The emergence of enduring antisocial personality changes in previously normal individuals, or "acquired sociopathy," has consistently been reported in patients with bilateral injuries of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Over the past three decades, cases of acquired sociopathy with (a) bilateral or (b) unilateral sparing of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex have been reported. These cases indicate that at least in a few individuals (a') neural structures beyond the ventromedial prefrontal cortex are also critical for normal social behavior, and (b') the neural underpinnings of social cognition may be lateralized to one cerebral hemisphere. Moreover, researchers have presented evidence that lesion laterality and gender may interact in the production of acquired sociopathy. In the present review, we carried out a comprehensive literature survey seeking possible interactions between gender and hemispheric asymmetry in acquired sociopathy. We found 85 cases of acquired sociopathy due to bilateral (N = 48) and unilateral (N = 37) hemispheric injuries. A significant association between acquired sociopathy and right hemisphere damage was found in men, whereas lesions were bilateral in most women with acquired sociopathy. The present survey shows that: (i) the number of well-documented single-cases of acquired sociopathy is surprisingly small given the length of the historical record; (ii) acquired sociopathy was significantly more frequent in men after an injury of the right or of both cerebral hemispheres; and (iii) in most women who developed acquired sociopathy the injuries affected both cerebral hemispheres. These findings may be especially valuable to neuroscientists and to functional neurosurgeons in particular for the planning of tumor resections as well as for the choice of the best targets for therapeutic neuromodulation.

Major advances have been made in the understanding of the neurobiology of psychopathy in the past years, yet the distribution and extent of neuroanatomical abnormalities underlying the disorder are still poorly known. It is also unclear if different dimensions of the construct of psychopathy (e.g., emotional callousness, antisocial behavior) correspond to structural abnormalities in distinct regions of the brain. We tested the following hypotheses: (1) psychopathy is related to grey matter reductions in regions of the brain that underlie moral conduct and (2) the severity of psychopathy is related to the degree of structural abnormalities. Optimized voxel-based morphometry and the screening version of the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL: SV) were employed to investigate a matched sample of 15 community psychiatric patients with high PCL: SV scores, and 15 healthy normal volunteers. The analyses controlled for total grey matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid volumes. Grey matter reductions were observed in the frontopolar, orbitofrontal and anterior temporal cortices, superior temporal sulcus region, and insula of the patients. The degree of structural abnormalities was significantly related to the interpersonal/affective dimension of psychopathy. The pattern of grey matter reductions in patients with high psychopathy scores comprised a distributed fronto-temporal network which plays a critical role in moral sensibility and behavior.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been associated with neural hyposensitivity to reward-predicting cues. Methylphenidate is widely used in the management of the disorder's symptoms, but its effects on reward sensitivity in ADHD are unknown. The current study used fMRI to measure striatal responses to reward-predicting cues in adults with ADHD on and off methylphenidate and a control group, during a classical conditioning task. Responses to cued reward were also explored. Larger differences in the ventral striatum activation to reward cues versus non-reward cues were observed when the ADHD participants were on methylphenidate compared to placebo. In response to cued-reward outcome, an exploratory analysis showed methylphenidate reduced the BOLD time-series correlation between the dorsal striatum and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex. Methylphenidate's therapeutic effects may be mediated by altering reward processing in individuals with ADHD.

Social feelings have conceptual and empirical connections with affect and emotion. In this review, we discuss how they relate to cognition, emotion, behavior and well-being. We examine the functional neuroanatomy and neurobiology of social feelings and their role in adaptive social functioning. Existing neuroscience literature is reviewed to identify concepts, methods and challenges that might be addressed by social feelings research. Specific topic areas highlight the influence and modulation of social feelings on interpersonal affiliation, parent-child attachments, moral sentiments, interpersonal stressors, and emotional communication. Brain regions involved in social feelings were confirmed by meta-analysis using the Neurosynth platform for large-scale, automated synthesis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Words that relate specifically to social feelings were identfied as potential research variables. Topical inquiries into social media behaviors, loneliness, trauma, and social sensitivity, especially with recent physical distancing for guarding public and personal health, underscored the increasing importance of social feelings for affective and second person neuroscience research with implications for brain development, physical and mental health, and lifelong adaptive functioning.

