Abstract:Aging is associated with changes in cognitive and affective functioning, which likely shape older adults' social cognition. As the neural and psychological mechanisms underlying age differences in social abilities remain poorly understood, the present study aims to extend the research in this field. To this purpose, younger (n = 30; M age = 26.6), middle-aged (n = 30; M age = 48.4), and older adults (n = 29; M age = 64.5) performed a task designed to assess affective perspective-taking, during an EEG recording… Show more
“…The results of studies conducted with ERPs point in the same direction, which is the case of a recent study conducted with a ToM task involving pictures of social scenarios (Fernandes et al, 2019).…”
Section: Aging and Theory Of Mindsupporting
confidence: 74%
“…In addition to the accuracy rates, the authors assessed how mentalizing abilities modulated the late positive potential (LPP), an ERP that is higher to recognized than to new material (Danker et al, 2008). The LPP was assessed in those trials in which participants gave a correct answer, and results showed that younger adults had higher amplitudes for congruent than incongruent targets, while older adults had similar amplitudes in both conditions (Fernandes et al, 2019). The younger adults' higher amplitudes for congruent targets suggest that they were able to infer the appropriate emotional states during the scenarios, which they maintained in working memory and then compared with the emotion displayed in the target.…”
Aging is associated with a decline in several neurocognitive processes but also with a preserved or even improved emotional functioning. As both neurocognitive and emotional processes are implicated in social cognition, what happens to this domain during aging? Social cognition broadly refers to the ability to construct mental representations of the relations between oneself and others and to use them to guide social behavior. It involves the processing of information that is relevant to guide the behavior in social contexts, but considering that most information is relevant for this purpose, social cognition became a term too general to be measurable. To make this construct quantifiable, it is typically divided into subdomains that are studied separately, among which emotional identification, theory of mind, and social perception are the most studied. In this comprehensive review, we discuss the core insights into the effects of aging on these domains of social cognition, present the main up-to-date findings and point to areas that demand further investigation. This review highlights that aging may affect all these domains, even if a preserved or even improved performance is occasionally found. Further studies are needed to reach higher consistency.
Public Significance StatementAging has been associated with decreasing biological and cognitive functioning, but also with increasing emotional regulation. Considering the role of emotional and cognitive abilities on social cognition, it is necessary to clarify the effects of aging on this domain, which is a fundamental component of successful social interactions. Social interactions are of extreme importance during aging considering that older adults with stronger social relationships are less likely to decline in cognitive functions.
“…The results of studies conducted with ERPs point in the same direction, which is the case of a recent study conducted with a ToM task involving pictures of social scenarios (Fernandes et al, 2019).…”
Section: Aging and Theory Of Mindsupporting
confidence: 74%
“…In addition to the accuracy rates, the authors assessed how mentalizing abilities modulated the late positive potential (LPP), an ERP that is higher to recognized than to new material (Danker et al, 2008). The LPP was assessed in those trials in which participants gave a correct answer, and results showed that younger adults had higher amplitudes for congruent than incongruent targets, while older adults had similar amplitudes in both conditions (Fernandes et al, 2019). The younger adults' higher amplitudes for congruent targets suggest that they were able to infer the appropriate emotional states during the scenarios, which they maintained in working memory and then compared with the emotion displayed in the target.…”
Aging is associated with a decline in several neurocognitive processes but also with a preserved or even improved emotional functioning. As both neurocognitive and emotional processes are implicated in social cognition, what happens to this domain during aging? Social cognition broadly refers to the ability to construct mental representations of the relations between oneself and others and to use them to guide social behavior. It involves the processing of information that is relevant to guide the behavior in social contexts, but considering that most information is relevant for this purpose, social cognition became a term too general to be measurable. To make this construct quantifiable, it is typically divided into subdomains that are studied separately, among which emotional identification, theory of mind, and social perception are the most studied. In this comprehensive review, we discuss the core insights into the effects of aging on these domains of social cognition, present the main up-to-date findings and point to areas that demand further investigation. This review highlights that aging may affect all these domains, even if a preserved or even improved performance is occasionally found. Further studies are needed to reach higher consistency.
Public Significance StatementAging has been associated with decreasing biological and cognitive functioning, but also with increasing emotional regulation. Considering the role of emotional and cognitive abilities on social cognition, it is necessary to clarify the effects of aging on this domain, which is a fundamental component of successful social interactions. Social interactions are of extreme importance during aging considering that older adults with stronger social relationships are less likely to decline in cognitive functions.
“…Exclusion criteria consisted of the presence or history of any cardiovascular, neurological, or musculoskeletal problems contraindicated to exercise, as well as a history of any head injury with a loss of consciousness. Given the potential influence of emerging developmental changes (Lukie, Montazer-Hojat, & Holroyd, 2014) and advancing age (e.g., Fernandes et al, 2019; Mather, 2016) on emotional and reward processing, we restricted our sample to adults between the ages of 18 and 35 years of age. All participants were physically able to engage in aerobic exercise as indicated by responses to the physical activity readiness questionnaire (PAR-Q; Thomas, Reading, & Shephard, 1992).…”
Reward sensitivity and emotional reactivity have been identified as two candidate mechanisms of anhedonia in depression. However, there is a paucity of research examining whether deficits in reward sensitivity and emotional reactivity can be modified through brief, behavioral interventions. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of continuous moderate-intensity aerobic exercise on the reward positivity (RewP) and late positive potential (LPP) among individuals reporting variable symptoms of depression. Using a within-subjects design, 66 young adults completed a 30-min session of aerobic exercise and seated rest on separate days. Reward sensitivity and emotional reactivity were assessed following each session using the RewP and LPP event-related brain potentials. Results indicated that the LPP to positive stimuli was potentiated following exercise, while no effect on RewP was observed. Notably, individuals who experienced greater emotional reactivity to positive stimuli following exercise also exhibited increased sensitivity to rewards. Depressive symptom severity failed to moderate any effects, suggesting beneficial effects of acute exercise on positive emotional reactivity across depressive symptom profiles. These findings suggest that aerobic exercise increases emotional engagement to positive stimuli, which may have implications for protecting against the development of anhedonia and resolving the blunted emotional reactivity to positive content in depression.
“…This hypothesis has motivated the study of patients with chronic pain, mainly regarding the processing of information related to pain. Previous studies have shown that people with chronic pain selectively process information related to their clinical condition to the detriment of neutral information [ 23 , 24 ]. However, other studies have failed to find evidence of possible attentional biases [ 25 , 26 ].…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…As the LPP shows a temporally broad distribution (e.g. [ 23 ]), we divided its corresponding time window into an early (LPPe; 400–600 ms) and late component (LPPl; 600–800 ms). Fig.…”
Introduction:The present research investigates the neural correlates of attentional bias in fibromyalgia (FM) with a dot-probe task performed during an electroencephalogram (EEG) recording. Methods: For this purpose, 30 female participants were recruited, divided into two groups: a group of patients with FM (FM, n = 15, M age = 51.87) and a healthy control group (HC) (HC, n = 15, M age = 46.13). Results: The results did not show behavioral differences between groups, but the EEG results showed that healthy controls had larger P300 amplitudes than patients with FM. Regarding late positive potentials (LPP), we found that patients with FM had larger amplitudes than healthy controls in a later time window. Conclusion: In summary, while the P300 results suggest that patients allocate less attentional resources to the task, the increased amplitudes of their LPP suggest augmented emotional processing of the target stimuli. Altogether, our results seem to support the thesis of generalized attentional deficits in FM.
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