Social anxiety and social norms in individualistic and collectivistic countries

Background: Social anxiety is assumed to be related to cultural norms across countries. Heinrichs et al. [2006: Behav Res Ther 44:1187–1197] compared individualistic and collectivistic countries and found higher social anxiety and more positive attitudes toward socially avoidant behaviors in collectivistic rather than in individualistic countries. However, the authors failed to include Latin American countries in the collectivistic group. Methods: To provide support for these earlier results within an extended sample of collectivistic countries, 478 undergraduate students from individualistic countries were compared with 388 undergraduate students from collectivistic countries (including East Asian and Latin American) via self‐report of social anxiety and social vignettes assessing social norms. Results: As expected, the results of Heinrichs et al. [2006: Behav Res Ther 44:1187–1197] were replicated for the individualistic and Asian countries, but not for Latin American countries. Latin American countries displayed the lowest social anxiety levels, whereas the collectivistic East Asian group displayed the highest. Conclusions: These findings indicate that while culture‐mediated social norms affect social anxiety and might help to shed light on the etiology of social anxiety disorder, the dimension of individualism–collectivism may not fully capture the relevant norms. Depression and Anxiety, 2010.© 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Neural representations of close others in collectivistic brains

Our recent work showed that close relationships result in shared cognitive and neural representations of the self and one's mother in collectivistic individuals (Zhu et al., 2007, Neuroimage, 34, 1310-7). However, it remains unknown whether close others, such as mother, father and best friend, are differentially represented in collectivistic brains. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a trait judgment task, we showed evidence that, while trait judgments of the self and mother generated comparable activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and anterior cingulate (ACC) of Chinese adults, trait judgments of mother induced greater MPFC/ACC activity than trait judgments of father and best friend. Our results suggest that, while neural representations of the self and mother overlapped in the MPFC/ACC, close others such as mother, father and best friend are unequally represented in the MPFC/ACC of collectivistic brains.     

Medial prefrontal activity differentiates self from close others

A key question in psychology and neuroscience is the extentto which the neural representation of others is incorporatedwith, or is distinct from, our concept of self. Recent neuroimagingresearch has emphasized the importance of a region in the medialprefrontal cortex [MPFC; Brodmann's area (BA) 10] when performingself-referent tasks. Specifically, previous studies have reportedselective MPFC recruitment when making judgments about the selfrelative to a familiar but personally unknown other. The presentevent-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study extendsthese findings to judgments about personally known others. Subjectswere imaged while making trait adjective judgments in one ofthe three conditions: (i) whether the adjective described theself; (ii) whether the adjective described an intimate other(i.e., a best friend); or (iii) whether the adjective was presentedin uppercase letters. Making judgments about the self relativeto an intimate other selectively activated the MPFC region previouslyimplicated in the self-processing literature. These resultssuggest that while we may incorporate intimate others into ourself-concept, the neural correlates of the self remain distinctfrom intimate and non-intimate others.     

Neural basis of altered earlier attention and higher order biological motion processing in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia patients have impairments of biological motion (BM) perception, which provides critical information about social cognition. Because social cognition is underpinned by attention, the impairments of BM perception in schizophrenia could be partially attributable to altered attention. To elucidate the impairments in attention and social perception in schizophrenia, we investigated the neural basis of impaired BM processing using MRI in respect to attention deficits by eye tracker. Voxel-based morphometry was performed to evaluate the relationship between BM perception and gray matter (GM) volume. The temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and anterior superior temporal sulcus (aSTS) were related to task accuracy. However, when the effect of attention (i.e., eye movement) was controlled, the relationship in TPJ became non-significant, while aSTS showed a significant relationship with BM perception. Alteration in TPJ might be associated with inefficient attentional strategy, whereas dysfunctional aSTS might be correlated with deficit in higher order BM processing per se. Several cognitive levels as well as corresponding brain areas are possibly involved in the manifestation of social cognitive deficits in schizophrenia.     

