Outgrowing emotional egocentricity

Children are more egocentric than adults. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig  have demonstrated for the first time that children are also worse at putting themselves in other people’s emotional shoes. According to the researchers, the supramarginal gyrus region of the brain must be sufficiently developed in children for them to be able to overcome their egocentric take on the world.

When little Philip rejoices at winning the prize in a game, it is almost impossible for him to understand that his best friend Tom, who has just lost, is not as jubilant. The opposite also applies. “Children are simply more egocentric,” says Nikolaus Steinbeis, a researcher at the Leipzig-based Max Planck Institute, summing up the general hypothesis.

Egocentrism refers to the inability to differentiate between one’s own point of view and that of other people. Egocentric people consider themselves to be the centre of all activity and assess all events and circumstances from this perspective. They project their own ideas, fears and desires onto the environment and others.

Up to now, all that the research in this area had to offer was a few theoretical ideas and studies on the development of cognitive perspective-taking. The question concerning egocentrism in connection with people’s emotional states and the development of this phenomenon over the course of childhood had been largely ignored. “We currently know very little about how emotional egocentrism is expressed in childhood and about the neuronal and cognitive processes on which this is based,” explains Steinbeis.

In order to compare the emotional states of different age groups, Steinbeis used an innovative game involving monetary rewards and punishments. “Earlier studies have shown that similarly strong emotional states can be triggered in both children and adults using such rewards and punishments. Children take as much delight as adults in monetary rewards and they are just as frustrated by losses,” he says.

During the game, two people competed against each other without, however, being able to see each other.  Equipped with a computer screen and keyboard, the test subjects were asked to demonstrate their reaction speed. The participants were informed by the screen as to whether they or their opponents could rejoice in victory or despair in defeat. They were then asked to estimate the emotions experienced by their opponents. Of principal interest was how strongly the players’ own results influenced their assessments of their opponents’ emotional state. For example, if, due to their own status as a winner, a participant assessed their counterpart as being happy, despite the fact that the latter had just lost the game, this indicated that the winner was egocentrically projecting their own state onto the opponent.

The results of the study reveal that adults found it easy to overcome this tendency, whereas children between the ages of 6 and 13 tended to be guided by their own emotions when assessing those of others. The ability to assess the emotions of our counterparts independently of our own emotional state improves with age. “In general, the older a child is, the better he or she will be able to put itself in the emotional position of another person,” says Steinbeis, explaining the study findings.

In addition, the scientists measured the activity of different regions of the brain in MRI scanners and discovered a region that plays a crucial role in our ability to overcome our own feelings. The right supramarginal gyrus is a region of the temporoparietal junction, which is generally necessary for overcoming one’s own point of view. It is strongly linked with other brain regions like the anterior insula, which is exclusively responsible for enabling us to identify with other people’s emotional states. “This means that, with the right supramarginal gyrus, we have located a region which mainly functions in enabling us to overcome our own feelings,” says Steinbeis. Moreover, the scientists established that, with increasing age, the cortical thickness of the nerve fibres in this area declines. This suggests that the nerve fibres are more active as we get older.

Emotional egocentrism plays a major role in many conflicts, as the inability to overcome egocentric thinking leads to inappropriate social behaviour.  People affected by this condition experience rejection, which has been shown to have a negative impact on health and development. Scientists would therefore like to understand the reasons for socially detrimental behaviour and develop options for targeted intervention.

Does porn affect the brain? Scientists urge more study

Researchers found less grey matter in the brains of men who watched large amounts of sexually explicit material, according to a new study.

The research, which appeared Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, could not determine if porn actually caused the brain to shrink however, and the authors called for additional study on the topic.

"Future studies should investigate the effects of pornography longitudinally or expose naive participants to pornography and investigate the causal effects over time," said researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany.

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(Image caption: Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have identified the neurons in the brain that determine if a mouse will learn to cope with stress or become depressed. These neurons, located in a region of the brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex (green, left image), become hyperactive in depressed mice (right panel is close-up of left, yellow indicates activation). The team showed that this enhanced activity in fact causes depression.)

Dealing with stress – to cope or to quit?

We all deal with stress differently. For many of us, stress is a great motivator, spurring a renewed sense of vigor to solve life’s problems. But for others, stress triggers depression. We become overwhelmed, paralyzed by hopelessness and defeat. Up to 20% of us will struggle with depression at some point in life, and researchers are actively working to understand how and why this debilitating mental disease develops.

