Neuroscience

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Posts tagged social cognition

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When good people do bad things When people get together in groups, unusual things can happen — both good and bad. Groups create important social institutions that an individual could not achieve alone, but there can be a darker side to such alliances: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group. “Although humans exhibit strong preferences for equity and moral prohibitions against harm in many contexts, people’s priorities change when there is an ‘us’ and a ‘them,’” says Rebecca Saxe, an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT. “A group of people will often engage in actions that are contrary to the private moral standards of each individual in that group, sweeping otherwise decent individuals into ‘mobs’ that commit looting, vandalism, even physical brutality.” Several factors play into this transformation. When people are in a group, they feel more anonymous, and less likely to be caught doing something wrong. They may also feel a diminished sense of personal responsibility for collective actions. Saxe and colleagues recently studied a third factor that cognitive scientists believe may be involved in this group dynamic: the hypothesis that when people are in groups, they “lose touch” with their own morals and beliefs, and become more likely to do things that they would normally believe are wrong. In a study that recently went online in the journal NeuroImage, the researchers measured brain activity in a part of the brain involved in thinking about oneself. They found that in some people, this activity was reduced when the subjects participated in a competition as part of a group, compared with when they competed as individuals. Those people were more likely to harm their competitors than people who did not exhibit this decreased brain activity. “This process alone does not account for intergroup conflict: Groups also promote anonymity, diminish personal responsibility, and encourage reframing harmful actions as ‘necessary for the greater good.’ Still, these results suggest that at least in some cases, explicitly reflecting on one’s own personal moral standards may help to attenuate the influence of ‘mob mentality,’” says Mina Cikara, a former MIT postdoc and lead author of the NeuroImage paper. Group dynamics Cikara, who is now an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, started this research project after experiencing the consequences of a “mob mentality”: During a visit to Yankee Stadium, her husband was ceaselessly heckled by Yankees fans for wearing a Red Sox cap. “What I decided to do was take the hat from him, thinking I would be a lesser target by virtue of the fact that I was a woman,” Cikara says. “I was so wrong. I have never been called names like that in my entire life.” The harassment, which continued throughout the trip back to Manhattan, provoked a strong reaction in Cikara, who isn’t even a Red Sox fan. “It was a really amazing experience because what I realized was I had gone from being an individual to being seen as a member of ‘Red Sox Nation.’ And the way that people responded to me, and the way I felt myself responding back, had changed, by virtue of this visual cue — the baseball hat,” she says. “Once you start feeling attacked on behalf of your group, however arbitrary, it changes your psychology.” Cikara, then a third-year graduate student at Princeton University, started to investigate the neural mechanisms behind the group dynamics that produce bad behavior. In the new study, done at MIT, Cikara, Saxe (who is also an associate member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research), former Harvard University graduate student Anna Jenkins, and former MIT lab manager Nicholas Dufour focused on a part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex. When someone is reflecting on himself or herself, this part of the brain lights up in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans. A couple of weeks before the study participants came in for the experiment, the researchers surveyed each of them about their social-media habits, as well as their moral beliefs and behavior. This allowed the researchers to create individualized statements for each subject that were true for that person — for example, “I have stolen food from shared refrigerators” or “I always apologize after bumping into someone.” When the subjects arrived at the lab, their brains were scanned as they played a game once on their own and once as part of a team. The purpose of the game was to press a button if they saw a statement related to social media, such as “I have more than 600 Facebook friends.” The subjects also saw their personalized moral statements mixed in with sentences about social media. Brain scans revealed that when subjects were playing for themselves, the medial prefrontal cortex lit up much more when they read moral statements about themselves than statements about others, consistent with previous findings. However, during the team competition, some people showed a much smaller difference in medial prefrontal cortex activation when they saw the moral statements about themselves compared to those about other people. Those people also turned out to be much more likely to harm members of the competing group during a task performed after the game. Each subject was asked to select photos that would appear with the published study, from a set of four photos apiece of two teammates and two members of the opposing team. The subjects with suppressed medial prefrontal cortex activity chose the least flattering photos of the opposing team members, but not of their own teammates. “This is a nice way of using neuroimaging to try to get insight into something that behaviorally has been really hard to explore,” says David Rand, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University who was not involved in the research. “It’s been hard to get a direct handle on the extent to which people within a group are tapping into their own understanding of things versus the group’s understanding.” Getting lost The researchers also found that after the game, people with reduced medial prefrontal cortex activity had more difficulty remembering the moral statements they had heard during the game. “If you need to encode something with regard to the self and that ability is somehow undermined when you’re competing with a group, then you should have poor memory associated with that reduction in medial prefrontal cortex signal, and that’s exactly what we see,” Cikara says. Cikara hopes to follow up on these findings to investigate what makes some people more likely to become “lost” in a group than others. She is also interested in studying whether people are slower to recognize themselves or pick themselves out of a photo lineup after being absorbed in a group activity.

When good people do bad things

When people get together in groups, unusual things can happen — both good and bad. Groups create important social institutions that an individual could not achieve alone, but there can be a darker side to such alliances: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group.

“Although humans exhibit strong preferences for equity and moral prohibitions against harm in many contexts, people’s priorities change when there is an ‘us’ and a ‘them,’” says Rebecca Saxe, an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT. “A group of people will often engage in actions that are contrary to the private moral standards of each individual in that group, sweeping otherwise decent individuals into ‘mobs’ that commit looting, vandalism, even physical brutality.”

Several factors play into this transformation. When people are in a group, they feel more anonymous, and less likely to be caught doing something wrong. They may also feel a diminished sense of personal responsibility for collective actions.

Saxe and colleagues recently studied a third factor that cognitive scientists believe may be involved in this group dynamic: the hypothesis that when people are in groups, they “lose touch” with their own morals and beliefs, and become more likely to do things that they would normally believe are wrong.

In a study that recently went online in the journal NeuroImage, the researchers measured brain activity in a part of the brain involved in thinking about oneself. They found that in some people, this activity was reduced when the subjects participated in a competition as part of a group, compared with when they competed as individuals. Those people were more likely to harm their competitors than people who did not exhibit this decreased brain activity.