Recent innovations in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) have sped data collection by enabling simultaneous scans of neural activity in multiple brain locations, but have these innovations come at a cost? In a meta-analysis and preregistered direct comparison of original data, we examined whether acquiring FMRI data with multi-band versus single-band scanning protocols might compromise detection of mesolimbic activity during reward processing. Meta-analytic results (n = 44 studies; cumulative n = 5005 subjects) indicated that relative to single-band scans, multi-band scans showed significantly decreased effect sizes for reward anticipation in the Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) by more than half. Direct within-subject comparison of single-band versus multi-band scanning data (multi-band factors = 4 and 8; n = 12 subjects) acquired during repeated administration of the Monetary Incentive Delay task indicated that reductions in temporal signal-to-noise ratio could account for compromised detection of task-related responses in mesolimbic regions (i.e., the NAcc). Together, these findings imply that researchers should opt for single-band over multi-band scanning protocols when probing mesolimbic responses with FMRI. The findings also have implications for inferring mesolimbic activity during related tasks and rest, for summarizing historical results, and for using neuroimaging data to track individual differences in reward-related brain activity.

We examined the relationship between emotional stability as a more stable personality trait and COVID-related worries with basic human values in a Brazilian sample (N = 578) that is strongly affected by COVID-19. We tested whether emotional stability would moderate the effect of infection and economic worries on personal values. In line with predictions, we found that infection worries were more strongly related to Security values, especially among individuals with less emotional stability, whereas economic worries were more strongly correlated with Power values, in particular among individuals with less emotional stability. Findings for Achievement values suggested perceived behavioral control effects for individuals high in Emotional Stability. Our findings provide insights into possible longer-term psychological effects of the current pandemic. Emotional dynamics in connection with worries created by the pandemic could influence values of importance for societal functioning in the short to medium term.

The paradoxical absence of a split-brain syndrome in most cases of callosal dysgenesis has originated three main hypotheses, namely, (i) bilateral cortical representation of language, (ii) bilateral thalamocortical projections of somatosensory pathways conveyed by the spinothalamic-medial lemniscus system, and (iii) a variable combination of (i) and (ii). We used functional neuroimaging to investigate the cortical representation and lateralization of somatosensory information from the palm of each hand in six cases of callosal dysgenesis (hypothesis [ii]). Cortical regions of interest were contralateral and ipsilateral S1 (areas 3a and 3b, 1 and 2 in the central sulcus and postcentral gyrus) and S2 (parts of areas 40 and 43 in the parietal operculum). The degree of cortical asymmetry was expressed by a laterality index (LI), which may assume values from -1 (fully left-lateralized) to +1 (fully right-lateralized). In callosal dysgenesis, LI values for the right and the left hands were, respectively, -1 and + 1 for both S1 and S2, indicating absence of engagement of ipsilateral S1 and S2. In controls, LI values were - 0.70 (S1) and - 0.51 (S2) for right hand stimulation, and 0.82 (S1) and 0.36 (S2) for left hand stimulation, reflecting bilateral asymmetric activations, which were significantly higher in the hemisphere contralateral to the stimulated hand. Therefore, none of the main hypotheses so far entertained to account for the callosal dysgenesis-split-brain paradox have succeeded. We conclude that the preserved interhemispheric transfer of somatosensory tactile information in callosal dysgenesis must be mediated by a fourth alternative, such as aberrant interhemispheric bundles, reorganization of subcortical commissures, or both.