Neural substrates for functionally discriminating self-face from personally familiar faces

Understanding the neurobiological substrates of self-recognition yields important insight into socially and clinically critical cognitive functions such as theory of mind. Experimental evidence suggests that right frontal and parietal lobes preferentially process self-referent information. Recognition of one's own face is an important parameter of self-recognition, but well-controlled experimental data on the brain substrates of self-face recognition is limited. The goal of this study was to characterize the activation specific to self-face in comparison with control conditions of two levels of familiarity: unknown unfamiliar face and the more stringent control of a personally familiar face. We studied 12 healthy volunteers who made "unknown," "familiar," and "self" judgments about photographs of three types of faces: six different novel faces, a personally familiar face (participant's fraternity brother), and their own face during an event-related functional MRI (fMRI) experiment. Contrasting unknown faces with baseline showed activation of the inferior occipital lobe, which supports previous findings suggesting the presence of a generalized face-processing area within the inferior occipital-temporal region. Activation in response to a familiar face, when contrasted with an unknown face, invoked insula, middle temporal, inferior parietal, and medial frontal lobe activation, which is consistent with an existing hypothesis suggesting familiar face recognition taps neural substrates that are different from those involved in general facial processing. Brain response to self-face, when contrasted with familiar face, revealed activation in the right superior frontal gyrus, medial frontal and inferior parietal lobes, and left middle temporal gyrus. The contrast familiar vs. self produced activation only in the anterior cingulate gyrus. Our results support the existence of a bilateral network for both perceptual and executive aspects of self-face processing that cannot be accounted for by a simple hemispheric dominance model. This network is similar to those implicated in social cognition, mirror neuron matching, and face-name matching. Our findings also show that some regions of the medial frontal and parietal lobes are specifically activated by familiar faces but not unknown or self-faces, indicating that these regions may serve as markers of face familiarity and that the differences between activation associated with self-face recognition and familiar face recognition are subtle and appear to be localized to lateral frontal, parietal, and temporal regions.     

Probing culture in the head: the neural correlates of relational models

Relational Models Theory or RMT proposes that there are four universal ways in which socio-economic relations can be organized. According to the RMT, each of its four relational models (Communal Sharing, Authority Ranking, Equality Matching, and Market Pricing) is associated with a distinct cognitive representation, with a cumulative pattern in which each relational model is a superset of the next lower model. This report for the first time uses a combination of cognitive and the social neuroscience to put this model to the test.

RMT proposes that members of every culture use all four relational models, just in different proportions. It should therefore be possible to study their neural correlates in a mono-cultural sample. In this study, thirty-nine European-American students were imaged in a 3T Siemens Trio with a 24-channel head coil while rating the extent to which each relational model organized relationships with each of thirty-two acquaintances/friend/relatives in a boxcar design. FreeSurfer Functional Analysis Stream (FS-FAST) analyses revealed distinct patterns of activation for each of the relational models. The activations did not follow a cumulative hierarchical pattern, suggestive that this aspect of the RMT model should be revised.     

Conflict management of mothers and daughters belonging to individualistic and collectivistic cultural backgrounds: a comparative study

Research on the mother-daughter relationship during adolescence is mostly conducted in Western and European cultures where individualism is stressed. To examine ethnic/cultural differences and similarities in this relationship, 80 dyads of British (white) and Pakistani mothers and their adolescent daughters were studied. On the basis of the theories of cultural variability dimension and conflict face negotiation, it was hypothesized that mothers and daughters from the two cultures would use different styles of handling disagreements/conflicts. That is, Pakistani mothers and daughters would use an avoiding style, whereas British mothers and daughters would use either a dominating or compromising style, to a greater degree. It was also argued that Pakistani daughters and mothers will express more intimacy and relational harmony, will exhibit greater connectedness and mutuality and demonstrate lesser individuality and self-assertion compared to their British counterparts. However, it appeared that both the groups used an avoiding style equally, although the British group used a dominating style more than Pakistani group. As hypothesized, Pakistani mothers and daughters expressed more intimacy, relational harmony, connectedness and mutuality and lesser individuality than British mothers and daughters.     

