Reduced sensitivity to minimum-jerk biological motion in autism spectrum conditions

We compared psychophysical thresholds for biological and non-biological motion detection in adults with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) and controls. Participants watched animations of a biological stimulus (a moving hand) or a non-biological stimulus (a falling tennis ball). The velocity profile of the movement was varied between 100% natural motion (minimum-jerk (MJ) for the hand; gravitational (G) for the ball) and 100% constant velocity (CV). Participants were asked to judge which animation was ‘less natural’ in a two-interval forced-choice paradigm and thresholds were estimated adaptively. There was a significant interaction between group and condition. Thresholds in the MJ condition were lower than in the G condition for the NC group whereas there was no difference between the thresholds in the two conditions for the ASC group. Thus, unlike the controls, the ASC group did not show an increased sensitivity for perturbation to biological over non-biological velocity profiles.     

New light on chromotherapy: Grakov's 'Virtual Scanning' system of medical assessment and treatment

Virtual Scanning incorporates novel uses of colored light into its system of health assessment and therapy. Independent investigations of its effectiveness in Russia and the UK have revealed unique abilities to correct incipient and fully developed chronic conditions. As such it forms an important new addition to the field of Chromotherapy. It differs from most others, in that its development depended on discoveries in neuroscience by its inventor, and subsequent application of new models in computational neuroscience.     

La dimension psychique de la douleur chronique: modèles étiopathogéniques

Résumé  Le modèle bio-psycho-social de la douleur chronique est un modèle intégratif des dimensions biologiques psychologiques et sociales de la douleur. II permet de renoncer à la vision dualiste de la douleur, dans laquelle les dimensions somatique et psychogène s'excluaient mutuellement au lieu de se compléter. Ainsi, l'utilisation de ce modèle bio-psycho-social permet de considérer les comportements et les émotions comme partie prenante de la symptomatologie présentée par les douloureux chroniques. Il faut pourtant souligner que les points de vue concernant l'étiopathogénie de la dimension psychique de la douleur chronique sont multiples. Ainsi les neurosciences nous éclairent sur cette dimension grace aux phénomènes de sensibilisation et d'inhibition centrale du message douloureux. Les psychanalystes ont, quant à eux, recours à des notions telles que le traumatisme, le masochisme et la conversion. Les comportementalo-cognitivistes ont recours à des notions issues du modèle transactionnel du stress tels le sentiment de contr?le, l'anticipation anxieuse, les modalités d'adaptation (coping). II est encore difficile de faire une synthèse cohérente de cette multiplicité de références théoriques, mais sur le plan pratique, elle permet de diversifier la palette des possibilités thérapeutiques offertes aux patients.      

Evidence from pupillometry and fMRI indicates reduced neural response during vicarious social pain but not physical pain in autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by substantial social deficits. The notion that dysfunctions in neural circuits involved in sharing another's affect explain these deficits is appealing, but has received only modest experimental support. Here we evaluated a complex paradigm on the vicarious social pain of embarrassment to probe social deficits in ASD as to whether it is more potent than paradigms currently in use. To do so we acquired pupillometry and fMRI in young adults with ASD and matched healthy controls. During a simple vicarious physical pain task no differences emerged between groups in behavior, pupillometry, and neural activation of the anterior insula (AIC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). In contrast, processing complex vicarious social pain yielded reduced responses in ASD on all physiological measures of sharing another's affect. The reduced activity within the AIC was thereby explained by the severity of autistic symptoms in the social and affective domain. Additionally, behavioral responses lacked correspondence with the anterior cingulate and anterior insula cortex activity found in controls. Instead, behavioral responses in ASD were associated with hippocampal activity. The observed dissociation echoes the clinical observations that deficits in ASD are most pronounced in complex social situations and simple tasks may not probe the dysfunctions in neural pathways involved in sharing affect. Our results are highly relevant because individuals with ASD may have preserved abilities to share another's physical pain but still have problems with the vicarious representation of more complex emotions that matter in life. Hum Brain Mapp, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Rudimentary empathy in macaques’ social decision-making