The demonstration that humans can learn to modulate their own brain activity based on feedback of neurophysiological signals opened up exciting opportunities for fundamental and applied neuroscience. Although EEG-based neurofeedback has been long employed both in experimental and clinical investigation, functional MRI (fMRI)-based neurofeedback emerged as a promising method, given its superior spatial resolution and ability to gauge deep cortical and subcortical brain regions. In combination with improved computational approaches, such as pattern recognition analysis (e.g., Support Vector Machines, SVM), fMRI neurofeedback and brain decoding represent key innovations in the field of neuromodulation and functional plasticity. Expansion in this field and its applications critically depend on the existence of freely available, integrated and user-friendly tools for the neuroimaging research community. Here, we introduce FRIEND, a graphic-oriented user-friendly interface package for fMRI neurofeedback and real-time multivoxel pattern decoding. The package integrates routines for image preprocessing in real-time, ROI-based feedback (single-ROI BOLD level and functional connectivity) and brain decoding-based feedback using SVM. FRIEND delivers an intuitive graphic interface with flexible processing pipelines involving optimized procedures embedding widely validated packages, such as FSL and libSVM. In addition, a user-defined visual neurofeedback module allows users to easily design and run fMRI neurofeedback experiments using ROI-based or multivariate classification approaches. FRIEND is open-source and free for non-commercial use. Processing tutorials and extensive documentation are available.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with functional abnormalities in fronto-meso-limbic networks contributing to decision-making, affective and reward processing impairments. Such functional disturbances may underlie a tendency for enhanced altruism driven by empathy-based guilt observed in some patients. However, despite the relevance of altruistic decisions to understanding vulnerability, as well as everyday psychosocial functioning, in MDD, their functional neuroanatomy is unknown.

Humans spend a substantial share of their lives mind-wandering. This spontaneous thinking activity usually comprises autobiographical recall, emotional, and self-referential components. While neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that a specific brain "default mode network" (DMN) is consistently engaged by the "resting state" of the mind, the relative contribution of key cognitive components to DMN activity is still poorly understood. Here we used fMRI to investigate whether activity in neural components of the DMN can be differentially explained by active recall of relevant emotional autobiographical memories as compared with the resting state. Our study design combined emotional autobiographical memory, neutral memory and resting state conditions, separated by a serial subtraction control task. Shared patterns of activation in the DMN were observed in both emotional autobiographical and resting conditions, when compared with serial subtraction. Directly contrasting autobiographical and resting conditions demonstrated a striking dissociation within the DMN in that emotional autobiographical retrieval led to stronger activation of the dorsomedial core regions (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex), whereas the resting state condition engaged a ventral frontal network (ventral striatum, subgenual and ventral anterior cingulate cortices) in addition to the IPL. Our results reveal an as yet unreported dissociation within the DMN. Whereas the dorsomedial component can be explained by emotional autobiographical memory, the ventral frontal one is predominantly associated with the resting state proper, possibly underlying fundamental motivational mechanisms engaged during spontaneous unconstrained ideation.

Neurofeedback by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a technique of potential therapeutic relevance that allows individuals to be aware of their own neurophysiological responses and to voluntarily modulate the activity of specific brain regions, such as the premotor cortex (PMC), important for motor recovery after brain injury. We investigated (i) whether healthy human volunteers are able to up-regulate the activity of the left PMC during a right hand finger tapping motor imagery (MI) task while receiving continuous fMRI-neurofeedback, and (ii) whether successful modulation of brain activity influenced non-targeted motor control regions. During the MI task, participants of the neurofeedback group (NFB) received ongoing visual feedback representing the level of fMRI responses within their left PMC. Control (CTL) group participants were shown similar visual stimuli, but these were non-contingent on brain activity. Both groups showed equivalent levels of behavioral ratings on arousal and MI, before and during the fMRI protocol. In the NFB, but not in CLT group, brain activation during the last run compared to the first run revealed increased activation in the left PMC. In addition, the NFB group showed increased activation in motor control regions extending beyond the left PMC target area, including the supplementary motor area, basal ganglia and cerebellum. Moreover, in the last run, the NFB group showed stronger activation in the left PMC/inferior frontal gyrus when compared to the CTL group. Our results indicate that modulation of PMC and associated motor control areas can be achieved during a single neurofeedback-fMRI session. These results contribute to a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of MI-based neurofeedback training, with direct implications for rehabilitation strategies in severe brain disorders, such as stroke.

