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Anthropomorphism Influences Perception of Computer-Animated Characters’ Actions’, Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci, nsm017. URL (consulted 18 July 2007): http://scan.oxfordjournals. org/cgi/content/abstract/nsm017v1
- of Disney Studies’ – Free Online Library. Afterimage. URL (consulted 30 June 2007): http: //www.thefreelibrary.com/Beyond+the+mouse-ear+gates%3a+the+won derful+world+of+Disney+studies-a018257190 Churchland, P.S. (2002) Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosop
, 2007
"... Computer-animated characters are common in popular culture and have begun to be used as experimental tools in social cognitive neurosciences. Here we investigated how appearance of these characters ’ influences perception of their actions. Subjects were presented with different characters animated e ..."
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Computer-animated characters are common in popular culture and have begun to be used as experimental tools in social cognitive neurosciences. Here we investigated how appearance of these characters ’ influences perception of their actions. Subjects were presented with different characters animated either with motion data captured from human actors or by interpolating between poses (keyframes) designed by an animator, and were asked to categorize the motion as biological or artificial. The response bias towards ‘biological’, derived from the Signal Detection Theory, decreases with characters’ anthropomorphism, while sensitivity is only affected by the simplest rendering style, point-light displays. fMRI showed that the response bias correlates positively with activity in the mentalizing network including left temporoparietal junction and anterior cingulate cortex, and negatively with regions sustaining motor resonance. The absence of significant effect of the characters on the brain activity suggests individual differences in the neural responses to unfamiliar artificial agents. While computer-animated characters are invaluable tools to investigate the neural bases of social cognition, further research is required to better understand how factors such as anthropomorphism affect their perception, in order to optimize their appearance for entertainment, research or therapeutic purposes.
Functional neuroimaging of autobiographical memory
- Trends in Cognitive Neurosciences
, 2007
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Research review: the neurobiology and genetics of maltreatment and adversity
- Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
, 2010
"... The neurobiological mechanisms by which childhood maltreatment heightens vulnerability to psycho-pathology remain poorly understood. It is likely that a complex interaction between environmental experiences (including poor caregiving) and an individual’s genetic make-up influence neurobiological dev ..."
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The neurobiological mechanisms by which childhood maltreatment heightens vulnerability to psycho-pathology remain poorly understood. It is likely that a complex interaction between environmental experiences (including poor caregiving) and an individual’s genetic make-up influence neurobiological development across infancy and childhood, which in turn sets the stage for a child’s psychological and emotional development. This review provides a concise synopsis of those studies investigating the neurobiological and genetic factors associated with childhood maltreatment and adversity. We first provide an overview of the neuroendocrine findings, drawing from animal and human studies. These studies indicate an association between early adversity and atypical development of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis stress response, which can predispose to psychiatric vulnerability in adulthood. We then review the neuroimaging findings of structural and functional brain differences in children and adults who have experienced childhood maltreatment. These studies offer evidence of several structural differences associated with early stress, most notably in the corpus callosum in children and the hippocampus in adults; functional studies have reported atypical activation of several brain regions, including decreased activity of the prefrontal cortex. Next we consider studies that suggest that the effect of environmental adversity may be conditional on an individual’s genotype. We also briefly consider the possible role that epigenetic mechanisms might play in mediating the impact of early adversity. Finally we consider several ways in which the neurobiological and genetic research may be relevant to clinical practice and intervention. Keywords: Child abuse, maltreatment, neuroscience, genetics, HPA, psychopathology, resilience, cortisol. There is a burgeoning interest in understanding how early adverse experiences impact on the developing brain (e.g., Caspi & Moffitt, 2006; Lupien, McEwen,
Early cortical specialization for faceto-face communication in human infants
- Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences
, 2008
"... This study examined the brain bases of early human social cognitive abilities. Specifically, we investigated whether cortical regions implicated in adults ’ perception of facial communication signals are functionally active in early human development. Four-month-old infants watched two kinds of dyna ..."
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Cited by 26 (10 self)
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This study examined the brain bases of early human social cognitive abilities. Specifically, we investigated whether cortical regions implicated in adults ’ perception of facial communication signals are functionally active in early human development. Four-month-old infants watched two kinds of dynamic scenarios in which a face either established mutual gaze or averted its gaze, both of which were followed by an eyebrow raise with accompanying smile. Haemodynamic responses were measured by near-infrared spectroscopy, permitting spatial localization of brain activation (experiment 1), and gamma-band oscillatory brain activity was analysed from electroencephalography to provide temporal information about the underlying cortical processes (experiment 2). The results revealed that perceiving facial communication signals activates areas in the infant temporal and prefrontal cortex that correspond to the brain regions implicated in these processes in adults. In addition, mutual gaze itself, and the eyebrow raise with accompanying smile in the context of mutual gaze, produce similar cortical activations. This pattern of results suggests an early specialization of the cortical network involved in the perception of facial communication cues, which is essential for infants ’ interactions with, and learning from, others.
