Шестакова Анна Николаевна

MEG signatures of remote effects of agreement and disagreement with the majority

2021 · ARTICLE · en

People often change their beliefs by succumbing to an opinion of the majority. Such changes are often referred to as majority influence or conformity. While some previous studies have focused on the reinforcement learning mechanisms of conformity or on its internalization, others have reported evidence of changes in sensory processing evoked by majority opinion. In this study, we used magnetoencephalographic (MEG) source imaging to further investigate the remote effects of agreement and disagreement with the majority. During the first session, participants rated the trustworthiness of faces and subsequently learned how the majority of their peers had previously rated each face. To identify the neural correlates of the post-effect of agreeing or disagreeing with the group, we recorded MEG activity while participants rated faces during the next session. We found MEG traces of past disagreement or agreement with the peer group at the parietal cortices as early as approximately 230 ms after the face onset. The neural activity of the superior parietal lobule, intraparietal sulcus, and precuneus was significantly stronger if the participant’s rating had previously differed from the ratings of his or her peers. The early MEG correlates of disagreement with the majority were followed by activity in the orbitofrontal cortex starting at about 320 ms after the face onset. Altogether, the results reveal the temporal dynamics of the neural mechanism of remote effects of disagreement with the peer group: early signatures of modified face processing were followed by later markers of long-term social influence on the valuation process at the ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Neural Mechanisms of Social Conformity

2021 · CHAPTER · en

Conformity is a form of social influence in which individuals align their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with other members of a group. Numerous neuroimaging findings support the hypothesis that human conformity is underlined by the basic (dopamine-related) learning mechanism: conflicts with a group opinion generate a “social” reward prediction error signal. Thus, a difference between an individual behavior and the group behavior is perceived as a behavioral error. The recent neuroimaging studies further support this conclusion and suggest that the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortexcontinuously update subjective values based on a comparison of our own actions and the behavior of others.

Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita Enhances the Variability of Neural Responses to Naturalistic Video Scenes

2021 в печати · ARTICLE · en

Feasibility and Challenges of Performing Magnetoencephalography Experiments in Children With Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita

2021 · ARTICLE · en

Arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (AMC) has recently drawn substantial attention from researchers and clinicians. New effective surgical and physiotherapeutic methods have been developed to improve the quality of life of patients with AMC. While it is clear that all these interventions should strongly rely on the plastic reorganization of the central nervous system, almost no studies have investigated this topic. The present study demonstrates the feasibility of using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate brain activity in young AMC patients. We also outlined the general challenges and limitations of electrophysiological investigations on patients with arthrogryposis. We conducted MEG recordings using a 306-channel Elekta Neuromag VectorView system during a cued motor task performance in four patients with arthrogryposis, five normally developed children, and five control adults. Following the voice command of the experimenter, each subject was asked to bring their hand toward their mouth to imitate the self-feeding process. Two patients had latissimus dorsi transferred to the biceps brachii position, one patient had a pectoralis major transferred to the biceps brachii position, and one patient had no elbow flexion restoration surgery before the MEG investigation. Three patients who had undergone autotransplantation prior to the MEG investigation demonstrated activation in the sensorimotor area contralateral to the elbow flexion movement similar to the healthy controls. One patient who was recorded before the surgery demonstrated subjectively weak distributed bilateral activation during both left and right elbow flexion. Visual inspection of MEG data suggested that neural activity associated with motor performance was less pronounced and more widely distributed across the cortical areas of patients than of healthy control subjects. In general, our results could serve as a proof of principle in terms of the application of MEG in studies on cortical activity in patients with AMC. Reported trends might be consistent with the idea that prolonged motor deficits are associated with more difficult neuronal recruitment and the spatial heterogeneity of neuronal sources, most likely reflecting compensatory neuronal mechanisms. On the practical side, MEG could be a valuable technique for investigating the neurodynamics of patients with AMC as a function of postoperative abilitation.

Aberrant Auditory and Visual Memory Development of Children with Upper Limb Motor Disorders

2021 · ARTICLE · en

The current study aimed to compare differences in the cognitive development of children with and without upper limb motor disorders. The study involved 89 children from 3 to 15 years old; 57 children with similar upper limb motor disorders and 32 healthy children. Our results showed that motor disorders could impair cognitive functions, especially memory. In particular, we found that children between 8 and 11 years old with upper limb disorders differed significantly from their healthy peers in both auditory and visual memory scales. These results can be explained by the fact that the development of cognitive functions depends on the normal development of motor skills, and the developmental delay of motor skills affects cognitive functions. Correlation analysis did not reveal any significant relationship between other cognitive functions (attention, thinking, intelligence) and motor function. Altogether, these findings point to the need to adapt general habilitation programs for children with motor disorders, considering the cognitive impairment during their development. The evaluation of children with motor impairment is often limited to their motor dysfunction, leaving their cognitive development neglected. The current study showed the importance of cognitive issues for these children. Moreover, early intervention, particularly focused on memory, can prevent some of the accompanying difficulties in learning and daily life functioning of children with movement disorders.