Language batteries used to assess the skills of elderly individuals, such as naming and semantic verbal fluency, present some limitations in differentiating healthy controls from patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI). Deficits in narrative discourse occur early in dementia caused by Alzheimer's disease (AD), and the narrative discourse abilities of a-MCI patients are poorly documented. The present study sought to propose and evaluate parameters for investigating narrative discourse in these populations. After a pilot study of 30 healthy subjects who served as a preliminary investigation of macro- and micro-linguistic aspects, 77 individuals (patients with AD and a-MCI and a control group) were evaluated. The experimental task required the participants to narrate a story based on a sequence of actions visually presented. The Control and AD groups differed in all parameters except narrative time and the total number of words recalled. The a-MCI group displayed mild discursive difficulties that were characterized as an intermediate stage between the Control and AD groups' performances. The a-MCI and Control groups differed from the AD group with respect to global coherence, discourse type and referential cohesion. The a-MCI and AD groups were similar to one another but differed from the Control group with respect to the type of words recalled, the repetition of words in the same sentence, the narrative structure and the inclusion of irrelevant propositions in the narrative. The narrative parameter that best distinguished the three groups was the speech effectiveness index. The proposed task was able to reveal differences between healthy controls and groups with cognitive decline. According to our findings, patients with a-MCI already present narrative deficits that are characterized by mild discursive difficulties that are less severe than those found in patients with AD.

The cerebral correlates of altruistic decisions have increasingly attracted the interest of neuroscientists. To date, investigations on the neural underpinnings of altruistic decisions have primarily been conducted in healthy adults undergoing functional neuroimaging as they engaged in decisions to punish third parties. The chief purpose of the present study was to investigate altruistic decisions following focal brain damage with a novel altruistic decision task. In contrast to studies that have focused either on altruistic punishment or donation, the Altruistic Decision Task allows players to anonymously punish or donate to 30 charitable organizations involved with salient societal issues such as abortion, nuclear energy and civil rights. Ninety-four Vietnam War veterans with variable patterns of penetrating traumatic brain injury and 28 healthy veterans who also served in combat participated in the study as normal controls. Participants were asked to invest $1 to punish or reward real societal organizations, or keep the money for themselves. Associations between lesion distribution and performance on the task were analysed with multivariate support vector regression, which enables the assessment of the joint contribution of multiple regions in the determination of a given behaviour of interest. Our main findings were: (i) bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal lesions increased altruistic punishment, whereas lesions of the right perisylvian region and left temporo-insular cortex decreased punishment; (ii) altruistic donations were increased by bilateral lesions of the dorsomedial parietal cortex, whereas lesions of the right posterior superior temporal sulcus and middle temporal gyri decreased donations; (iii) altruistic punishment and donation were only weakly correlated, emphasizing their dissociable neuroanatomical associations; and (iv) altruistic decisions were not related to post-traumatic personality changes. These findings indicate that altruistic punishment and donation are determined by largely non-overlapping cerebral regions, which have previously been implicated in social cognition and moral experience such as evaluations of intentionality and intuitions of justice and morality.10.1093/brain/awy064_video1awy064media15758316955001.

Studies addressing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have demonstrated that PTSD patients exhibit structural abnormalities in brain regions that relate to stress regulation and fear responses, such as the hippocampus, amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Premotor cortical areas are involved in preparing to respond to a threatening situation and in representing the peripersonal space. Urban violence is an important and pervasive cause of human suffering, especially in large urban centers in the developing world. Violent events, such as armed robbery, are very frequent in certain cities, and these episodes increase the risk of PTSD. Assaultive trauma is characterized by forceful invasion of the peripersonal space; therefore, could this traumatic event be associated with structural alteration of premotor areas in PTSD?

