Yoko Mano

Neural basis of individualistic and collectivistic views of self

Individualism and collectivism refer to cultural values that influence how people construe themselves and their relation to the world. Individualists perceive themselves as stable entities, autonomous from other people and their environment, while collectivists view themselves as dynamic entities, continually defined by their social context and relationships. Despite rich understanding of how individualism and collectivism influence social cognition at a behavioral level, little is known about how these cultural values modulate neural representations underlying social cognition. Using cross‐cultural functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined whether the cultural values of individualism and collectivism modulate neural activity within medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) during processing of general and contextual self judgments. Here, we show that neural activity within the anterior rostral portion of the MPFC during processing of general and contextual self judgments positively predicts how individualistic or collectivistic a person is across cultures. These results reveal two kinds of neural representations of self (eg, a general self and a contextual self) within MPFC and demonstrate how cultural values of individualism and collectivism shape these neural representations. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009.

Dynamic cultural influences on neural representations of the self

People living in multicultural environments often encounter situations which require them to acquire different cultural schemas and to switch between these cultural schemas depending on their immediate sociocultural context. Prior behavioral studies show that priming cultural schemas reliably impacts mental processes and behavior underlying self-concept. However, less well understood is whether or not cultural priming affects neurobiological mechanisms underlying the self. Here we examined whether priming cultural values of individualism and collectivism in bicultural individuals affects neural activity in cortical midline structures underlying self-relevant processes using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Biculturals primed with individualistic values showed increased activation within medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) during general relative to contextual self-judgments, whereas biculturals primed with collectivistic values showed increased response within MPFC and PCC during contextual relative to general self-judgments. Moreover, degree of cultural priming was positively correlated with degree of MPFC and PCC activity during culturally congruent self-judgments. These findings illustrate the dynamic influence of culture on neural representations underlying the self and, more broadly, suggest a neurobiological basis by which people acculturate to novel environments.

Theory and methods in cultural neuroscience

Cultural neuroscience is an emerging research discipline that investigates cultural variation in psychological, neural and genomic processes as a means of articulating the bidirectional relationship of these processes and their emergent properties. Research in cultural neuroscience integrates theory and methods from anthropology, cultural psychology, neuroscience and neurogenetics. Here, we review a set of core theoretical and methodological challenges facing researchers when planning and conducting cultural neuroscience studies, and provide suggestions for overcoming these challenges. In particular, we focus on the problems of defining culture and culturally appropriate experimental tasks, comparing neuroimaging data acquired from different populations and scanner sites and identifying functional genetic polymorphisms relevant to culture. Implications of cultural neuroscience research for addressing current issues in population health disparities are discussed.

Dissociable roles of the anterior temporal regions in successful encoding of memory for person identity information

Memory for person identity information consists of three main components: face-related information, name-related information, and person-related semantic information, such as the persons job title. Although previous studies have demonstrated the importance of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in the retrieval of associations between these kinds of information, there is no evidence concerning whether the ATL region contributes to the encoding of this memory, and whether ATL roles are dissociable between different levels of association in this memory. Using fMRI, we investigated dissociable roles within the ATL during successful encoding of this memory. During encoding, participants viewed unfamiliar faces, each paired with a job title and name. During retrieval, each learned face was presented with two job titles or two names, and participants were required to choose the correct job title or name. Successful encoding conditions were categorized by subsequent retrieval conditions: successful encoding of names and job titles (HNJ), names (HN), and job titles (HJ). The study yielded three main findings. First, the dorsal ATL showed greater activations in HNJ than in HN or HJ. Second, ventral ATL activity was greater in HNJ and HJ than in HN. Third, functional connectivity between these regions was significant during successful encoding. The results are the first to demonstrate that the dorsal and ventral ATL roles are dissociable between two steps of association, associations of person-related semantics with name and with face, and a dorsal–ventral ATL interaction predicts subsequent retrieval success of memory for person identity information.

Beyond the memory mechanism: Person-selective and nonselective processes in recognition of personally familiar faces

Special processes recruited during the recognition of personally familiar people have been assumed to reflect the rich episodic and semantic information that selectively represents each person. However, the processes may also include person nonselective ones, which may require interpretation in terms beyond the memory mechanism. To examine this possibility, we assessed decrease in differential activation during the second presentation of an identical face (repetition suppression) as an index of person selectivity. During fMRI, pictures of personally familiar, famous, and unfamiliar faces were presented to healthy subjects who performed a familiarity judgment. Each face was presented once in the first half of the experiment and again in the second half. The right inferior temporal and left inferior frontal gyri were activated during the recognition of both types of familiar faces initially, and this activation was suppressed with repetition. Among preferentially activated regions for personally familiar over famous faces, robust suppression in differential activation was exhibited in the bilateral medial and anterior temporal structures, left amygdala, and right posterior STS, all of which are known to process episodic and semantic information. On the other hand, suppression was minimal in the posterior cingulate, medial prefrontal, right inferior frontal, and intraparietal regions, some of which were implicated in social cognition and cognitive control. Thus, the recognition of personally familiar people is characterized not only by person-selective representation but also by nonselective processes requiring a research framework beyond the memory mechanism, such as a social adaptive response.