“This process alone does not account for intergroup conflict: Groups also promote anonymity, diminish personal responsibility, and encourage reframing harmful actions as ‘necessary for the greater good.’ Still, these results suggest that at least in some cases, explicitly reflecting on one’s own personal moral standards may help to attenuate the influence of ‘mob mentality,’” says Mina Cikara, a former MIT postdoc and lead author of the NeuroImage paper.

Group dynamics

Cikara, who is now an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, started this research project after experiencing the consequences of a “mob mentality”: During a visit to Yankee Stadium, her husband was ceaselessly heckled by Yankees fans for wearing a Red Sox cap. “What I decided to do was take the hat from him, thinking I would be a lesser target by virtue of the fact that I was a woman,” Cikara says. “I was so wrong. I have never been called names like that in my entire life.”

The harassment, which continued throughout the trip back to Manhattan, provoked a strong reaction in Cikara, who isn’t even a Red Sox fan.

“It was a really amazing experience because what I realized was I had gone from being an individual to being seen as a member of ‘Red Sox Nation.’ And the way that people responded to me, and the way I felt myself responding back, had changed, by virtue of this visual cue — the baseball hat,” she says. “Once you start feeling attacked on behalf of your group, however arbitrary, it changes your psychology.”

Cikara, then a third-year graduate student at Princeton University, started to investigate the neural mechanisms behind the group dynamics that produce bad behavior. In the new study, done at MIT, Cikara, Saxe (who is also an associate member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research), former Harvard University graduate student Anna Jenkins, and former MIT lab manager Nicholas Dufour focused on a part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex. When someone is reflecting on himself or herself, this part of the brain lights up in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans.

A couple of weeks before the study participants came in for the experiment, the researchers surveyed each of them about their social-media habits, as well as their moral beliefs and behavior. This allowed the researchers to create individualized statements for each subject that were true for that person — for example, “I have stolen food from shared refrigerators” or “I always apologize after bumping into someone.”

When the subjects arrived at the lab, their brains were scanned as they played a game once on their own and once as part of a team. The purpose of the game was to press a button if they saw a statement related to social media, such as “I have more than 600 Facebook friends.”

The subjects also saw their personalized moral statements mixed in with sentences about social media. Brain scans revealed that when subjects were playing for themselves, the medial prefrontal cortex lit up much more when they read moral statements about themselves than statements about others, consistent with previous findings. However, during the team competition, some people showed a much smaller difference in medial prefrontal cortex activation when they saw the moral statements about themselves compared to those about other people.

Those people also turned out to be much more likely to harm members of the competing group during a task performed after the game. Each subject was asked to select photos that would appear with the published study, from a set of four photos apiece of two teammates and two members of the opposing team. The subjects with suppressed medial prefrontal cortex activity chose the least flattering photos of the opposing team members, but not of their own teammates.

“This is a nice way of using neuroimaging to try to get insight into something that behaviorally has been really hard to explore,” says David Rand, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University who was not involved in the research. “It’s been hard to get a direct handle on the extent to which people within a group are tapping into their own understanding of things versus the group’s understanding.”

Getting lost

The researchers also found that after the game, people with reduced medial prefrontal cortex activity had more difficulty remembering the moral statements they had heard during the game.

“If you need to encode something with regard to the self and that ability is somehow undermined when you’re competing with a group, then you should have poor memory associated with that reduction in medial prefrontal cortex signal, and that’s exactly what we see,” Cikara says.

Cikara hopes to follow up on these findings to investigate what makes some people more likely to become “lost” in a group than others. She is also interested in studying whether people are slower to recognize themselves or pick themselves out of a photo lineup after being absorbed in a group activity.

Filed under prefrontal cortex social cognition intergroup competition psychology neuroscience science

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(Image caption: MRI images from a neurotypical control (left) and an adult with complete agenesis of the corpus callosum (right). The corpus callosum is indicated in red, fading as the fibers enter the hemispheres in order to suggest that they continue on. The anterior commissure is indicated by light aqua. The image illustrates the dramatic lack of inter hemispheric connections in callosal agenesis. Credit: Lynn Paul/Caltech) Research Update: An Autism Connection Building on their prior work, a team of neuroscientists at Caltech now report that rare patients who are missing connections between the left and right sides of their brain—a condition known as agenesis of the corpus callosum (AgCC)—show a strikingly high incidence of autism. The study is the first to show a link between the two disorders. The findings are reported in a paper published April 22, 2014, in the journal Brain. The corpus callosum is the largest connection in the human brain, connecting the left and right brain hemispheres via about 200 million fibers. In very rare cases it is surgically cut to treat epilepsy—causing the famous “split-brain” syndrome, for whose discovery the late Caltech professor Roger Sperry received the Nobel Prize. People with AgCC are like split-brain patients in that they are missing their corpus callosum—except they are born this way. In spite of this significant brain malformation, many of these individuals are relatively high-functioning individuals, with jobs and families, but they tend to have difficulty interacting with other people, among other symptoms such as memory deficits and developmental delays. These difficulties in social behavior bear a strong resemblance to those faced by high-functioning people with autism spectrum disorder. "We and others had noted this resemblance between AgCC and autism before," explains Lynn Paul, lead author of the study and a lecturer in psychology at Caltech. But no one had directly compared the two groups of patients. This was a challenge that the Caltech team was uniquely positioned to do, she says, since it had studied patients from both groups over the years and had tested them on the same tasks. "When we made detailed comparisons, we found that about a third of people with AgCC would meet diagnostic criteria for an autism spectrum disorder in terms of their current symptoms," says Paul, who was the founding president of the National Organization for Disorders of the Corpus Callosum. The research was done in the laboratory of Ralph Adolphs, Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and professor of biology at Caltech and a coauthor of the study. The team looked at a range of different tasks performed by both sets of patients. Some of the exercises that involved certain social behaviors were videotaped and analyzed by the researchers to assess for autism. The team also gave the individuals questionnaires to fill out that measured factors like intelligence and social functioning. "Comparing different clinical groups on exactly the same tasks within the same lab is very rare, and it took us about a decade to accrue all of the data," Adolphs notes. One important difference between the two sets of patients did emerge in the comparison. People with autism spectrum disorder showed autism-like behaviors in infancy and early childhood, but the same type of behaviors did not seem to emerge in individuals with AgCC until later in childhood or the teen years. "Around ages 9 through 12, a normally formed corpus callosum goes through a developmental ‘growth spurt’ which contributes to rapid advances in social skills and abstract thinking during those years," notes Paul. "Because they don’t have a corpus callosum, teens with AgCC become more socially awkward at the age when social skills are most important." According to Adolphs, it is important to note that AgCC can now be diagnosed before a baby is born, using high-resolution ultrasound imaging during pregnancy. This latest development also opens the door for some exciting future directions in research. "If we can identify people with AgCC already before birth, we should be in a much better position to provide interventions like social skills training before problems arise," Paul points out. "And of course from a research perspective it would be tremendously valuable to begin studying such individuals early in life, since we still know so little both about autism and about AgCC." For example, the team would like to discern at what age subtle difficulties first appear in AgCC individuals, and at what point they start looking similar to autism, as well as what happens in the brain during these changes. "If we could follow a baby with AgCC as it grows up, and visualize its brain with MRI each year, we would gain such a wealth of knowledge," Adolphs says.

