Cendri A. Hutcherson

Loving-Kindness Meditation Increases Social Connectedness

The need for social connection is a fundamental human motive, and it is increasingly clear that feeling socially connected confers mental and physical health benefits. However, in many cultures, societal changes are leading to growing social distrust and alienation. Can feelings of social connection and positivity toward others be increased? Is it possible to self-generate these feelings? In this study, the authors used a brief loving-kindness meditation exercise to examine whether social connection could be created toward strangers in a controlled laboratory context. Compared with a closely matched control task, even just a few minutes of loving-kindness meditation increased feelings of social connection and positivity toward novel individuals on both explicit and implicit levels. These results suggest that this easily implemented technique may help to increase positive social emotions and decrease social isolation.

The Moral Emotions: A Social-Functionalist Account of Anger, Disgust, and Contempt

Recent research has highlighted the important role of emotion in moral judgment and decision making (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001). What is less clear is whether distinctions should be drawn among specific moral emotions. Although some have argued for differences among anger, disgust, and contempt (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999), others have suggested that these terms may describe a single undifferentiated emotional response to morally offensive behavior (Nabi, 2002). In this article, we take a social-functionalist perspective, which makes the prediction that these emotions should be differentiable both in antecedent appraisals and in consequent actions and judgments. Studies 1-3 tested and found support for our predictions concerning distinctions among antecedent appraisals, including (a) a more general role for disgust than has been previously been described, (b) an effect of self-relevance on anger but not other emotions, and (c) a role for contempt in judging incompetent actions. Studies 4 and 5 tested and found support for our specific predictions concerning functional outcomes, providing evidence that these emotions are associated with different consequences. Taken together, these studies support a social-functionalist account of anger, disgust, and contempt and lay the foundation for future research on the negative interpersonal emotions.

The neural bases of amusement and sadness: a comparison of block contrast and subject-specific emotion intensity regression approaches.

Neuroimaging studies have made substantial progress in elucidating the neural bases of emotion. However, few studies to date have directly addressed the subject-specific, time-varying nature of emotional responding. In the present study, we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural bases of two common emotions--amusement and sadness--using both (a) a stimulus-based block contrast approach and (b) a subject-specific regression analysis using continuous ratings of emotional intensity. Thirteen women viewed a set of nine 2-min amusing, sad, or neutral film clips two times. During the first viewing, participants watched the film stimuli. During the second viewing, they made continuous ratings of the intensity of their own amusement and sadness during the first film viewing. For sad films, both block contrast and subject-specific regression approaches resulted in activations in medial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, precuneus, lingual gyrus, amygdala, and thalamus. For amusing films, the subject-specific regression analysis demonstrated significant activations not detected by the block contrast in medial, inferior frontal gyrus, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, temporal lobes, hippocampus, thalamus, and caudate. These results suggest a relationship between emotion-specific temporal dynamics and the sensitivity of different data analytic methods for identifying emotion-related neural responses. These findings shed light on the neural bases of amusement and sadness, and highlight the value of using emotional film stimuli and subject-specific continuous emotion ratings to characterize the dynamic, time-varying components of emotional responses.

Cognitive Regulation during Decision Making Shifts Behavioral Control between Ventromedial and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Value Systems

Cognitive regulation is often used to influence behavioral outcomes. However, the computational and neurobiological mechanisms by which it affects behavior remain unknown. We studied this issue using an fMRI task in which human participants used cognitive regulation to upregulate and downregulate their cravings for foods at the time of choice. We found that activity in both ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) correlated with value. We also found evidence that two distinct regulatory mechanisms were at work: value modulation, which operates by changing the values assigned to foods in vmPFC and dlPFC at the time of choice, and behavioral control modulation, which operates by changing the relative influence of the vmPFC and dlPFC value signals on the action selection process used to make choices. In particular, during downregulation, activation decreased in the value-sensitive region of dlPFC (indicating value modulation) but not in vmPFC, and the relative contribution of the two value signals to behavior shifted toward the dlPFC (indicating behavioral control modulation). The opposite pattern was observed during upregulation: activation increased in vmPFC but not dlPFC, and the relative contribution to behavior shifted toward the vmPFC. Finally, ventrolateral PFC and posterior parietal cortex were more active during both upregulation and downregulation, and were functionally connected with vmPFC and dlPFC during cognitive regulation, which suggests that they help to implement the changes to the decision-making circuitry generated by cognitive regulation.