Primates live in highly social environments, where prosocial behaviors promote social bonds and cohesion and contribute to group members’ fitness. Despite a growing interest in the biological basis of nonhuman primates’ social interactions, their underlying motivations remain a matter of debate. We report that macaque monkeys take into account the welfare of their peers when making behavioral choices bringing about pleasant or unpleasant outcomes to a monkey partner. Two macaques took turns in making decisions that could impact their own welfare or their partner’s. Most monkeys were inclined to refrain from delivering a mildly aversive airpuff and to grant juice rewards to their partner. Choice consistency between these two types of outcome suggests that monkeys display coherent motivations in different social interactions. Furthermore, spontaneous affilitative group interactions in the home environment were mostly consistent with the measured social decisions, thus emphasizing the impact of preexisting social bonds on decision-making. Interestingly, unique behavioral markers predicted these decisions: benevolence was associated with enhanced mutual gaze and empathic eye blinking, whereas indifference or malevolence was associated with lower or suppressed such responses. Together our results suggest that prosocial decision-making is sustained by an intrinsic motivation for social affiliation and controlled through positive and negative vicarious reinforcements.Animal sociality encompasses a broad range of behaviors presumed to influence social bonds and promote group cohesion (1–5). Although higher forms of altruism, such as costly care of unknown individuals or donations to charity, may require uniquely human mentalizing abilities, evidence supports an evolutionary continuity in the motivational and affective mechanisms that regulate attachment and affiliation (6–9). In nonhuman primates, the ubiquitous social play, grooming behavior, and their hormonal correlates suggest an ability to conceive what is pleasant or unpleasant for others (10–12). Pioneering experimental studies have shown that macaques can perceive and seek to alleviate their peers’ distress (13, 14) and more recent studies have attributed even to rodents the possibility of empathy and its promotion of helping behavior (2–4). Empathy is understood to refer to vicarious experiences of the affective states of others and is believed to improve adaptive social behaviors. Different components of empathy could be described, for instance, a cognitive one is related to the capacity to abstract other''s experience, and another one depends on the emotional display of a conspecific. All of these components are known to be deeply influenced by the level of closeness existing between individuals (7). The ultimate, evolutionary basis of altruism and empathy is a topic of scientific interest that has been extensively discussed (7, 15–20). One of the recurrent issues is whether the motivations that drive prosocial behavior are selfish or purely altruistic. This question equally concerns the ubiquitous grooming behavior of nonhuman primates that has been shown to be pleasant for both participants (10, 12) or the nature of human altruism, as seen, for example, in the difficulty of discerning the inner motivations of blood donors (21). There are still appealing unanswered questions related to the underlying cognitive and affective mechanisms of nonhuman primates’ social behaviors. In particular, the implication of vicariously induced affective states in nonhuman primates’ social decision-making remains a matter of debate (7, 16, 22). Different theories have emphasized the role of proximate affective mechanisms in shaping behavior mainly through social reinforcement (6, 7, 23, 24). For example, it has been proposed that matching a peer’s affective state to one’s own prior or current state might be involved in social decision-making (7, 25). In addition to that, it is not known whether a common motivation drives social behavior across different contexts, such as sharing food or avoid harming a conspecific.We investigated the motivational and affective basis of prosocial behavior through social decisions, asking whether macaques take into account the welfare of others (defined here as the exposure to a pleasant or unpleasant experience) when making choices leading to positive or negative outcomes on others. Specifically, we sought to determine whether their motivation is consistent for different outcome valences and is predicted by their sensitivity to a peer’s affective state. Pairs of animals sat face to face in a primate chair and alternately made forced-choice decisions by touching one of two visual cues that were projected on a transparent touch-sensitive panel (Fig. 1A), leading to the subsequent delivery of a combination of outcomes (Fig. 1 B and C). Social decisions consisted, for one monkey (the actor), in choosing an outcome for another monkey (the partner) vs. the same outcome to nobody. The outcome was either a drop of juice or an airpuff delivered close to the eyes. From the actor’s perspective, sensory events associated with partner and nobody outcomes were similar in every respect, except for their impact on the partner monkey. Choosing one or the other option did not determine the outcome for the actor monkey, who received a constant juice reward for touching one of the cues. Nonsocial decisions were interleaved with social decisions to control for the animals’ perception of the same outcomes when delivered to self. Eye-tracking devices were used to record the monkeys’ gaze and eye blinks as proxies of, respectively, social engagement and negative affect.Open in a separate windowFig. 1.Task design. (A) Two monkeys (actor in black, partner in light brown) faced each other on either side of transparent touch panels on which visual stimuli were virtually projected. Both animals could observe the images and each other at all times. Tubes connected to solenoid devices allowed delivering the different outcomes. (B) Monkeys made social decisions regarding potential appetitive (offer J-S) and aversive (offer A-S) outcomes for the partner and nonsocial decisions regarding similar outcomes for self (offers J-nS and A-nS). For nonsocial decisions involving airpuffs and for social decisions, the actor was always rewarded with a drop of juice so as to maintain an adequate motivation level. (C) Typical trial sequence. A visual cue instructed the monkeys as to their role (actor or partner) in the current trial. The actor first touched this cue, triggering the appearance of two additional images. The monkey indicated its choice by touching one of these images. The unchosen image was then turned off and following a delay the partner’s and actor’s outcomes were delivered, preceded by unique 500-ms-long warning tones.     

