestors although a great deal of further investigation remains for this type of historical analysis.     

Theory of mind deficits in patients with mild symptoms of major depressive disorder

The aim of this study was to investigate theory of mind (ToM) in a sample of depressed patients with mild symptom severity using a measure with varied cognitive processing demands. Patients demonstrated impaired performance on second-order, cognitively demanding ToM scenarios. Reduced ToM ability was associated with poor psychosocial functioning.     

Re-examining the cognitive phenotype in autism: A study with young Chinese children

Deficits consistently found in autism include an impaired “theory of mind”, weak central coherence, and deficits in executive function. The current study examined whether this traditional cluster of symptoms existed in a group of Chinese-speaking children with autism. Sixteen high-functioning, non-retarded children with autism were matched to 16 typically developing (TD) children on gender, non-verbal IQ and age. Non-verbal IQ's of all participants were measured using the Raven Progressive Matrices. Each participant was tested individually on measures of “theory of mind”, central coherence and executive function. Results indicated that most, but not all, participants with autism performed significantly poorer on two standard measures of first-order “theory of mind,” although there was no significant difference on two other measures of that domain. As expected, they performed significantly worse on executive function tasks. However, the hypothesis of weak central coherence in autism was not substantiated. There was no evidence that these three cognitive impairments co-existed in individuals with autism. More likely, each of these deficits appears singly or in pair instead of forming a cluster.     

How and where: Theory-of-mind in the brain

Theory of mind (ToM) is a core topic in both social neuroscience and developmental psychology, yet theory and data from each field have only minimally constrained thinking in the other. The two fields might be fruitfully integrated, however, if social neuroscientists sought evidence directly relevant to current accounts of ToM development: modularity, simulation, executive, and theory theory accounts. Here we extend the distinct predictions made by each theory to the neural level, describe neuroimaging evidence that in principle would be relevant to testing each account, and discuss such evidence where it exists. We propose that it would be mutually beneficial for both fields if ToM neuroimaging studies focused more on integrating developmental accounts of ToM acquisition with neuroimaging approaches, and suggest ways this might be achieved.     

Changing the mind? Not really—activity and connectivity in the caudate correlates with changes of choice

Changes in preference are inherently subjective and internal psychological events. We have identified brain events that presage ultimate (rather than intervening) choices, and signal the finality of a choice. At the first exposure to a pair of faces, caudate activity reflected the face of final choice, even if an initial choice was different. Furthermore, the orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus exhibited correlations only when the subject had made a choice that would not change.     

Can children with autism read emotions from the eyes? The Eyes Test revisited

This study aimed to test two new, simplified tasks related to the eye-test, targeting children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing controls (TD). Test-1 assessed the recognition of emotion/mental states with displays using one word and two eye-pictures, whereas Test-2 presented displays using two words and one eye-picture. Black and white photographs of children were used as materials. A cross-cultural study (Caucasian/East-Asian) with adults was initially carried out to verify generalizability across different ethnic groups. Cross-sectional trajectory analyses were used to compare emotion recognition from the eyes in the two tests. Trajectories were constructed linking performance on both tests either to chronological age or to different measures of mental age (receptive vocabulary based on the BPVS, CARS or ASQ for the ASD group). Performance improved with chronological age in both the ASD and TD groups of children. However, performance in Test-1 was significantly superior in children with ASD, who showed delayed onset and slower rate of improvement than TD children in Test-2. In both the ASD and TD groups the lowest error rate was recorded for the item ‘anger’, suggesting that threat-detection cue mechanisms may be intact in autism. In general, all children showed good performance on our novel tests, thus making them good candidates for assessing younger children and those with lower general abilities.