During the last decades, neurofeedback training for emotional self-regulation has received significant attention from scientific and clinical communities. Most studies have investigated emotions using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), including the real-time application in neurofeedback training. However, the electroencephalogram (EEG) is a more suitable tool for therapeutic application. Our study aims at establishing a method to classify discrete complex emotions (e.g., tenderness and anguish) elicited through a near-immersive scenario that can be later used for EEG-neurofeedback. EEG-based affective computing studies have mainly focused on emotion classification based on dimensions, commonly using passive elicitation through single-modality stimuli. Here, we integrated both passive and active elicitation methods. We recorded electrophysiological data during emotion-evoking trials, combining emotional self-induction with a multimodal virtual environment. We extracted correlational and time-frequency features, including frontal-alpha asymmetry (FAA), using Complex Morlet Wavelet convolution. Thinking about future real-time applications, we performed within-subject classification using 1-s windows as samples and we applied trial-specific cross-validation. We opted for a traditional machine-learning classifier with low computational complexity and sufficient validation in online settings, the Support Vector Machine. Results of individual-based cross-validation using the whole feature sets showed considerable between-subject variability. The individual accuracies ranged from 59.2 to 92.9% using time-frequency/FAA and 62.4 to 92.4% using correlational features. We found that features of the temporal, occipital, and left-frontal channels were the most discriminative between the two emotions. Our results show that the suggested pipeline is suitable for individual-based classification of discrete emotions, paving the way for future personalized EEG-neurofeedback training.

Storytelling is a distinctive human characteristic that may have played a fundamental role in humans' ability to bond and navigate challenging social settings throughout our evolution. However, the potential impact of storytelling on regulating physiological and psychological functions has received little attention. We investigated whether listening to narratives from a storyteller can provide beneficial effects for children admitted to intensive care units. Biomarkers (oxytocin and cortisol), pain scores, and psycholinguistic associations were collected immediately before and after storytelling and an active control intervention (solving riddles that also involved social interaction but lacked the immersive narrative aspect). Compared with the control group, children in the storytelling group showed a marked increase in oxytocin combined with a decrease in cortisol in saliva after the 30-min intervention. They also reported less pain and used more positive lexical markers when describing their time in hospital. Our findings provide a psychophysiological basis for the short-term benefits of storytelling and suggest that a simple and inexpensive intervention may help alleviate the physical and psychological pain of hospitalized children on the day of the intervention.

The importance of differentiating between social concepts when appraising actions (e.g., understanding behavior as critical vs. fault-finding) and its contribution to vulnerability to major depressive disorder (MDD) is unknown. We predicted poor integration of differentiated conceptual knowledge when people with MDD appraise their social actions, contributing to their tendency to grossly overgeneralize self-blame (e.g., "I am unlikable rather than critical"). To test this hypothesis, we used a neuropsychological test measuring social conceptual differentiation and its relationship with emotional biases in a remitted MDD and a control group. During fMRI, guilt- and indignation-evoking sentences were presented. As predicted, conceptual overgeneralization was associated with increased emotional intensity when appraising social actions. Interdependence of conceptual overgeneralization and negative emotional biases was stronger in MDD (reproducible in the subgroup without medication) and was associated with overgeneralized self-blame. This high conceptual-emotional interdependence was associated with functional disconnection between the right superior anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) as well as a septal region across groups when experiencing guilt (SPM8). Strong coupling of conceptual information (ATL) with information about the context of actions and emotions (frontal-subcortical regions) is thus associated with appraisal being less dependent on conceptual overgeneralization, thereby protecting against excessive self-blame.

Proneness to self-blaming moral emotions such as shame and guilt is increased in major depressive disorder (MDD), and may play an important role in vulnerability even after symptoms have subsided. Social psychologists have argued that shame-proneness is relevant for depression vulnerability and is distinct from guilt. Shame depends on the imagined critical perception of others, whereas guilt results from one's own judgement. The neuroanatomy of shame in MDD is unknown. Using fMRI, we compared 21 participants with MDD remitted from symptoms with no current co-morbid axis-I disorders, and 18 control participants with no personal or family history of MDD. The MDD group exhibited higher activation of the right amygdala and posterior insula for shame relative to guilt (SPM8). This neural difference was observed despite equal levels of rated negative emotional valence and frequencies of induced shame and guilt experience across groups. These same results were found in the medication-free MDD subgroup (N = 15). Increased amygdala and posterior insula activations, known to be related to sensory perception of emotional stimuli, distinguish shame from guilt responses in remitted MDD. People with MDD thus exhibit changes in the neural response to shame after symptoms have subsided. This supports the hypothesis that shame and guilt play at least partly distinct roles in vulnerability to MDD. Shame-induction may be a more sensitive probe of residual amygdala hypersensitivity in MDD compared with facial emotion-evoked responses previously found to normalize on remission.