(Image caption: MRI images from a neurotypical control (left) and an adult with complete agenesis of the corpus callosum (right). The corpus callosum is indicated in red, fading as the fibers enter the hemispheres in order to suggest that they continue on. The anterior commissure is indicated by light aqua. The image illustrates the dramatic lack of inter hemispheric connections in callosal agenesis. Credit: Lynn Paul/Caltech)

Research Update: An Autism Connection

Building on their prior work, a team of neuroscientists at Caltech now report that rare patients who are missing connections between the left and right sides of their brain—a condition known as agenesis of the corpus callosum (AgCC)—show a strikingly high incidence of autism. The study is the first to show a link between the two disorders.

The findings are reported in a paper published April 22, 2014, in the journal Brain.

The corpus callosum is the largest connection in the human brain, connecting the left and right brain hemispheres via about 200 million fibers. In very rare cases it is surgically cut to treat epilepsy—causing the famous “split-brain” syndrome, for whose discovery the late Caltech professor Roger Sperry received the Nobel Prize. People with AgCC are like split-brain patients in that they are missing their corpus callosum—except they are born this way. In spite of this significant brain malformation, many of these individuals are relatively high-functioning individuals, with jobs and families, but they tend to have difficulty interacting with other people, among other symptoms such as memory deficits and developmental delays. These difficulties in social behavior bear a strong resemblance to those faced by high-functioning people with autism spectrum disorder.

"We and others had noted this resemblance between AgCC and autism before," explains Lynn Paul, lead author of the study and a lecturer in psychology at Caltech. But no one had directly compared the two groups of patients. This was a challenge that the Caltech team was uniquely positioned to do, she says, since it had studied patients from both groups over the years and had tested them on the same tasks.

"When we made detailed comparisons, we found that about a third of people with AgCC would meet diagnostic criteria for an autism spectrum disorder in terms of their current symptoms," says Paul, who was the founding president of the National Organization for Disorders of the Corpus Callosum.

The research was done in the laboratory of Ralph Adolphs, Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and professor of biology at Caltech and a coauthor of the study. The team looked at a range of different tasks performed by both sets of patients. Some of the exercises that involved certain social behaviors were videotaped and analyzed by the researchers to assess for autism. The team also gave the individuals questionnaires to fill out that measured factors like intelligence and social functioning.

"Comparing different clinical groups on exactly the same tasks within the same lab is very rare, and it took us about a decade to accrue all of the data," Adolphs notes.

One important difference between the two sets of patients did emerge in the comparison. People with autism spectrum disorder showed autism-like behaviors in infancy and early childhood, but the same type of behaviors did not seem to emerge in individuals with AgCC until later in childhood or the teen years.

"Around ages 9 through 12, a normally formed corpus callosum goes through a developmental ‘growth spurt’ which contributes to rapid advances in social skills and abstract thinking during those years," notes Paul. "Because they don’t have a corpus callosum, teens with AgCC become more socially awkward at the age when social skills are most important."

According to Adolphs, it is important to note that AgCC can now be diagnosed before a baby is born, using high-resolution ultrasound imaging during pregnancy. This latest development also opens the door for some exciting future directions in research.

"If we can identify people with AgCC already before birth, we should be in a much better position to provide interventions like social skills training before problems arise," Paul points out. "And of course from a research perspective it would be tremendously valuable to begin studying such individuals early in life, since we still know so little both about autism and about AgCC."

For example, the team would like to discern at what age subtle difficulties first appear in AgCC individuals, and at what point they start looking similar to autism, as well as what happens in the brain during these changes.

"If we could follow a baby with AgCC as it grows up, and visualize its brain with MRI each year, we would gain such a wealth of knowledge," Adolphs says.

Filed under corpus callosum AgCC autism social behavior social cognition psychology neuroscience science

233 notes

New study settles how social understanding is performed by the brain A new study settles an important question about how social understanding is performed in the brain. The findings may help us to attain a better understanding of why people with autism and schizophrenia have difficulties with social interaction. In a study to be published in Psychological Science, researchers from Aarhus University and the University of Copenhagen demonstrate that brain cells in what is called the mirror system help people make sense of the actions they see other people perform in everyday life. Using magnetic stimulation to temporarily disrupt normal processing of the areas of the human brain involved in the production of actions of human participants, it is demonstrated that these areas are also involved in the understanding of actions. The study is the first to demonstrate a clear causal effect, whereas earlier studies primarily have looked at correlations, which are difficult to interpret. One of the researchers, John Michael, explains the process: “There has been a great deal of hype about the mirror system, and now we have performed an experiment that finally provides clear and straightforward evidence that the mirror system serves to help people make sense of others’ actions,” says John Michael. Understanding autism and schizophrenia The study shows that there are areas of the brain that are involved in the production of actions. And the researchers found evidence that these areas contribute to understanding others’ actions. This means that the same areas are involved in producing actions and understanding others’ actions. This helps us in everyday life, but it also holds great potential when trying to understand why people with autism and schizophrenia have difficulties with social interaction. “Attaining knowledge of the processes underlying social understanding in people in general is an important part of the process of attaining knowledge of the underlying causes of the difficulties that some people diagnosed with autism and schizophrenia experience in sustaining social understanding. But it is important to emphasise that this is just one piece of the puzzle.” “The findings may be interesting to therapists and psychiatrists who work with patients with schizophrenia or autism, or even to educational researchers,” adds John Michael. Facts about the empirical basis The participants (20 adults) came to the lab three times. They were given brain scans on the first visit. On the second and third, they received stimulation to their motor system and then performed a typical psychological task in which they watched brief videos of actors pantomiming actions (about 250 videos each time). After each video they had to choose a picture of an object that matched the pantomimed video. For example, a hammer was the correct answer for the video of an actor pretending to hammer. This task was intended to gauge their understanding of the observed actions. The researchers found that the stimulation interfered with their performance of this task. Innovative method The researchers used an innovative technique for magnetically stimulating highly specific brain areas in order to temporarily disrupt normal processing in those areas. The reason for using this technique (called continuous theta-burst stimulation) in general is that it makes it possible to determine which brain areas perform which functions. For example, if you stimulate (and thus temporarily impair) area A, and the participants subsequently have difficulty with some specific task (task T), then you can infer that area A usually performs task T. The effect goes away after 20 minutes, so this is a harmless and widely applicable way to identify which tasks are performed by which areas. With continuous theta-burst stimulation, you can actually determine that the activation of A contributes as a cause to people performing T. This method thus promises to be of great use to neuroscientists in the coming years.

