Science posts

See science posts on page 38 below.

    • 2011
    • Justin M. Carré et al.
    • The social neuroendocrinology of human aggression
    • Testosterone concentrations fluctuate rapidly in response to competitive and aggressive interactions, suggesting that changes in testosterone rather than baseline differences shape ongoing and/or future competitive and aggressive behaviors. Although recent experiments in animal models provide compelling empirical support for this idea, studies in humans have focused largely on how competitive interactions drive changes in testosterone concentrations and not how these changes influence subsequent behavior. In this paper, we provide a review of the literature on testosterone and human aggression with a main focus on the role of testosterone dynamics in modulating reactive aggression. We also speculate on one putative neural mechanism through which testosterone may bias human aggressive behavior. Finally, we conclude by highlighting important questions that should be addressed in future research.
    • 2011
    • Christoph Eisenegger et al.
    • The role of testosterone in social interaction
    • Although animal researchers established the role of testosterone as a ‘social hormone’ decades ago, the investigation of its causal influence on human social behaviors has only recently begun. Here, we review and discuss recent studies showing the causal effects of testosterone on social interactions in animals and humans, and outline the basic neurobiological mechanisms that might underlie these effects. Based on these recent findings, we argue that the role of testosterone in human social behavior might be best understood in terms of the search for, and maintenance of, social status.
    • 2008
    • Leo Schilbach et al.
    • Minds at rest? Social cognition as the default mode of cognizing and its putative relationship to the “default system” of the brain
    • The “default system” of the brain has been described as a set of regions which are ‘activated’ during rest and ‘deactivated’ during cognitively effortful tasks. To investigate the reliability of task-related deactivations, we performed a meta-analysis across 12 fMRI studies. Our results replicate previous findings by implicating medial frontal and parietal brain regions as part of the “default system”. However, the cognitive correlates of these deactivations remain unclear. In light of the importance of social cognitive abilities for human beings and their propensity to engage in such activities, we relate our results to findings from neuroimaging studies of social cognition. This demonstrates a remarkable overlap between the brain regions typically involved in social cognitive processes and the “default system”. We, henceforth, suggest that the physiological ‘baseline’ of the brain is intimately linked t..
    • 2006
    • Terje Falck-Ytter et al.
    • Infants predict other people's action goals
    • Do infants come to understand other people's actions through a mirror neuron system that maps an observed action onto motor representations of that action? We demonstrate that a specialized system for action perception guides proactive goal-directed eye movements in 12-month-old but not in 6-month-old infants, providing direct support for this view. The activation of this system requires observing an interaction between the hand of the agent and an object.
    • 2014
    • Appelbaum, L et al.
    • The Dynamics of Proactive and Reactive Cognitive Control Processes in the Human Brain
    • In this study, we leveraged the high temporal resolution of EEG to examine the neural mechanisms underlying the flexible regulation of cognitive control that unfolds over different timescales. We measured behavioral and neural effects of color–word incongruency, as different groups of participants performed three different versions of color–word Stroop tasks in which the relative timing of the color and word features varied from trial to trial. For this purpose, we used a standard Stroop color identification task with equal congruent-to-incongruent proportions (50%/50%), along with two versions of the “Reverse Stroop” word identification tasks, for which we manipulated the incongruency proportion (50%/50% and 80%/20%). Two canonical ERP markers of neural processing of stimulus incongruency, the frontocentral negative polarity incongruency wave (NINC) and the late positive component (LPC), were evoked across the various conditions. Results indicated that color&..
    • 2007
    • Kozhevnikov, Maria
    • Cognitive styles in the context of modern psychology: Toward an integrated framework of cognitive style.
    • The goals of this article are to elucidate trends and perspectives in the field of cognitive style research and to propose an integrated framework to guide future research. This is accomplished by means of a comprehensive literature review of the major advances and the theoretical and experimental problems that have accumulated over the years and by a discussion of the promising theoretical models that can be further developed, in part, with modern neuroscience techniques and with research from different psychological fields. On the basis of the research reviewed in this article, the author suggests that cognitive styles represent heuristics that individuals use to process information about their environment. These heuristics can be identified at multiple levels of information processing, from perceptual to metacognitive, and they can be grouped according to the type of regulatory function they exert on processes ranging from automatic data encoding to conscious executive allocation ..
    • 1995
    • Cranton, Patricia et al.
    • Assessing Jung's psychological types: The PET Type Check.
    • Describes the development of the PET Type Check (PTC), a procedure for assessing Jung's psychological types. The PTC has 3 components: empirical, interpretive, and critical. The empirical component consists of 80 items rated on a 5-point scale and categorized into 8 psychological types. The analysis of individual type profiles constitutes the interpretive portion of the procedure. A collaborative process between participant and facilitator of questioning the profile and developing a strategy for growth and change forms the critical component. Results of a pilot study with 24 graduate students and evaluation of 2 PTC test versions indicate that the empirical portion of the procedure has acceptable reliability and validity, and participant feedback indicated that the interpretive and critical components are satisfactory, dependable, and trustworthy.
    • 1997
    • John E. Barbuto. JR
    • A CRITIQUE OF THE MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR AND ITS OPERATIONALIZATION OF CARL JUNG'S PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES
    • Personality, as represented by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and its interpretetive literature as a means of understanding behavior, is critically analyzed. Specifically, the dichotomous nature of the indices is critized as is its operationalization of Jung's psychological types. This paper argues that Jung's stated intentions for understanding individual behavior suggest that personality variables exist in various levels of consciousness and unconsciousness which require study to consider the proportions with which each exists. The paper also considers a reconstruction of the measure of Jung's psychological types and reconsideration of the descriptions and characteristics of each personality function measured.
    • 2006
    • Alan N. Hampton et al.
    • The Role of the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Abstract State-Based Inference during Decision Making in Humans
    • Many real-life decision-making problems incorporate higher-order structure, involving interdependencies between different stimuli, actions, and subsequent rewards. It is not known whether brain regions implicated in decision making, such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), use a stored model of the task structure to guide choice (model-based decision making) or merely learn action or state values without assuming higher-order structure as in standard reinforcement learning. To discriminate between these possibilities, we scanned human subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed a simple decision-making task with higher-order structure, probabilistic reversal learning. We found that neural activity in a key decision-making region, the vmPFC, was more consistent with a computational model that exploits higher-order structure than with simple reinforcement learning. These results suggest that brain regions, such as the vmPFC, use an abstract model..
    • 1999
    • R Elliott et al.
    • Ventromedial prefrontal cortex mediates guessing
    • Guessing is an important component of everyday cognition. The present study examined the neural substrates of guessing using a simple card-playing task in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Subjects were scanned under four conditions. In two, they were shown images of the back of a playing card and had to guess either the colour or the suit of the card. In the other two they were shown the face of a card and had to report either the colour or the suit. Guessing compared to reporting was associated with significant activations in lateral prefrontal cortex (right more than left), right orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, bilateral inferior parietal cortex and right thalamus. Increasing the guessing demands by manipulating the number of alternative outcomes was associated with activation of the left lateral and medial orbitofrontal cortex. These data suggest that while simple two choice guessing depends on an extensive neural system including regions of..

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