Decoding what one likes or dislikes from single-trial fNIRS measurements.

Recent functional neuroimaging studies have shown the possibility of decoding human mental states from their brain activity using noninvasive neuroimaging techniques. In this study, we applied multivariate pattern classification, in conjunction with a short interval of functional near-infrared spectroscopy measurements of the anterior frontal cortex, to decode whether a human likes or dislikes a presented visual object; an ability that is quite beneficial for a number of clinical and technological applications. A variety of objects comprising sceneries, cars, foods, and animals were used as the stimuli. The results showed the possibility of predicting subjective preference from a short interval of functional near-infrared spectroscopy measurements of the anterior frontal regions. In addition, the pattern localization results showed the neuroscientific validity of the constructed classifier.

The representation of social interaction in episodic memory: A functional MRI study

The representation of social interaction in episodic memory is a critical factor for the successful navigation of social relationships. In general, it is important to separate episodic memory during social interaction from episodic memory during the self-generation of action events. Different cortical representations have been associated with social interaction vs. self-generated episodic memory. Here we clarified the cortical representation of the effect of context (social vs. solitary) on episodic memory by comparing it with the generation effect (self vs. other) on episodic memory. Each participant learned words while engaged in a sentence generation and a reading task, and subsequently each participant was scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they performed a recognition task using the words that had been learned. The experiment was comprised of four conditions and we looked at two situations that involved a social context and non-social (solitary) context task. In the learning session before entering the MRI, two participants collaborated in a social context either generating (social-contextual self-generation condition: SS) or reading (social-contextual other-generation condition: SO) a sequence of sentences alternately to construct a meaningful story narrative. In the non-social context, the participants generated (non-social-contextual self-generation condition: NS) or read (non-social-contextual other-generation condition: NO) a sequence of sentences individually. The stimuli for the recognition session consisted of learned words and novel words. Activation for social context retrieval was identified in the right medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and activation for self-generated retrieval was identified in the left mPFC and the left middle cingulate cortex. These results indicate that dissociable regions within the medial prefrontal cortices contribute to the processes involved in the representation of social interaction, including social context and self-generation in the retrieval of episodic memory.

Transient neural activation in human amygdala involved in aversive conditioning of face and voice

Elucidating the neural mechanisms involved in aversive conditioning helps find effective treatments for psychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorder and phobia. Previous studies using fMRI and human subjects have reported that the amygdala plays a role in this phenomenon. However, the noxious stimuli that were used as unconditioned stimuli in previous studies (e.g., electric shock) might have been ecologically invalid because we seldom encounter such stimuli in daily life. Therefore, we investigated whether a face stimulus could be conditioned by using a voice that had negative emotional valence and was collected from a real-life environment. A skin conductance response showed that healthy subjects were conditioned by using these stimuli. In an fMRI study, there was greater amygdala activation in response to the faces that had been paired with the voice than to those that had not. The right amygdala showed transient activity in the early stage of acquisition. A psychophysiological interaction analysis indicated that the subcortical pathway from the medial geniculate body to the amygdala played a role in conditioning. Modulation of the subcortical pathway by voice stimuli preceded the transient activity in the amygdala. The finding that an ecologically valid stimulus elicited the conditioning and amygdala response suggests that our brain is automatically processing unpleasant stimuli in daily life.

Autistic empathy toward autistic others

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are thought to lack self-awareness and to experience difficulty empathizing with others. Although these deficits have been demonstrated in previous studies, most of the target stimuli were constructed for typically developing (TD) individuals. We employed judgment tasks capable of indexing self-relevant processing in individuals with and without ASD. Fourteen Japanese men and 1 Japanese women with high-functioning ASD (17–41 years of age) and 13 Japanese men and 2 TD Japanese women (22–40 years of age), all of whom were matched for age and full and verbal intelligence quotient scores with the ASD participants, were enrolled in this study. The results demonstrated that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex was significantly activated in individuals with ASD in response to autistic characters and in TD individuals in response to non-autistic characters. Although the frontal–posterior network between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and superior temporal gyrus participated in the processing of non-autistic characters in TD individuals, an alternative network was involved when individuals with ASD processed autistic characters. This suggests an atypical form of empathy in individuals with ASD toward others with ASD.

Neural basis of episode context: an fMRI study

the internal action plan while responding to the exigencies of the local stimulus environment, we trained a monkey to perform a memory-guided sequential motor task that included planned interruptions. Experimental sessions were sectioned off according to the temporal order of the motor sequence the animal had to repeatedly perform (main-task). While the main-task was interrupted, the animal had to execute a movement instructed by a visual cue, independently from the main task. Thereafter, the animal resumed the main-task and was required to recall a motor sequence it previously performed. We recorded neuronal activity from the prefrontal cortex while the animal was interrupted during the sequential motor task. We studied the activity of neurons related to this interruption.