Neural basis of spontaneous thought processes

Studies examining thought processes have focused upon the deliberate, goal-directed mental processes occurring during complex cognitive tasks. Spontaneously occurring thought processes have, on the other hand, received much less attention. Such spontaneous thought processes occur frequently when no task is present or when task demands are low. Although their existence has been recognised, their study has been difficult due to lack of direct behavioural measures. Nevertheless, a number of behavioural methods based on subjects' verbal reports have been developed. Findings derived using such behavioural methods suggest that spontaneous thought processes share common cognitive mechanisms with purposeful, task-related thought processes. Furthermore, evidence from neuroimaging observations is accumulating suggesting similar conclusions about the neural basis of spontaneous thought processes. These neuroimaging findings demonstrate an overlap in the pattern of activation between various cognitive tasks and rest, with a number of higher cortical regions activated in common, including visual areas, medial temporal lobe, and lateral cortical association areas. Many of these observations have, however, been based upon comparisons between rest and tasks posing relatively high cognitive demands. In contrast, here we report an fMRI study in which rest was compared to a simple left/right response task of minimal cognitive demands. Rest was associated with greater activation in temporopolar cortex, parahippocampus, rostrolateral prefrontal cortex, parietal and visual cortical areas. Activation of temporal lobe structures was particularly extensive and robust, suggesting that long-term memory processes may form the core of spontaneous thought. By considering such long-term memory processes as an essential part of thought mechanisms, it may be possible to gain better understanding into spontaneous thought phenomena that have remained unaccounted for until now.     

Neural processing of vision and language in kindergarten is associated with prereading skills and predicts future literacy

The main objective of this longitudinal study was to investigate the neural predictors of reading acquisition. For this purpose, we followed a sample of 54 children from the end of kindergarten to the end of second grade. Preliterate children were tested for visual symbol (checkerboards, houses, faces, written words) and auditory language processing (spoken words) using a passive functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm. To examine brain–behavior relationships, we also tested cognitive–linguistic prereading skills at kindergarten age and reading performance of 48 of the same children 2 years later. Face‐selective response in the bilateral fusiform gyrus was positively associated with rapid automatized naming (RAN). Response to both spoken and written words at preliterate age was negatively associated with RAN in the dorsal temporo‐parietal language system. Longitudinally, neural response to faces in the ventral stream predicted future reading fluency. Here, stronger neural activity in inferior and middle temporal gyri at kindergarten age was associated with higher reading performance. Our results suggest that interindividual differences in the neural system of language and reading affect literacy acquisition and thus might serve as a marker for successful reading acquisition in preliterate children.     

社交恐怖障碍患者的父母养育方式和自我接纳

目的:探讨社交恐怖障碍患者的父母养育方式和自我接纳的特点。方法:对49例社交恐怖障碍患者和49例正常对照者进行一般社会人口学资料、父母养育方式评价量表(EMBU)和自我接纳问卷(SAQ)测评。结果:与正常对照组相比,社交恐怖障碍患者父母更少情感温暖、理解(P<0.01),母亲更多拒绝、否认和更少偏爱被试(P<0.05);逐步判别分析显示,母亲的温暖、理解具有统计学判别意义(P<0.01);社交恐怖障碍患者的自我接纳和自我评价显著低于正常组(P<0.01)。结论:社交恐怖障碍患者自我接纳程度低,父母养育方式中较少情感温暖、理解;母亲的情感温暖、理解可能与社交恐怖障碍有关。     

The therapist's use of self and cultures in children's psychotherapy groups

This paper presents a model for understanding decisions that a therapist makes concerning the use of the self as a therapeutic tool in children's psychotherapy groups. The parameters within which a therapist uses self is directly related to the development of the group's culture. It is proposed that two complementary cultures develop within children's groups, one, indigenous peer culture, strictly of the children's making and the other, therapeutic group culture, created by the therapist in collaboration with group members. Having taken the time to learn a group's indigenous peer culture the therapist can use its metaphors to speak to the children in their own language; eventually it will be possible to engage them in collaboratively building a meaning system which is uniquely designed to address their psychotherapeutic needs. Initially, when indigenous peer culture is predominant, the therapist uses self more receptively in order to connect with the children through empathic immersion, holding intolerable affects and developmental time travel; as treatment progresses and a therapeutic group culture is slowly constructed, the therapist may use him/her self for more change directed interventions through role modeling, confrontation and self disclosure.Chief Psychologist and Coordinator, Children's Clinical Services, Brookline Community Mental Health Center and Instructor, Psychiatry (Psychology), Harvard Medical School and private practice in Brookline and Newton Massachusetts.     