Social Cognitive Development During Adolescence
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
, 2006
"... Social relationships are particularly important during adolescence. In recent years, histological and MRI studies have shown that the brain is subject to considerable structural development during adolescence. Brain regions that are implicated in social cognition, including parts of prefrontal, pari ..."
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Cited by 25 (0 self)
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Social relationships are particularly important during adolescence. In recent years, histological and MRI studies have shown that the brain is subject to considerable structural development during adolescence. Brain regions that are implicated in social cognition, including parts of prefrontal, parietal and superior temporal cortex, undergo the most pronounced and prolonged change. However, the development of social cognition during adolescence and its neural underpinnings remains poorly understood. Here, we begin by outlining how the brain changes between childhood and adulthood. We then describe findings that have emerged from behavioural and neuroimaging studies of the recognition of facial expression during adolescence. Finally, we present new data that demonstrate development of emotional perspective taking during adolescence. In this study, 112 participants, aged 8–36 years, performed a computerised task that involved taking an emotional perspective either from the participant’s own point of view or from that of another person. The results showed that average difference in reaction time (RT) to answer questions in the first person perspective (1PP) and third person perspective (3PP) significantly decreased with age. The RT difference of adults tended to cluster close to the zero line (3PP1PP), while a greater proportion of pre-adolescents had higher difference values in both the positive (3PP>1PP) and negative direction (1PP> 3PP) of the scale. The data suggest that the efficiency, and possibly strategy, of perspective taking develop in parallel with brain maturation and psychosocial development during adolescence.
P (2009) ‘Social Psychology as a Natural Kind
- Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13
"... Although typically defined as the study of how people and groups interact, the field of social psychology comprises several disparate domains that make only indirect contributions to understanding interpersonal interaction, such as emotion, attitudes and the self. Although these various phenomena s ..."
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Cited by 24 (3 self)
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Although typically defined as the study of how people and groups interact, the field of social psychology comprises several disparate domains that make only indirect contributions to understanding interpersonal interaction, such as emotion, attitudes and the self. Although these various phenomena seem to have little in common, recent evidence indicates that the topics at the core of social psychology form a natural group of domains with a common functional neuroanatomy, centered on the medial prefrontal cortex. That self-referential, attitudinal, affective and other social phenomena converge on this region might reflect their shared reliance on inexact and internally generated estimates that differ from the more precise representations underlying other psychological phenomena. What is social psychology? A common definition of social psychology suggests that the field represents 'an attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others' How have these intrapersonal topics emerged as the central province of social psychology, ostensibly the science of understanding humans in interpersonal contexts? Why instead have these topics not formed a core part of cognitive psychology, which explicitly attempts to model the mental operations that support other such within-person abilities such as perception, attention and memory? Moreover, why have several phenomena with clear implications for interpersonal behavior, such as face identification and language, become central pursuits within cognitive science while remaining comparatively peripheral to social psychology? Although a coherent sense of self, stable attitudes and a rich repertoire of emotional experience doubtlessly have vital roles in interpersonal interaction, it is unclear how they bear more directly on social behavior than some of the abilities that have been relatively neglected by social psychology. Over the past decade and a half, studies using neuroimaging and neuropsychological patients have provided a surprising but consistent answer to the question of what, if anything, binds these disparate topics within social psychology: a common neural basis. This work has demonstrated that four seemingly distinct cognitive phenomenathinking about oneself, accessing one's attitudes, the experience of emotion and inferring the contents of another person's mind -all converge on a single brain region, the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). Such observations suggest that contemporary social psychology, far from being a patchwork of unrelated research questions, is the science of a set of closely related phenomena with a common functional neuroanatomy. Indeed, the neural confluence of self, attitudes, emotional experience and mental state inference implies that these phenomena pose a common cognitive challenge to the human mind, met by a common processing solution MPFC contributions to 'social' phenomena Here, I review findings that suggest the ubiquity of MPFC involvement in four topics of central interest to social psychologists: the self-concept, attitudes and evaluation, emotional experience and understanding the minds of others. The goal is to provide an impressionistic -rather than exhaustive -overview of the surprising convergence of such 'social' abilities in the MPFC. Accordingly, discussion of other brain regions known to contribute to these phenomena is deferred (Box 1). Self-concept More than a dozen neuroimaging studies have examined the neural basis of the self-concept, as traditionally operationalized by social psychologists (Box 2), and these studies have ubiquitously linked self-referential processing to activity in MPFC
Dynamic cultural influences on neural representations of the self
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
, 2010
"... & People living in multicultural environments often encoun-ter situations which require them to acquire different cultural schemas and to switch between these cultural schemas depend-ing on their immediate sociocultural context. Prior behavioral studies show that priming cultural schemas reliabl ..."