The risk factors of CVA in Jordan

This study aimed to identify the main risk factors of cerebrovascular accident (CVA) in Jordan. Identification of risk factors may help to reduce the incidence of CVA. A form was prepared for data collection which consisted of two parts to gather biodata and the incidence of risk factors. A sample of 200 patients with CVA (60% men) were randomly selected from various areas of Jordan. An age, region distribution, and gender-matched sample were selected to serve as control. Hypertension in the experimental group (66%) was significantly higher than the control group (32%) p < 0.001. Half of the subjects with stroke had diabetes compared to 22% of the control group (p < 0.001). Cardiovascular diseases were found in 29% of subjects with CVA compared to 14% in the control group (p < 0.001). About 27% of the CVA group had hyperlipidemia in comparison to 13% in the controls (p < 0.002). Smokers represented 54% of the experimental group compared to 30% of the control group (p < 0.05). An important finding in the present study was that about half of the selected subjects with strokes were under the age of 60 years. In conclusion, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, hyperlipidemia, and smoking are risk factors for CVA in Jordan.     

Early effect of thrombolysis on structural brain network organisation after anterior‐circulation stroke in the randomized WAKE‐UP trial

The symptoms of acute ischemic stroke can be attributed to disruption of the brain network architecture. Systemic thrombolysis is an effective treatment that preserves structural connectivity in the first days after the event. Its effect on the evolution of global network organisation is, however, not well understood. We present a secondary analysis of 269 patients from the randomized WAKE‐UP trial, comparing 127 imaging‐selected patients treated with alteplase with 142 controls who received placebo. We used indirect network mapping to quantify the impact of ischemic lesions on structural brain network organisation in terms of both global parameters of segregation and integration, and local disruption of individual connections. Network damage was estimated before randomization and again 22 to 36 h after administration of either alteplase or placebo. Evolution of structural network organisation was characterised by a loss in integration and gain in segregation, and this trajectory was attenuated by the administration of alteplase. Preserved brain network organization was associated with excellent functional outcome. Furthermore, the protective effect of alteplase was spatio‐topologically nonuniform, concentrating on a subnetwork of high centrality supported in the salvageable white matter surrounding the ischemic cores. This interplay between the location of the lesion, the pathophysiology of the ischemic penumbra, and the spatial embedding of the brain network explains the observed potential of thrombolysis to attenuate topological network damage early after stroke. Our findings might, in the future, lead to new brain network‐informed imaging biomarkers and improved prognostication in ischemic stroke.     

Sleep,Brain, and Cognition: The functions of sleep: A cognitive neuroscience perspective

This Special Feature explores the various purposes served by sleep, describing current attempts to understand how the many functions of sleep are instantiated in neural circuits and cognitive structures. Our feature reflects current experts'' opinions about, and insights into, the dynamic processes of sleep. In the last few decades, technological advances have supported the updated view that sleep plays an active role in both cognition and health. However, these roles are far from understood. This collection of articles evaluates the dynamic nature of sleep, how it evolves across the lifespan, becomes a competitive arena for memory systems through the influence of the autonomic system, supports the consolidation and integration of new memories, and how lucid dreams might originate. This set of papers highlights new approaches and insights that will lay the groundwork to eventually understand the full range of functions supported by sleep.     

Lacking social support is associated with structural divergences in hippocampus–default network co-variation patterns

Elaborate social interaction is a pivotal asset of the human species. The complexity of people’s social lives may constitute the dominating factor in the vibrancy of many individuals’ environment. The neural substrates linked to social cognition thus appear especially susceptible when people endure periods of social isolation: here, we zoom in on the systematic inter-relationships between two such neural substrates, the allocortical hippocampus (HC) and the neocortical default network (DN). Previous human social neuroscience studies have focused on the DN, while HC subfields have been studied in most detail in rodents and monkeys. To bring into contact these two separate research streams, we directly quantified how DN subregions are coherently co-expressed with specific HC subfields in the context of social isolation. A two-pronged decomposition of structural brain scans from ∼40 000 UK Biobank participants linked lack of social support to mostly lateral subregions in the DN patterns. This lateral DN association co-occurred with HC patterns that implicated especially subiculum, presubiculum, CA2, CA3 and dentate gyrus. Overall, the subregion divergences within spatially overlapping signatures of HC–DN co-variation followed a clear segregation into the left and right brain hemispheres. Separable regimes of structural HC–DN co-variation also showed distinct associations with the genetic predisposition for lacking social support at the population level.