New study settles how social understanding is performed by the brain

A new study settles an important question about how social understanding is performed in the brain. The findings may help us to attain a better understanding of why people with autism and schizophrenia have difficulties with social interaction.

In a study to be published in Psychological Science, researchers from Aarhus University and the University of Copenhagen demonstrate that brain cells in what is called the mirror system help people make sense of the actions they see other people perform in everyday life.

Using magnetic stimulation to temporarily disrupt normal processing of the areas of the human brain involved in the production of actions of human participants, it is demonstrated that these areas are also involved in the understanding of actions. The study is the first to demonstrate a clear causal effect, whereas earlier studies primarily have looked at correlations, which are difficult to interpret.

One of the researchers, John Michael, explains the process:

“There has been a great deal of hype about the mirror system, and now we have performed an experiment that finally provides clear and straightforward evidence that the mirror system serves to help people make sense of others’ actions,” says John Michael.

Understanding autism and schizophrenia

The study shows that there are areas of the brain that are involved in the production of actions. And the researchers found evidence that these areas contribute to understanding others’ actions. This means that the same areas are involved in producing actions and understanding others’ actions. This helps us in everyday life, but it also holds great potential when trying to understand why people with autism and schizophrenia have difficulties with social interaction.

“Attaining knowledge of the processes underlying social understanding in people in general is an important part of the process of attaining knowledge of the underlying causes of the difficulties that some people diagnosed with autism and schizophrenia experience in sustaining social understanding. But it is important to emphasise that this is just one piece of the puzzle.”

“The findings may be interesting to therapists and psychiatrists who work with patients with schizophrenia or autism, or even to educational researchers,” adds John Michael.

Facts about the empirical basis

The participants (20 adults) came to the lab three times. They were given brain scans on the first visit. On the second and third, they received stimulation to their motor system and then performed a typical psychological task in which they watched brief videos of actors pantomiming actions (about 250 videos each time). After each video they had to choose a picture of an object that matched the pantomimed video. For example, a hammer was the correct answer for the video of an actor pretending to hammer. This task was intended to gauge their understanding of the observed actions. The researchers found that the stimulation interfered with their performance of this task.

Innovative method

The researchers used an innovative technique for magnetically stimulating highly specific brain areas in order to temporarily disrupt normal processing in those areas. The reason for using this technique (called continuous theta-burst stimulation) in general is that it makes it possible to determine which brain areas perform which functions. For example, if you stimulate (and thus temporarily impair) area A, and the participants subsequently have difficulty with some specific task (task T), then you can infer that area A usually performs task T. The effect goes away after 20 minutes, so this is a harmless and widely applicable way to identify which tasks are performed by which areas.

With continuous theta-burst stimulation, you can actually determine that the activation of A contributes as a cause to people performing T. This method thus promises to be of great use to neuroscientists in the coming years.

Filed under social interaction autism schizophrenia mirror-neuron system theory of mind social cognition psychology neuroscience science

177 notes

In the Human Brain, Size Really Isn’t Everything There are many things that make humans a unique species, but a couple stand out. One is our mind, the other our brain. The human mind can carry out cognitive tasks that other animals cannot, like using language, envisioning the distant future and inferring what other people are thinking. The human brain is exceptional, too. At three pounds, it is gigantic relative to our body size. Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, have brains that are only a third as big. Scientists have long suspected that our big brain and powerful mind are intimately connected. Starting about three million years ago, fossils of our ancient relatives record a huge increase in brain size. Once that cranial growth was underway, our forerunners started leaving behind signs of increasingly sophisticated minds, like stone tools and cave paintings. But scientists have long struggled to understand how a simple increase in size could lead to the evolution of those faculties. Now, two Harvard neuroscientists, Randy L. Buckner and Fenna M. Krienen, have offered a powerful yet simple explanation. In our smaller-brained ancestors, the researchers argue, neurons were tightly tethered in a relatively simple pattern of connections. When our ancestors’ brains expanded, those tethers ripped apart, enabling our neurons to form new circuits. Dr. Buckner and Dr. Krienen call their idea the tether hypothesis, and present it in a paper in the December issue of the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. “I think it presents some pretty exciting ideas,” said Chet C. Sherwood, an expert on human brain evolution at George Washington University who was not involved in the research. Read more

In the Human Brain, Size Really Isn’t Everything

There are many things that make humans a unique species, but a couple stand out. One is our mind, the other our brain.

The human mind can carry out cognitive tasks that other animals cannot, like using language, envisioning the distant future and inferring what other people are thinking.

The human brain is exceptional, too. At three pounds, it is gigantic relative to our body size. Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, have brains that are only a third as big.

Scientists have long suspected that our big brain and powerful mind are intimately connected. Starting about three million years ago, fossils of our ancient relatives record a huge increase in brain size. Once that cranial growth was underway, our forerunners started leaving behind signs of increasingly sophisticated minds, like stone tools and cave paintings.