Neural similarity between mentalizing and live social interaction during the transition to adolescence

Social interactions are essential for human development, yet little neuroimaging research has examined their underlying neurocognitive mechanisms using socially interactive paradigms during childhood and adolescence. Recent neuroimaging research has revealed activity in the mentalizing network when children engage with a live social partner, even when mentalizing is not required. While this finding suggests that social‐interactive contexts may spontaneously engage mentalizing, it is not a direct test of how similarly the brain responds to these two contexts. The current study used representational similarity analysis on data from 8‐ to 14‐year‐olds who made mental and nonmental judgments about an abstract character and a live interaction partner during fMRI. A within‐subject, 2 (Mental/Nonmental) × 2 (Peer/Character) design enabled us to examine response pattern similarity between conditions, and estimate fit to three conceptual models of how the two contexts relate: (1) social interaction and mentalizing about an abstract character are represented similarly; (2) interactive peers and abstract characters are represented differently regardless of the evaluation type; and (3) mental and nonmental states are represented dissimilarly regardless of target. We found that the temporal poles represent mentalizing and peer interactions similarly (Model 1), suggesting a neurocognitive link between the two in these regions. Much of the rest of the social brain exhibits different representations of interactive peers and abstract characters (Model 2). Our findings highlight the importance of studying social‐cognitive processes using interactive approaches, and the utility of pattern‐based analyses for understanding how social‐cognitive processes relate to each other.     

Neural basis of stereotype-induced shifts in women's mental rotation performance

Recent negative focus on women's academic abilities has fueleddisputes over gender disparities in the sciences. The controversyderives, in part, from women's relatively poorer performancein aptitude tests, many of which require skills of spatial reasoning.We used functional magnetic imaging to examine the neural structureunderlying shifts in women's performance of a spatial reasoningtask induced by positive and negative stereotypes. Three groupsof participants performed a task involving imagined rotationsof the self. Prior to scanning, the positive stereotype groupwas exposed to a false but plausible stereotype of women's superiorperspective-taking abilities; the negative stereotype groupwas exposed to the pervasive stereotype that men outperformwomen on spatial tasks; and the control group received neutralinformation. The significantly poorer performance we found inthe negative stereotype group corresponded to increased activationin brain regions associated with increased emotional load. Incontrast, the significantly improved performance we found inthe positive stereotype group was associated with increasedactivation in visual processing areas and, to a lesser degree,complex working memory processes. These findings suggest thatstereotype messages affect the brain selectively, with positivemessages producing relatively more efficient neural strategiesthan negative messages.     

Fear Recognition and the Neural Basis of Social Cognition

Recent developments in cognitive neuroscience and neurobiology emphasise the interface between our emotions, our feelings and our ability to interact appropriately in social situations. The neural basis of social cognition is subject to intensive research in both humans and non-human primates, research that is providing exciting, provocative and yet consistent findings. Centre stage is the role of efferent and afferent connectivity between the amygdala and neocortical brain regions, now believed to be critical for the processing of social information. Recent research suggests that a sub-cortical neural pathway, routed through the amygdala, may turn out to be a key player in the mystery of why humans are so prone to disorders of social cognition. This pathway responds to direct eye contact, one of many classes of potential threat. In humans, arousal evoked by this exquisitely social stimulus is modulated and controlled by a variety of specific cortical regions. Neural circuits that evolved for the purpose of fear detection in other's faces, an essentially threatening stimulus, are now associated with the acquisition of social skills and appropriate responsiveness in social encounters.     