Today, a team of researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) led by Associate Professor Bo Li reveals a major insight into the neuronal basis of depression. They have identified the group of neurons in the brain that determines how a mouse responds to stress — whether with resilience or defeat.

For years, scientists have relied on brain imaging to look for neuronal changes during depression. They found that a region of the brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) becomes hyperactive in depressed people. This area of the brain is well known to play a role in the control of emotions and behavior, linking our feelings with our actions. But brain scans aren’t able to determine if increased activity in the mPFC causes depression, or if it is simply a byproduct of other neuronal changes. 

Dr. Li set out to identify the neuronal changes that underlie depression. In work published today in The Journal of Neuroscience,Li and his team, including Minghui Wang, Ph.D. and Zinaida Perova, Ph.D., used a mouse model for depression, known as “learned helplessness.” They combined this with a genetic trick to mark specific neurons that respond to stress. They discovered that neurons in the mPFC become highly excited in mice that are depressed. These same neurons are weakened in mice that aren’t deterred by stress – what scientists call resilient mice.

But the team still couldn’t be sure that enhanced signaling in the mPFC actually caused depression. To test this, they engineered mice to mimic the neuronal conditions they found in depressed mice. “We artificially enhanced the activity of these neurons using a powerful method known as chemical genetics,” says Li. “The results were remarkable: once-strong and resilient mice became helpless, showing all of the classic signs of depression.”

These results help explain how one promising new treatment for depression works and may lead to improvements in the treatment.

Doctors have had some success with deep brain stimulation (DBS), which suppresses the activity of neurons in a very specific portion of the brain. “We hope that our work will make DBS even more targeted and powerful,” says Li, “and we are working to develop additional strategies based upon the activity of the mPFC to treat depression.”

Next, Li is looking forward to exploring how the neurons in the mPFC become hyperactive in helpless mice. “These active neurons are surrounded by inhibitory neurons,” says Li. “Are the inhibitory neurons failing? Or are the active neurons somehow able to bypass their controls? These are some of the many open questions we are pursuing to understand the how depression develops.”

Altruism/egoism: a question of points of view

Different brain structures are at the basis of these behaviours

Sociality, cooperation and “prosocial” behaviours are the foundation of human society (and of the extraordinary development of our brain) and yet, taken individually, people often show huge variation in terms of altruism/egoism, both among individuals and in the same individual at different moments in time. What causes these differences in behaviour? An answer may be found by observing the activity of the brain, as was done by a group of researchers from SISSA in Trieste (in collaboration with the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, HCI lab, of the University of Udine). The brain circuits that are activated suggest that each of the two behaviour types corresponds to a cognitive analysis that emphasizes different aspects of the same situation.

It depends on how we experience the situation, or rather, on how our brain decides to experience it: when in a situation of need, will we adopt an altruistic behaviour, at the cost of putting our lives at risk, or will we behave selfishly? People make extremely variable decisions in such cases: some have a tendency to be always altruistic or always selfish, and some change their behaviour depending on the situation. What happens in a person’s mind when he/she decides to adopt one style rather than the other? This is the question that Giorgia Silani, a neuroscientist at SISSA, and colleagues addressed in a study just published in NeuroImage: “Even though prosocial behaviours are crucial to human society, and most probably helped to mould our cognitive system, we don’t always behave altruistically,” explains Silani. “We wanted to see what changes occur in our brain between one type of behaviour and the other”.

Silani and colleagues used a brain imaging technique which allows investigators to isolate the most active brain structures during a task. “In our experiments the participants were immersed in a virtual reality scenario in which they had to decide whether to help someone, and potentially put their own lives in danger, or save themselves without considering the other person” explains Silani. One innovative feature of the study is in fact the possibility of creating “ecological” experimental conditions, that is, as close as possible to a real situation.

“Traditionally, studies in this field used “games” in which participants had to allocate monetary gains, but many researchers including ourselves believe that these conditions are too artificial and tell us very little about altruism and egoism in daily life. However, obvious ethical constraints make it impossible to design realistic field experiments. Virtual reality has proved to be a good compromise that preserves the authenticity of the situation without putting anyone in danger”.

Silani and colleagues were able to see that in the brain of the tested subjects significantly different brain circuits are activated during the two types of behaviour (selfish/altruistic). In the first case the most active area was the “salience network” (anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex) whereas the most intensely involved structures in altruistic behaviour were the prefrontal cortex and the temporo-parietal junction.