But scientists have long struggled to understand how a simple increase in size could lead to the evolution of those faculties. Now, two Harvard neuroscientists, Randy L. Buckner and Fenna M. Krienen, have offered a powerful yet simple explanation.

In our smaller-brained ancestors, the researchers argue, neurons were tightly tethered in a relatively simple pattern of connections. When our ancestors’ brains expanded, those tethers ripped apart, enabling our neurons to form new circuits.

Dr. Buckner and Dr. Krienen call their idea the tether hypothesis, and present it in a paper in the December issue of the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

“I think it presents some pretty exciting ideas,” said Chet C. Sherwood, an expert on human brain evolution at George Washington University who was not involved in the research.

Read more

Filed under human brain brain size evolution neural circuit prefrontal cortex social cognition neuroscience science

609 notes

Researchers identify gene that influences the ability to remember faces New findings suggest the oxytocin receptor, a gene known to influence mother-infant bonding and pair bonding in monogamous species, also plays a special role in the ability to remember faces. This research has important implications for disorders in which social information processing is disrupted, including autism spectrum disorder. In addition, the finding may lead to new strategies for improving social cognition in several psychiatric disorders. A team of researchers from Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, the University College London in the United Kingdom and University of Tampere in Finland made the discovery, which will be published in an online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to author Larry Young, PhD, of Yerkes, the Department of Psychiatry in Emory’s School of Medicine and Emory’s Center for Translational Social Neuroscience (CTSN), this is the first study to demonstrate that variation in the oxytocin receptor gene influences face recognition skills. He and co-author David Skuse point out the implication that oxytocin plays an important role in promoting our ability to recognize one another, yet about one-third of the population possesses only the genetic variant that negatively impacts that ability. They say this finding may help explain why a few people remember almost everyone they have met while others have difficulty recognizing members of their own family. Skuse is with the Institute of Child Health, University College London, and the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, NHS Foundation Trust, London. Young, Skuse and their research team studied 198 families with a single autistic child because these families were known to show a wide range of variability in facial recognition skills; two-thirds of the families were from the United Kingdom, and the remainder from Finland. The Emory researchers previously found the oxytocin receptor is essential for olfactory-based social recognition in rodents, like mice and voles, and wondered whether the same gene could also be involved in human face recognition. They examined the influence of subtle differences in oxytocin receptor gene structure on face memory competence in the parents, non-autistic siblings and autistic child, and discovered a single change in the DNA of the oxytocin receptor had a big impact on face memory skills in the families. According to Young, this finding implies that oxytocin likely plays an important role more generally in social information processing, which is disrupted in disorders such as autism. Additionally, this study is remarkable for its evolutionary aspect. Rodents use odors for social recognition while humans use visual facial cues. This suggests an ancient conservation in genetic and neural architectures involved in social information processing that transcends the sensory modalities used from mouse to man. Skuse credits Young’s previous research that found mice with a mutated oxytocin receptor failed to recognize mice they previously encountered. “This led us to pursue more information about facial recognition and the implications for disorders in which social information processing is disrupted.” Young adds the team will continue working together to pursue strategies for improving social cognition in psychiatric disorders based on the current findings.

Researchers identify gene that influences the ability to remember faces

New findings suggest the oxytocin receptor, a gene known to influence mother-infant bonding and pair bonding in monogamous species, also plays a special role in the ability to remember faces. This research has important implications for disorders in which social information processing is disrupted, including autism spectrum disorder. In addition, the finding may lead to new strategies for improving social cognition in several psychiatric disorders.

A team of researchers from Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, the University College London in the United Kingdom and University of Tampere in Finland made the discovery, which will be published in an online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to author Larry Young, PhD, of Yerkes, the Department of Psychiatry in Emory’s School of Medicine and Emory’s Center for Translational Social Neuroscience (CTSN), this is the first study to demonstrate that variation in the oxytocin receptor gene influences face recognition skills. He and co-author David Skuse point out the implication that oxytocin plays an important role in promoting our ability to recognize one another, yet about one-third of the population possesses only the genetic variant that negatively impacts that ability. They say this finding may help explain why a few people remember almost everyone they have met while others have difficulty recognizing members of their own family.

Skuse is with the Institute of Child Health, University College London, and the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, NHS Foundation Trust, London.

Young, Skuse and their research team studied 198 families with a single autistic child because these families were known to show a wide range of variability in facial recognition skills; two-thirds of the families were from the United Kingdom, and the remainder from Finland.

The Emory researchers previously found the oxytocin receptor is essential for olfactory-based social recognition in rodents, like mice and voles, and wondered whether the same gene could also be involved in human face recognition. They examined the influence of subtle differences in oxytocin receptor gene structure on face memory competence in the parents, non-autistic siblings and autistic child, and discovered a single change in the DNA of the oxytocin receptor had a big impact on face memory skills in the families. According to Young, this finding implies that oxytocin likely plays an important role more generally in social information processing, which is disrupted in disorders such as autism.

Additionally, this study is remarkable for its evolutionary aspect. Rodents use odors for social recognition while humans use visual facial cues. This suggests an ancient conservation in genetic and neural architectures involved in social information processing that transcends the sensory modalities used from mouse to man.

Skuse credits Young’s previous research that found mice with a mutated oxytocin receptor failed to recognize mice they previously encountered. “This led us to pursue more information about facial recognition and the implications for disorders in which social information processing is disrupted.” Young adds the team will continue working together to pursue strategies for improving social cognition in psychiatric disorders based on the current findings.