Neural correlates of the implicit association test: evidence for semantic and emotional processing

The implicit association test (IAT) has been widely used in social cognitive research over the past decade. Controversies have arisen over what cognitive processes are being tapped into using this task. While most models use behavioral (RT) results to support their claims, little research has examined neurocognitive correlates of these behavioral measures. The present study measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) of participants while completing a gay-straight IAT in order to further understand the processes involved in a typical group bias IAT. Results indicated significantly smaller N400 amplitudes and significantly larger LPP amplitudes for compatible trials than for incompatible trials, suggesting that both the semantic and emotional congruence of stimuli paired together in an IAT trial contribute to the typical RT differences found, while no differences were present for earlier ERP components including the N2. These findings are discussed with respect to early and late processing in group bias IATs.     

Familiarity promotes the blurring of self and other in the neural representation of threat

Neurobiological investigations of empathy often support an embodied simulation account. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we monitored statistical associations between brain activations indicating self-focused threat to those indicating threats to a familiar friend or an unfamiliar stranger. Results in regions such as the anterior insula, putamen and supramarginal gyrus indicate that self-focused threat activations are robustly correlated with friend-focused threat activations but not stranger-focused threat activations. These results suggest that one of the defining features of human social bonding may be increasing levels of overlap between neural representations of self and other. This article presents a novel and important methodological approach to fMRI empathy studies, which informs how differences in brain activation can be detected in such studies and how covariate approaches can provide novel and important information regarding the brain and empathy.     

Exploring the role of self/other perspective-shifting in theory of mind with behavioural and EEG measures

ABSTRACT

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to compute and attribute mental states to oneself and other people. This study sought to assess the extent of differentiation between “Self” and “Other” in ToM processes, and, of particular importance, the key role of perspective-shifting between “Self” and “Other”. Utilizing a newly established false-belief paradigm in a matched design, healthy adult participants completed the task whilst behavioural measures (response times, error rates) and electrophysiological (EEG) recordings were taken. Results revealed that self-oriented belief-attribution was faster and less error-prone than other-oriented belief-attribution, and demonstrated a key role of perspective-shifting. Perspective shifts from Self-to-Other resulted in longer response times and more errors than shifts from Other-to-Self. In contrast, no difference between self and other probes was found in no perspective-shift trials. Reflecting this, EEG recordings showed a significant interaction between Perspective-Shifting and Probe Type at an early onset across right parieto/occipito-lateral areas (250 ms post-stimulus onset), and across frontal-central areas from 500 ms post-stimulus onset, indicating the key role of these areas in ToM engagement. Results demonstrate that “Self” and “Other” can be distinguished at a behavioural level, and highlight the critical role of “Perspective-Shifting” in ToM processes.     

Approach or avoidance: Neural correlates of intelligence evaluation from faces

Intelligence is among the key determinants of power and social status in modern societies. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we examined the neural correlates of intelligence evaluation from faces. Participants underwent scans while they evaluated the perceived intelligence and friendliness of faces. We found that medial orbitofrontal cortex activity increased linearly with friendliness ratings. The relationship between perceived intelligence and brain activity was positively linear in the right caudate nucleus and U‐shaped (i.e., strong responses to unintelligent‐looking or intelligent‐looking faces) in the right anterior insula/inferior frontal gyrus. Perceived intelligence was also significantly positively correlated with both friendliness and attractiveness. Furthermore, intelligence rating scores had a positive linear effect on reaction times in the friendliness rating task, suggesting that participants had greater conflicts when making friendliness judgments for faces that appeared to belong to intelligent individuals. In addition, the degree of this effect predicted individual differences in the positive linear modulatory effect of intelligence scores in the right caudate nucleus. Our interpretation was that the activity in the caudate nucleus revealed an approach‐avoidance conflict with regard to highly intelligent people, that is, they were perceived as attractive but also potentially threatening. Although our interpretations are merely suggestive because we did not measure the approach‐avoidance behaviors directly, our findings have important implications for understanding the dynamics of human interaction in modern societies that increasingly allocate power and status based on intelligence.