The syndromic heterogeneity of major depressive disorder (MDD) hinders understanding of the etiology of predisposing vulnerability traits and underscores the importance of identifying neurobiologically valid phenotypes. Distinctive fMRI biomarkers of vulnerability to MDD subtypes are currently lacking. This study investigated whether remitted melancholic MDD patients, who are at an elevated lifetime risk for depressive episodes, demonstrate distinctive patterns of resting-state connectivity with the subgenual cingulate cortex (SCC), known to be of core pathophysiological importance for severe and familial forms of MDD. We hypothesized that patterns of disrupted SCC connectivity would be a distinguishing feature of melancholia. A total of 63 medication-free remitted MDD (rMDD) patients (33 melancholic and 30 nonmelancholic) and 39 never-depressed healthy controls (HC) underwent resting-state fMRI scanning. SCC connectivity was investigated with closely connected bilateral a priori regions of interest (ROIs) relevant to MDD (anterior temporal, ventromedial prefrontal, dorsomedial prefrontal cortices, amygdala, hippocampus, septal region, and hypothalamus). Decreased (less positive) SCC connectivity with the right parahippocampal gyrus and left amygdala distinguished melancholic rMDD patients from the nonmelancholic rMDD and HC groups (cluster-based familywise error-corrected p⩽0.007 over individual a priori ROIs corresponding to approximate Bonferroni-corrected p⩽0.05 across all seven a priori ROIs). No areas demonstrating increased (more positive) connectivity were observed. Abnormally decreased connectivity of the SCC with the amygdala and parahippocampal gyrus distinguished melancholic from nonmelancholic rMDD. These results provide the first resting-state neural signature distinctive of melancholic rMDD and may reflect a subtype-specific primary vulnerability factor given a lack of association with the number of previous episodes.

Neurofeedback (NFB) enables the voluntary regulation of brain activity, with promising applications to enhance and recover emotion and cognitive processes, and their underlying neurobiology. It remains unclear whether NFB can be used to aid and sustain complex emotions, with ecological validity implications. We provide a technical proof of concept of a novel real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rtfMRI) NFB procedure. Using rtfMRI-NFB, we enabled participants to voluntarily enhance their own neural activity while they experienced complex emotions. The rtfMRI-NFB software (FRIEND Engine) was adapted to provide a virtual environment as brain computer interface (BCI) and musical excerpts to induce two emotions (tenderness and anguish), aided by participants' preferred personalized strategies to maximize the intensity of these emotions. Eight participants from two experimental sites performed rtfMRI-NFB on two consecutive days in a counterbalanced design. On one day, rtfMRI-NFB was delivered to participants using a region of interest (ROI) method, while on the other day using a support vector machine (SVM) classifier. Our multimodal VR/NFB approach was technically feasible and robust as a method for real-time measurement of the neural correlates of complex emotional states and their voluntary modulation. Guided by the color changes of the virtual environment BCI during rtfMRI-NFB, participants successfully increased in real time, the activity of the septo-hypothalamic area and the amygdala during the ROI based rtfMRI-NFB, and successfully evoked distributed patterns of brain activity classified as tenderness and anguish during SVM-based rtfMRI-NFB. Offline fMRI analyses confirmed that during tenderness rtfMRI-NFB conditions, participants recruited the septo-hypothalamic area and other regions ascribed to social affiliative emotions (medial frontal / temporal pole and precuneus). During anguish rtfMRI-NFB conditions, participants recruited the amygdala and other dorsolateral prefrontal and additional regions associated with negative affect. These findings were robust and were demonstrable at the individual subject level, and were reflected in self-reported emotion intensity during rtfMRI-NFB, being observed with both ROI and SVM methods and across the two sites. Our multimodal VR/rtfMRI-NFB protocol provides an engaging tool for brain-based interventions to enhance emotional states in healthy subjects and may find applications in clinical conditions associated with anxiety, stress and impaired empathy among others.