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Cited by 24 (4 self)
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& People living in multicultural environments often encoun-ter situations which require them to acquire different cultural schemas and to switch between these cultural schemas depend-ing on their immediate sociocultural context. Prior behavioral studies show that priming cultural schemas reliably impacts mental processes and behavior underlying self-concept. How-ever, less well understood is whether or not cultural priming affects neurobiological mechanisms underlying the self. Here we examined whether priming cultural values of individualism and collectivism in bicultural individuals affects neural activity in cortical midline structures underlying self-relevant processes using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Biculturals primed with individualistic values showed increased activation within medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cor-tex (PCC) during general relative to contextual self-judgments, whereas biculturals primed with collectivistic values showed in-creased response within MPFC and PCC during contextual rel-ative to general self-judgments. Moreover, degree of cultural priming was positively correlated with degree of MPFC and PCC activity during culturally congruent self-judgments. These findings illustrate the dynamic influence of culture on neural representations underlying the self and, more broadly, suggest a neurobiological basis by which people acculturate to novel environments. &
Alternative mechanisms for regulating racial responses according to internal vs. external cues
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
, 2006
"... extent to which internally and externally driven regulatory processes arise from the same mechanism is unknown. Whereas the regulation of race bias according to internal cues has been associated with conflict-monitoring processes and activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), we prop ..."
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Cited by 23 (9 self)
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extent to which internally and externally driven regulatory processes arise from the same mechanism is unknown. Whereas the regulation of race bias according to internal cues has been associated with conflict-monitoring processes and activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), we proposed that responses regulated according to external cues to respond without prejudice involves mechanisms of error-perception, a process associated with rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) activity. We recruited low-prejudice participants who reported high or low sensitivity to non-prejudiced norms, and participants completed a stereotype inhibition task in private or public while electroencephalography was recorded. Analysis of event-related potentials revealed that the error-related negativity component, linked to dACC activity, predicted behavioural control of bias across conditions, whereas the error-perception component, linked to rACC activity, predicted control only in public among participants sensitive to external pressures to respond without prejudice.
Making Sense by Making Sentient: Effectance Motivation Increases Anthropomorphism
"... People commonly anthropomorphize nonhuman agents, imbuing everything from computers to pets to gods with humanlike capacities and mental experiences. Although widely observed, the determinants of anthropomorphism are poorly understood and rarely investigated. We propose that people anthropomorphize, ..."
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Cited by 23 (6 self)
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People commonly anthropomorphize nonhuman agents, imbuing everything from computers to pets to gods with humanlike capacities and mental experiences. Although widely observed, the determinants of anthropomorphism are poorly understood and rarely investigated. We propose that people anthropomorphize, in part, to satisfy effectance motivation—the basic and chronic motivation to attain mastery of one’s environment. Five studies demonstrated that increasing effectance motivation by manipulating the perceived unpredictability of a nonhuman agent or by increasing the incentives for mastery increases anthropomorphism. Neuroimaging data demonstrated that the neural correlates of this process are similar to those engaged when mentalizing other humans. A final study demonstrated that anthropomorphizing a stimulus makes it appear more predictable and understandable, suggesting that anthropomorphism satisfies effectance motivation. Anthropomorphizing nonhuman agents seems to satisfy the basic motivation to make sense of an otherwise uncertain environment.
How do we empathize with someone who is not like us? A functional magnetic resonance imaging study
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
, 2010
"... & Previous research on the neural underpinnings of empathy has been limited to affective situations experienced in a similar way by an observer and a target individual. In daily life we also interact with people whose responses to affective stimuli can be very different from our own. How do we u ..."
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Cited by 22 (3 self)
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& Previous research on the neural underpinnings of empathy has been limited to affective situations experienced in a similar way by an observer and a target individual. In daily life we also interact with people whose responses to affective stimuli can be very different from our own. How do we understand the affective states of these individuals? We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess how participants empathize with the feelings of patients who reacted with no pain to surgical procedures but with pain to a soft touch. Empathy for pain of these patients activated the same areas (insula, medial/anterior cingulate cortex) as empathy for persons who responded to painful stimuli in the same way as the observer. Empathy in a situation that was aversive only for the observer but neutral for the patient recruited areas involved in self–