Filed under oxytocin facial recognition memory ASD social cognition neuroscience science

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Theatre offers promise for youth with autism A novel autism intervention program using theatre to teach reciprocal communication skills is improving social deficits in adolescents with the disorder that now affects an estimated one in 88 children, Vanderbilt University researchers released today in the journal Autism Research. The newly released study assessed the effectiveness of a two-week theatre camp on children with autism spectrum disorder and found significant improvements were made in social perception, social cognition and home living skills by the end of the camp. There were also positive changes in the participants’ physiological stress and reductions in self-reported parental stress. Called SENSE Theatre, the Social Emotional Neuroscience & Endocrinology (SENSE) program evaluates the social functioning of children with autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders. Camp participants ages 8 to 17 years join with typically developing peers who are specially trained to serve as models for social interaction and communication, skills that are difficult for children with autism. The camp uses techniques such as role-play and improvisation and culminates in public performances of a play. “The findings show that treatment can be delivered in an unconventional setting, and children with autism can learn from unconventional ‘interventionists’ – their typically developing peer,” said lead author Blythe Corbett, Ph.D., associate professor of Psychiatry. Social perception and interaction skills were measured before and after the camp using neuropsychological measures, play with peers and parental reporting. Significant differences were found in face processing, social awareness and social cognition, and duration of interaction with familiar peers increased significantly over the course of the camp. Additionally, the stress hormone cortisol was measured through saliva samples taken both at home and throughout the camp to compare the stress level of participants at home, at the beginning of the camp and at the end of the camp. Cortisol levels rose on the first day of camp when compared to home values but declined by the end of treatment and during post-treatment play with peers. “Our findings show that the SENSE Theatre program contributes to improvement in core social deficits when engaging with peers both on and off the stage,” Corbett said. “This research also shows it’s never too late to make a significant difference in the lives of children and youth with autism spectrum disorder, as [this program] targets children who are much older than kids who are participating in early intervention, yet we are still seeing significant gains in the core deficits of autism, and in a rather brief intervention.” This research was supported by the Martin McCoy-Jesperson Discovery Grant in Positive Psychology and a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant No. R01 MH085717). Corbett will continue using theatre techniques to study areas of social functioning among children with autism through a newly awarded grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant No. R34 MH097793). This forthcoming study will explore treatment length and peer familiarity as factors in optimizing and generalizing gains and will enroll more than 30 youth with autism ages 8 to 16 in a 10-week program model beginning January 2014.

Theatre offers promise for youth with autism

A novel autism intervention program using theatre to teach reciprocal communication skills is improving social deficits in adolescents with the disorder that now affects an estimated one in 88 children, Vanderbilt University researchers released today in the journal Autism Research.

The newly released study assessed the effectiveness of a two-week theatre camp on children with autism spectrum disorder and found significant improvements were made in social perception, social cognition and home living skills by the end of the camp. There were also positive changes in the participants’ physiological stress and reductions in self-reported parental stress.

Called SENSE Theatre, the Social Emotional Neuroscience & Endocrinology (SENSE) program evaluates the social functioning of children with autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders.

Camp participants ages 8 to 17 years join with typically developing peers who are specially trained to serve as models for social interaction and communication, skills that are difficult for children with autism. The camp uses techniques such as role-play and improvisation and culminates in public performances of a play.

“The findings show that treatment can be delivered in an unconventional setting, and children with autism can learn from unconventional ‘interventionists’ – their typically developing peer,” said lead author Blythe Corbett, Ph.D., associate professor of Psychiatry.

Social perception and interaction skills were measured before and after the camp using neuropsychological measures, play with peers and parental reporting. Significant differences were found in face processing, social awareness and social cognition, and duration of interaction with familiar peers increased significantly over the course of the camp.

Additionally, the stress hormone cortisol was measured through saliva samples taken both at home and throughout the camp to compare the stress level of participants at home, at the beginning of the camp and at the end of the camp. Cortisol levels rose on the first day of camp when compared to home values but declined by the end of treatment and during post-treatment play with peers.

“Our findings show that the SENSE Theatre program contributes to improvement in core social deficits when engaging with peers both on and off the stage,” Corbett said. “This research also shows it’s never too late to make a significant difference in the lives of children and youth with autism spectrum disorder, as [this program] targets children who are much older than kids who are participating in early intervention, yet we are still seeing significant gains in the core deficits of autism, and in a rather brief intervention.”

This research was supported by the Martin McCoy-Jesperson Discovery Grant in Positive Psychology and a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant No. R01 MH085717).

Corbett will continue using theatre techniques to study areas of social functioning among children with autism through a newly awarded grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant No. R34 MH097793). This forthcoming study will explore treatment length and peer familiarity as factors in optimizing and generalizing gains and will enroll more than 30 youth with autism ages 8 to 16 in a 10-week program model beginning January 2014.

Filed under ASD autism social cognition social interaction theatre cortisol psychology neuroscience science

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Human Brains Are Hardwired for Empathy, Friendship, Study Shows Perhaps one of the most defining features of humanity is our capacity for empathy – the ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes. A new University of Virginia study strongly suggests that we are hardwired to empathize because we closely associate people who are close to us – friends, spouses, lovers – with our very selves. “With familiarity, other people become part of ourselves,” said James Coan, a U.Va. psychology professor in the College of Arts & Sciences who used functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans to find that people closely correlate people to whom they are attached to themselves. The study appears in the August issue of the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. “Our self comes to include the people we feel close to,” Coan said. In other words, our self-identity is largely based on whom we know and empathize with. Coan and his U.Va. colleagues conducted the study with 22 young adult participants who underwent fMRI scans of their brains during experiments to monitor brain activity while under threat of receiving mild electrical shocks to themselves or to a friend or stranger. The researchers found, as they expected, that regions of the brain responsible for threat response – the anterior insula, putamen and supramarginal gyrus – became active under threat of shock to the self. In the case of threat of shock to a stranger, the brain in those regions displayed little activity. However when the threat of shock was to a friend, the brain activity of the participant became essentially identical to the activity displayed under threat to the self. “The correlation between self and friend was remarkably similar,” Coan said. “The finding shows the brain’s remarkable capacity to model self to others; that people close to us become a part of ourselves, and that is not just metaphor or poetry, it’s very real. Literally we are under threat when a friend is under threat. But not so when a stranger is under threat.” Coan said this likely is because humans need to have friends and allies who they can side with and see as being the same as themselves. And as people spend more time together, they become more similar. “It’s essentially a breakdown of self and other; our self comes to include the people we become close to,” Coan said. “If a friend is under threat, it becomes the same as if we ourselves are under threat. We can understand the pain or difficulty they may be going through in the same way we understand our own pain.” This likely is the source of empathy, and part of the evolutionary process, Coan reasons. “A threat to ourselves is a threat to our resources,” he said. “Threats can take things away from us. But when we develop friendships, people we can trust and rely on who in essence become we, then our resources are expanded, we gain. Your goal becomes my goal. It’s a part of our survivability.” People need friends, Coan added, like “one hand needs another to clap.”