Neural Processing of Narratives: From Individual Processing to Viral Propagation

2020 · ARTICLE · en

Narratives, in the form of, e.g., written stories, mouth-to-mouth accounts, audiobooks, fiction movies, and media-feeds, powerfully shape the perception of reality and widely influence human decision-making. In this review, we describe findings from recent neuroimaging studies unraveling how narratives influence the human brain, thus shaping perception, cognition, emotions, and decision-making. It appears that narrative sense-making relies on default-mode network (DMN) structures of the brain, especially precuneus. Activity in precuneus further seems to differ for fictitious vs. real narratives. Notably, high inter-subject correlation (ISC) of brain activity during narrative processing seems to predict the efficacy of a narrative. Factors that enhance the ISC of brain activity during narratives include higher levels of attention, emotional arousal, and negative emotional valence. Higher levels of attentional suspense seem to co-vary with activity in the temporoparietal junction, emotional arousal with activity in dorsal attention network, and negative emotional valence with activity in DMN. Lingering after-effects of emotional narratives have been further described in DMN, amygdala, and sensory cortical areas. Finally, inter-individual differences in personality, and cultural-background related analytical and holistic thinking styles, shape ISC of brain activity during narrative perception. Together, these findings offer promising leads for future studies elucidating the effects of narratives on the human brain, and how such effects might predict the efficacy of narratives in modulating decision-making.

Cortical plasticity elicited by monetary losses: An ERP study

2020 · ARTICLE · en

Both human and animal studies have demonstrated remarkable findings of experience-induced plasticity in the cortex. Here, we investigated whether the widely used monetary incentive delay (MID) task changes the neural processing of incentive cues that code expected monetary outcomes. We used a novel auditory version of the MID task, where participants responded to acoustic cues that coded expected monetary losses. To investigate task-induced brain plasticity, we presented incentive cues as deviants during passive oddball tasks before and after two sessions of the MID task. During the oddball task, we recorded the mismatch-related negativity (MMN) as an index of cortical plasticity. We found that two sessions of the MID task evoked a significant enhancement of MMN for incentive cues that predicted large monetary losses, specifically when monetary cue discrimination was essential for maximising monetary outcomes. The task-induced plasticity correlated with the learning-related neural activity recorded during the MID task. Thus, our results confirm that the auditory processing of (loss) incentive cues is dynamically modulated by previous monetary outcomes

Action in auctions: neural and computational mechanisms of bidding behaviour

2019 · ARTICLE · en

Competition for resources is a fundamental characteristic of evolution. Auctions have been widely used to model competition of individuals for resources, and bidding behaviour plays a major role in social competition. Yet, how humans learn to bid efficiently remains an open question. We used model‐based neuroimaging to investigate the neural mechanisms of bidding behaviour under different types of competition. Twenty‐seven subjects (nine male) played a prototypical bidding game: a double action, with three “market” types, which differed in the number of competitors. We compared different computational learning models of bidding: directional learning models (DL), where the model bid is “nudged” depending on whether it was accepted or rejected, along with standard reinforcement learning models (RL). We found that DL fit the behaviour best and resulted in higher payoffs. We found the binary learning signal associated with DL to be represented by neural activity in the striatum distinctly posterior to a weaker reward prediction error signal. We posited that DL is an efficient heuristic for valuation when the action (bid) space is continuous. Indeed, we found that the posterior parietal cortex represents the continuous action space of the task, and the frontopolar prefrontal cortex distinguishes among conditions of social competition. Based on our findings, we proposed a conceptual model that accounts for a sequence of processes that are required to perform successful and flexible bidding under different types of competition.

The Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) Task Induces Changes in Sensory Processing: ERP Evidence

2019 · ARTICLE · en

Numerous cognitive studies have demonstrated experience-induced plasticity in the primary sensory cortex, indicating that repeated decisions could modulate sensory processing. In this context, we investigated whether an auditory version of the monetary incentive delay (MID) task could change the neural processing of the incentive cues that code expected monetary outcomes. To study sensory plasticity, we presented the incentive cues as deviants during oddball sessions recorded before and after training in the two MID task sessions. We found that after 2 days of training in the MID task, incentive cues evoked a larger P3a (compared with the baseline condition), indicating there was an enhancement of the involuntary attention to the stimuli that predict rewards. At the individual level, the training-induced change of mismatch-related negativity was correlated with the amplitude of the feedback-related negativity (FRN) recorded during the first MID task session. Our results show that the MID task evokes plasticity changes in the auditory system associated with better passive discrimination of incentive cues and with enhanced involuntary attention switching towards these cues. Thus, the sensory processing of incentive cues is dynamically modulated by previous outcomes.

Depletion of executive control during risky decision making reveals a correspondence between the reflection effect and trial-by-trial strategy formation

2019 · ARTICLE · en

According to dual process theories, depletion of executive resources may amplify decision-making biases. Psychological studies investigating the influence of executive control on risky decision making typically employ dual task paradigms, e.g. a risky decision-making task in parallel with an executive task. However, these paradigms often reveal relatively weak to effects. In this study, we designed a novel task to determine the influence of executive control on risky decision making directly, and simultaneously separating gains and losses using a block design. Contrary to other tasks, risk taking, and executive control occurred during the same decision. When risky decisions were conditioned on high executive control, participants demonstrated a reflection effect: higher risk taking for loss blocks, compared to gain blocks. Further exploration revealed that the gain-domain specific influence of executive control on risky decisions occurred due to the influence of trial-by-trial decision-making strategies.