The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and ventrolateral PFC (VLPFC) are both crucial structures involved in voluntary emotional regulation. However, it remains unclear whether the functions of these two cortical regions that are involved in emotional regulation, which are usually active in non-social situations, could be generalized to the regulation of social pain as well.

Background Reward dysfunction is a major dimension of depressive symptomatology, but it remains obscure if that dysfunction varies across different reward types. In this study, we focus on the abnormalities in anticipatory/consummatory processing of monetary and social reward associated with depressive symptoms. Methods Forty participants with depressive symptoms and forty normal controls completed the monetary incentive delay (MID) and social incentive delay (SID) tasks with event-related potential (ERP) recording. Results In the SID but not the MID task, both the behavioral hit rate and the ERP component contingent negative variation (CNV; indicating reward anticipation) were sensitive to the interaction between the grouping factor and reward magnitude; that is, the depressive group showed a lower hit rate and a smaller CNV to large-magnitude (but not small-magnitude) social reward cues compared to the control group. Further, these two indexes were correlated with each other. Meanwhile, the ERP components feedback-related negativity and P3 (indicating reward consumption) were sensitive to the main effect of depression across the MID and SID tasks, though this effect was more prominent in the SID task. Conclusions Overall, we suggest that depressive symptoms are associated with deficits in both the reward anticipation and reward consumption stages, particularly for social rewards. These findings have a potential to characterize the profile of functional impairment that comprises and maintains depression.

The acoustic attenuation of Helmholtz resonator including an extended neck and sound–absorbing materials is investigated in current study. A two-dimensional analytical method based on mode matching method is developed to determine the Transmission loss (TL) of a piston-driven model of Helmholtz resonator. The resonance frequency and Transmission loss predicted from this method show reasonable agreements with published experimental results. Finally, this method is used to examine the effect of length of extended neck, extended neck with/without absorbing material and acoustic properties of sound-absorbing material on acoustic performance of Helmholtz resonator.

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Background: Amotivation is a typical feature in major depressive disorders and refers to individuals exhibiting reduced willingness to exert effort for rewards.However, the motivation pattern when deciding whether to exert effort for self versus others in people with depression remains unclear.Methods: We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study and employed an adapted Effort-Expenditure for Rewards Task in subthreshold depressive (SD) participants (n = 33) and healthy controls (HC) (n = 32). This required participants to choose between a fixed low-effort/low-reward and a variable higheffort/high-reward option, and then immediately exert effort to obtain corresponding rewards for themselves or for unfamiliar people.Results: Compared with the HC group, the SD group showed blunted activity in the left dorsal anterior cingulate cortex/dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, bilateral anterior insula (AI), and right putamen-left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex functional connectivity when choosing to exert effort for themselves. Additionally, the SD group exhibited increased willingness and greater activation in the bilateral AI when choosing to exert effort for others. Furthermore, these brain activations and functional connectivity were positively related to self-reported motivation.Conclusions: These findings show altered motivation during effort-based decisionmaking in individuals with the mild depressive state, particularly with higher motivation for others. Thus, this suggests that motivational behaviors and prefrontal-striatal circuitry are altered in individuals with SD, which can be utilized to discover treatment targets and develop strategies to address mental illness caused by motivation disorders.