Human Brains Are Hardwired for Empathy, Friendship, Study Shows

Perhaps one of the most defining features of humanity is our capacity for empathy – the ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes. A new University of Virginia study strongly suggests that we are hardwired to empathize because we closely associate people who are close to us – friends, spouses, lovers – with our very selves.

“With familiarity, other people become part of ourselves,” said James Coan, a U.Va. psychology professor in the College of Arts & Sciences who used functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans to find that people closely correlate people to whom they are attached to themselves. The study appears in the August issue of the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

“Our self comes to include the people we feel close to,” Coan said.

In other words, our self-identity is largely based on whom we know and empathize with.

Coan and his U.Va. colleagues conducted the study with 22 young adult participants who underwent fMRI scans of their brains during experiments to monitor brain activity while under threat of receiving mild electrical shocks to themselves or to a friend or stranger.

The researchers found, as they expected, that regions of the brain responsible for threat response – the anterior insula, putamen and supramarginal gyrus – became active under threat of shock to the self. In the case of threat of shock to a stranger, the brain in those regions displayed little activity. However when the threat of shock was to a friend, the brain activity of the participant became essentially identical to the activity displayed under threat to the self.

“The correlation between self and friend was remarkably similar,” Coan said. “The finding shows the brain’s remarkable capacity to model self to others; that people close to us become a part of ourselves, and that is not just metaphor or poetry, it’s very real. Literally we are under threat when a friend is under threat. But not so when a stranger is under threat.”

Coan said this likely is because humans need to have friends and allies who they can side with and see as being the same as themselves. And as people spend more time together, they become more similar.

“It’s essentially a breakdown of self and other; our self comes to include the people we become close to,” Coan said. “If a friend is under threat, it becomes the same as if we ourselves are under threat. We can understand the pain or difficulty they may be going through in the same way we understand our own pain.”

This likely is the source of empathy, and part of the evolutionary process, Coan reasons.

“A threat to ourselves is a threat to our resources,” he said. “Threats can take things away from us. But when we develop friendships, people we can trust and rely on who in essence become we, then our resources are expanded, we gain. Your goal becomes my goal. It’s a part of our survivability.”

People need friends, Coan added, like “one hand needs another to clap.”

Filed under empathy social cognition brain activity interpersonal relationships psychology neuroscience science

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Making the Brain Take Notice of Faces in Autism

A new study in Biological Psychiatry explores the influence of oxytocin

Difficulty in registering and responding to the facial expressions of other people is a hallmark of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Relatedly, functional imaging studies have shown that individuals with ASD display altered brain activations when processing facial images.

The hormone oxytocin plays a vital role in the social interactions of both animals and humans. In fact, multiple studies conducted with healthy volunteers have provided evidence for beneficial effects of oxytocin in terms of increased trust, improved emotion recognition, and preference for social stimuli.

This combination of scientific work led German researchers to hypothesize about the influence of oxytocin in ASD. Dr. Gregor Domes, from the University of Freiburg and first author of the new study, explained: “In the present study, we were interested in the question of whether a single dose of oxytocin would change brain responses to social compared to non-social stimuli in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.”

They found that oxytocin did show an effect on social processing in the individuals with ASD, “suggesting that oxytocin may help to treat a basic brain function that goes awry in autism spectrum disorders,” commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry.

To conduct this study, they recruited fourteen individuals with ASD and fourteen control volunteers, all of whom completed a face- and house-matching task while undergoing imaging scans. Each participant completed this task and scanning procedure twice, once after receiving a nasal spray containing oxytocin and once after receiving a nasal spray containing placebo. The order of the sprays was randomized, and the tests were administered one week apart.

Using two sets of stimuli in the matching task, one of faces and one of houses, allowed the researchers to not only compare the effects of the oxytocin and placebo administrations, but also allowed them to discriminate findings between specific effects to only social stimuli and non-specific effects to more general brain processing.

What they found was intriguing. The data indicate that oxytocin specifically increases responses of the amygdala to social stimuli in individuals with ASD. The amygdala, the authors explain, “has been associated with processing of emotional stimuli, threat-related stimuli, face processing, and vigilance for salient stimuli”.

This finding suggests oxytocin might promote the salience of social stimuli in ASD. Increased salience of social stimuli might support behavioral training of social skills in ASD.

These data support the idea that oxytocin may be a promising approach in the treatment of ASD and could stimulate further research, even clinical trials, on the exploration of oxytocin as an add-on treatment for individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

(Source: alphagalileo.org)

Filed under oxytocin autism ASD amygdala face processing social cognition neuroscience science

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Teens’ Self-Consciousness Linked With Specific Brain, Physiological Responses Teenagers are famously self-conscious, acutely aware and concerned about what their peers think of them. A new study reveals that this self-consciousness is linked with specific physiological and brain responses that seem to emerge in adolescence. “Our study identifies adolescence as a unique period of the lifespan in which self-conscious emotion, physiological reactivity, and activity in specific brain areas converge and peak in response to being evaluated by others,” says psychological scientist and lead researcher Leah Somerville of Harvard University. The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that teens’ sensitivity to social evaluation might be explained by shifts in physiological and brain function during adolescence, in addition to the numerous sociocultural changes that take place during the teen years. Somerville and colleagues wanted to investigate whether just being looked at — a minimal social-evaluation situation — might register with greater importance, arousal, and intensity for adolescents than for either children or adults. The researchers hypothesized that late-developing regions of the brain, such as the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), could play a unique role in the way teens monitor these types of social evaluative contexts. The researchers had 69 participants, ranging in age from 8 to almost 23 years old, come to the lab and complete measures that gauged emotional, physiological, and neural responses to social evaluation. They told the participants that they would be testing a new video camera embedded in the head coil of a functional MRI scanner. The participants watched a screen indicating whether the camera was “off,” “warming up,” or “on”, and were told that a same-sex peer of about the same age would be watching the video feed and would be able to see them when the camera was on. In reality, there was no camera in the MRI machine. The consistency and strength of the resulting data took the researchers by surprise: “We were concerned about whether simply being looked at was a strong enough ‘social evaluation’ to evoke emotional, physiological and neural responses,” says Somerville. “Our findings suggest that being watched, and to some extent anticipating being watched, were sufficient to elicit self-conscious emotional responses at each level of measurement.” Specifically, participants’ self-reported embarrassment, physiological arousal, and MPFC activation showed reactivity to social evaluation that seemed to converge and peak during adolescence. Adolescent participants also showed increased functional connectivity between the MPFC and striatum, an area of the brain that mediates motivated behaviors and actions. Somerville and colleagues speculate that the MPFC-striatum pathway may be a route by which social evaluative contexts influence behavior. The link may provide an initial clue as to why teens often engage in riskier behaviors when they’re with their peers.