“The salience network, which serves to increase the “conspicuity” of stimuli for the cognitive system, could make the dangers of the situation more apparent to the subject, leading the individual to behave in a selfish manner. Conversely, the areas that are most active when a subject decides to behave altruistically are the ones that the scientific literature commonly associates with the ability to take another person’s point of view, which would therefore make the subject more empathic and willing to act for the benefit of others”.

“Ours is the first study to measure neurophysiological data during decision-making in life-threatening situations” concludes Silani.  In addition to Silani, who coordinated the study, the SISSA team also includes Marco Zanon, first author, and Giovanni Novembre, whereas HCI Lab investigators are Nicola Zangrando and Luca Chittaro.

(Figure 1: Correspondence between the activity of the medial prefrontal cortex and study results in the second year versus the first year. Horizontal axis shows the degree of activity in the medial prefrontal cortex of various students; vertical axis shows performance improvement in the second academic year compared with the first.)

How the brain builds on prior knowledge

It is easier to learn something new if you can link it to something you already know. A specific part of the brain appears to be involved in this process: the medial prefrontal cortex. The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience has published these findings, from research by neuroscientists at Radboud university medical center and Radboud University, as an Early Access paper. The findings further enhance our understanding of the brain mechanisms that underlie effective learning.

Neuroscientist Marlieke van Kesteren tested two groups of students who had just started on their second-year of biology or pedagogy studies. While an MRI scanner was registering their brain activity, the students learned short sentences containing new information that expanded on their own or the other study programme. The following day, the students were tested on the information they had learned. As expected, they had retained the information that was related to their own programme better than the unrelated information.

In practice
During the successful retention of related information, a different part of the brain was active than when unrelated information was memorised. ‘The brain area we found, the medial prefrontal cortex, probably linked new information directly to prior knowledge’, Van Kesteren said. ‘In previous studies this brain area came to the fore as well, but only during simple tests. We have specifically shown that this area also plays a role in the neural basis of learning in educational practice.’

Link to study results
To her amazement, Van Kesteren also discovered that the activity in the medial prefrontal cortex corresponded with how well students performed in their second year, compared with the first. So is it possible to predict a student’s future academic success by placing him or her in a scanner? ‘No, certainly not, the links we found were not strong enough’, Van Kesteren explained. ‘We’re mostly talking here about differences of not more than 10% (Figure 1). What’s more, we can’t tell from a simple correlation like this what the chief reason is, and whether a whole lot of other factors are playing a role. But if we know exactly how our brain uses prior knowledge, we could try to address that knowledge more selectively before we start learning new information. For example, you could consider how the new information is related to what you already know.’

Van Kesteren added a tip for secondary school students taking their final exams: ‘If you don’t immediately know the answer to a question, you could first try recalling what you already know about that topic. This might help you to come up with the right answer after all.’

This publication is part of Marlieke van Kesteren’s PhD research, for which she obtained her doctorate at Radboud University Nijmegen in March 2013. In April 2013 she received a Rubicon grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), allowing her to work on her research into prior knowledge and memory at Stanford University in California for the next two years.

Controlling fear by modifying DNA

For many people, fear of flying or of spiders skittering across the lounge room floor is more than just a momentary increase in heart rate and a pair of sweaty palms.

It’s a hard-core phobia that can lead to crippling anxiety, but an international team of researchers, including neuroscientists from The University of Queensland’s Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), may have found a way to silence the gene that feeds this fear.

QBI senior research fellow Dr Timothy Bredy said the team had shed new light on the processes involved in loosening the grip of fear-related memories, particularly those implicated in conditions such as phobia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dr Bredy said they had discovered a novel mechanism of gene regulation associated with fear extinction, an inhibitory learning process thought to be critical for controlling fear when the response was no longer required.

“Rather than being static, the way genes function is incredibly dynamic and can be altered by our daily life experiences, with emotionally relevant events having a pronounced impact,” Dr Bredy said.

He said that by understanding the fundamental relationship between the way in which DNA functions without a change in the underlying sequence, future targets for therapeutic intervention in fear-related anxiety disorders could be developed.

“This may be achieved through the selective enhancement of memory for fear extinction by targeting genes that are subject to this novel mode of epigenetic regulation,” he said.