Dietary Self-Control Is Related to the Speed With Which Attributes of Healthfulness and Tastiness Are Processed

We propose that self-control failures, and variation across individuals in self-control abilities, are partly due to differences in the speed with which the decision-making circuitry processes basic attributes, such as tastiness, versus more abstract attributes, such as healthfulness. We tested these hypotheses by combining a dietary-choice task with a novel form of mouse tracking that allowed us to pinpoint when different attributes were being integrated into the choice process with temporal resolution at the millisecond level. We found that, on average, tastiness was processed about 195 ms earlier than healthfulness during the choice process. We also found that 13% to 39% of observed individual differences in self-control ability could be explained by differences in the relative speed with which tastiness and healthfulness were processed.

Decision value computation in DLPFC and VMPFC adjusts to the available decision time

It is increasingly clear that simple decisions are made by computing decision values for the options under consideration, and then comparing these values to make a choice. Computational models of this process suggest that it involves the accumulation of information over time, but little is known about the temporal course of valuation in the brain. To examine this, we manipulated the available decision time and observed the consequences in the brain and behavioral correlates of choice. Participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they chose to eat or not eat basic food items, in two conditions differing in the amount of time provided for choice. After identifying valuation‐related regions with unbiased whole‐brain general linear models, we analyzed two regions of interest: ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Finite impulse response models of the upsampled estimated neural activity from those regions allowed us to examine the onset, duration and termination of decision value signals, and to compare across regions. We found evidence for the immediate onset of value computation in both regions, but an extended duration with longer decision time. However, this was not accompanied by behavioral changes in either the accuracy or determinants of choice. Finally, there was modest evidence that DLPFC computation correlated with, but lagged behind, VMPFC computation, suggesting the sharing of information across these regions. These findings have important implications for models of decision value computation and choice.

Attention and emotion influence the relationship between extraversion and neural response

Extraversion has been shown to positively correlate with activation within the ventral striatum, amygdala and other dopaminergically innervated, reward-sensitive regions. These regions are implicated in emotional responding, in a manner sensitive to attentional focus. However, no study has investigated the interaction among extraversion, emotion and attention. We used fMRI and dynamic, evocative film clips to elicit amusement and sadness in a sample of 28 women. Participants were instructed either to respond naturally (n = 14) or to attend to and continuously rate their emotions (n = 14) while watching the films. Contrary to expectations, striatal response was negatively associated with extraversion during amusement, regardless of attention. A negative association was also observed during sad films, but only when attending to emotion. These findings suggest that attentional focus does not influence the relationship between extraversion and neural response to positive (amusing) stimuli but does impact the response to negative (sad) stimuli.

Failure to Find Executive Function Deficits Following One Night's Total Sleep Deprivation in University Students Under Naturalistic Conditions

Young adult male students participated in a naturalistic, group-design experiment to ascertain the effects of one nights total sleep deprivation (TSD) on performance of diverse executive function tasks presented as an extended, multitask battery. On the majority of component tasks in this battery, performance has been reported to be impaired following one nights TSD when tasks are administered in isolation. However, participants sleep deprived 35 to 39 hr showed few performance deficits among tests in this battery when compared with non-sleep-deprived controls. Sleep-deprived participants showed only poorer recognition memory and overconfidence in incorrect temporal judgments. Behavioral and physiological adaptation to chronically sleep-restricting lifestyles may confer resistance to the cognitive effects of sleep deprivation in high-functioning young adults.

The neural correlates of social connection

Cultivating social connection has long been a goal of psychology, philosophy, religion, and public policy. Yet the psychological and neural responses that accompany a feeling of connection to others remain unclear. In the present study, we used functional neuroimaging to shed light on the neural correlates of self- and other-focused processes during the successful self-generation of feelings of social connection. To do this, we used a trait judgment task to localize functional activation related to self-focused thought. We then examined brain responses during guided exercises designed both to encourage feeling love and connection from others (i.e., self-focused) and to generate feelings of love and connection toward others (i.e., other-focused). Our results indicated that generating feelings of social connection recruited a portion of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) implicated in thinking about both the self and others. Within this larger area, we observed distinct profiles of activation within different subregions. Although rostral anterior cingulate cortex was more strongly activated by other-focused components of the task, a more dorsal portion of MPFC was comparatively more active during primarily self-focused components of the task. Somewhat surprisingly, stronger feelings of social connection were not associated with greater activation in the anterior cingulate, but rather with less activation in the dorsal region of the MPFC related to self-focused thought. These results are consistent with the possibility that reducing certain kinds of self-focused thought might yield a greater sense of social connection to and care for others.