Teens’ Self-Consciousness Linked With Specific Brain, Physiological Responses

Teenagers are famously self-conscious, acutely aware and concerned about what their peers think of them. A new study reveals that this self-consciousness is linked with specific physiological and brain responses that seem to emerge in adolescence.

“Our study identifies adolescence as a unique period of the lifespan in which self-conscious emotion, physiological reactivity, and activity in specific brain areas converge and peak in response to being evaluated by others,” says psychological scientist and lead researcher Leah Somerville of Harvard University.

The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that teens’ sensitivity to social evaluation might be explained by shifts in physiological and brain function during adolescence, in addition to the numerous sociocultural changes that take place during the teen years.

Somerville and colleagues wanted to investigate whether just being looked at — a minimal social-evaluation situation — might register with greater importance, arousal, and intensity for adolescents than for either children or adults. The researchers hypothesized that late-developing regions of the brain, such as the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), could play a unique role in the way teens monitor these types of social evaluative contexts.

The researchers had 69 participants, ranging in age from 8 to almost 23 years old, come to the lab and complete measures that gauged emotional, physiological, and neural responses to social evaluation.

They told the participants that they would be testing a new video camera embedded in the head coil of a functional MRI scanner. The participants watched a screen indicating whether the camera was “off,” “warming up,” or “on”, and were told that a same-sex peer of about the same age would be watching the video feed and would be able to see them when the camera was on. In reality, there was no camera in the MRI machine.

The consistency and strength of the resulting data took the researchers by surprise:

“We were concerned about whether simply being looked at was a strong enough ‘social evaluation’ to evoke emotional, physiological and neural responses,” says Somerville. “Our findings suggest that being watched, and to some extent anticipating being watched, were sufficient to elicit self-conscious emotional responses at each level of measurement.”

Specifically, participants’ self-reported embarrassment, physiological arousal, and MPFC activation showed reactivity to social evaluation that seemed to converge and peak during adolescence.

Adolescent participants also showed increased functional connectivity between the MPFC and striatum, an area of the brain that mediates motivated behaviors and actions. Somerville and colleagues speculate that the MPFC-striatum pathway may be a route by which social evaluative contexts influence behavior. The link may provide an initial clue as to why teens often engage in riskier behaviors when they’re with their peers.

Filed under adolescence self-consciousness prefrontal cortex social cognition psychology neuroscience science

1,461 notes

Giving White People The Illusion Of Darker Skin Makes Them Less Racist An optical illusion can change the implicit biases of Caucasian people against people with darker skin, according to a study published in the August 2013 edition of Cognition. The research, a collaboration between Royal Holloway University of London, the Central European University in Budapest and Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, analyzed the implicit racial biases of 34 Caucasian participants, then subjected them to something called the Rubber Hand Illusion, where they watched a rubber hand being touched by a paintbrush as they felt their own hand being stimulated out of sight. The illusion creates the sense that the fake hand is part of the subject’s body, even when it’s of a completely different skin color. The more the participants felt like the darker skinned fake hand was their own, the less racist they came off in a second implicit bias test. In another test, participants underwent the same process, but some saw a white hand, while others saw a dark hand. The implicit bias test showed that the opinions of those who saw the white hand didn’t change, while again those who felt ownership of the darker hand felt less racial bias. "Across two experiments, the more intense the participants’ illusion of ownership over the dark-skinned rubber hand, the more positive their implicit racial attitudes became," the authors write. “It comes down to a perceived similarity between white and dark skin,” lead author Lara Maister of Royal Holloway University of London said in a press statement. “The illusion creates an overlap, which in turn helps to reduce negative attitudes because participants see less difference between themselves and those with dark skin.” The study suggests that racial biases aren’t necessarily cemented by adulthood, but that they can be altered. “Changes in body-representation may therefore constitute a core, previously unexplored, dimension that in turn changes social cognition processes,” the authors write. They suggest that future research into different social groups and stereotypes could expand on their work, since this research only explored the attitudes of white individuals.

Giving White People The Illusion Of Darker Skin Makes Them Less Racist

An optical illusion can change the implicit biases of Caucasian people against people with darker skin, according to a study published in the August 2013 edition of Cognition.

The research, a collaboration between Royal Holloway University of London, the Central European University in Budapest and Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, analyzed the implicit racial biases of 34 Caucasian participants, then subjected them to something called the Rubber Hand Illusion, where they watched a rubber hand being touched by a paintbrush as they felt their own hand being stimulated out of sight. The illusion creates the sense that the fake hand is part of the subject’s body, even when it’s of a completely different skin color.

The more the participants felt like the darker skinned fake hand was their own, the less racist they came off in a second implicit bias test.

In another test, participants underwent the same process, but some saw a white hand, while others saw a dark hand. The implicit bias test showed that the opinions of those who saw the white hand didn’t change, while again those who felt ownership of the darker hand felt less racial bias.

"Across two experiments, the more intense the participants’ illusion of ownership over the dark-skinned rubber hand, the more positive their implicit racial attitudes became," the authors write.

“It comes down to a perceived similarity between white and dark skin,” lead author Lara Maister of Royal Holloway University of London said in a press statement. “The illusion creates an overlap, which in turn helps to reduce negative attitudes because participants see less difference between themselves and those with dark skin.”

The study suggests that racial biases aren’t necessarily cemented by adulthood, but that they can be altered. “Changes in body-representation may therefore constitute a core, previously unexplored, dimension that in turn changes social cognition processes,” the authors write. They suggest that future research into different social groups and stereotypes could expand on their work, since this research only explored the attitudes of white individuals.

Filed under racial bias implicit racial bias social cognition rubber hand illusion psychology neuroscience science

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