Mr Xiang Li, a PhD candidate and the study’s lead author, said fear extinction was a clear example of rapid behavioural adaptation, and that impairments in this process were critically involved in the development of fear-related anxiety disorders.

“What is most exciting is that we have revealed an epigenetic state that appears to be quite specific for fear extinction,” Mr Li said.

Dr Bredy said this was the first comprehensive analysis of how fear extinction was influenced by modifying DNA.

“It highlights the adaptive significance of experience-dependent changes in the chromatin landscape in the adult brain,” he said.

The collaborative research is being done by a team from QBI, the University of California, Irvine, and Harvard University.

The study was published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

How the brain pays attention

Neuroscientists identify a brain circuit that’s key to shifting our focus from one object to another.

Picking out a face in the crowd is a complicated task: Your brain has to retrieve the memory of the face you’re seeking, then hold it in place while scanning the crowd, paying special attention to finding a match.

A new study by MIT neuroscientists reveals how the brain achieves this type of focused attention on faces or other objects: A part of the prefrontal cortex known as the inferior frontal junction (IFJ) controls visual processing areas that are tuned to recognize a specific category of objects, the researchers report in the April 10 online edition of Science.

Scientists know much less about this type of attention, known as object-based attention, than spatial attention, which involves focusing on what’s happening in a particular location. However, the new findings suggest that these two types of attention have similar mechanisms involving related brain regions, says Robert Desimone, the Doris and Don Berkey Professor of Neuroscience, director of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and senior author of the paper.

“The interactions are surprisingly similar to those seen in spatial attention,” Desimone says. “It seems like it’s a parallel process involving different areas.”

In both cases, the prefrontal cortex — the control center for most cognitive functions — appears to take charge of the brain’s attention and control relevant parts of the visual cortex, which receives sensory input. For spatial attention, that involves regions of the visual cortex that map to a particular area within the visual field.

In the new study, the researchers found that IFJ coordinates with a brain region that processes faces, known as the fusiform face area (FFA), and a region that interprets information about places, known as the parahippocampal place area (PPA). The FFA and PPA were first identified in the human cortex by Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT.  

The IFJ has previously been implicated in a cognitive ability known as working memory, which is what allows us to gather and coordinate information while performing a task — such as remembering and dialing a phone number, or doing a math problem.

For this study, the researchers used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to scan human subjects as they viewed a series of overlapping images of faces and houses. Unlike functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which is commonly used to measure brain activity, MEG can reveal the precise timing of neural activity, down to the millisecond. The researchers presented the overlapping streams at two different rhythms — two images per second and 1.5 images per second — allowing them to identify brain regions responding to those stimuli.

“We wanted to frequency-tag each stimulus with different rhythms. When you look at all of the brain activity, you can tell apart signals that are engaged in processing each stimulus,” says Daniel Baldauf, a postdoc at the McGovern Institute and the lead author of the paper.

Each subject was told to pay attention to either faces or houses; because the houses and faces were in the same spot, the brain could not use spatial information to distinguish them. When the subjects were told to look for faces, activity in the FFA and the IFJ became synchronized, suggesting that they were communicating with each other. When the subjects paid attention to houses, the IFJ synchronized instead with the PPA.

The researchers also found that the communication was initiated by the IFJ and the activity was staggered by 20 milliseconds — about the amount of time it would take for neurons to electrically convey information from the IFJ to either the FFA or PPA. The researchers believe that the IFJ holds onto the idea of the object that the brain is looking for and directs the correct part of the brain to look for it.

The MEG scanner, as well as the study’s “elegant design,” were critical to discovering this relationship, says Robert Knight, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley who was not part of the research team.

“Functional MRI gives hints of connectivity,” Knight says, “but the time course is way too slow to show these millisecond-scale frequencies and to establish what they show, which is that the inferior frontal lobe is the prime driver.”

Further bolstering this idea, the researchers used an MRI-based method to measure the white matter that connects different brain regions and found that the IFJ is highly connected with both the FFA and PPA.

Members of Desimone’s lab are now studying how the brain shifts its focus between different types of sensory input, such as vision and hearing. They are also investigating whether it might be possible to train people to better focus their attention by controlling the brain interactions  involved in this process.

“You have to identify the basic neural mechanisms and do basic research studies, which sometimes generate ideas for things that could be of practical benefit,” Desimone says. “It’s too early to say whether this training is even going to work at all, but it’s something that we’re actively pursuing.”