Attributed social context and emotional content recruit frontal and limbic brain regions during virtual feedback processing

Abstract

In communication, who is communicating can be just as important as what is said. However, sender identity in virtual communication is often inferred rather than perceived. Therefore, the present research investigates the brain structures activated by sender identity attributions and evaluative feedback processing during virtual communication. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, 32 participants were told that they would receive personality feedback, either sent from another human participant or from a randomly acting computer. In reality, both conditions contained random but counterbalanced feedback, automatically delivered by approving or denying negative, neutral, or positive adjectives. Although physically identical, feedback attributed to the Bhuman^sender activated multiple regions within a "social brain" network, including the superior frontal, medial prefrontal, and orbitofrontal cortex, anterior and posterior parts of the cingulate cortex, and the bilateral insula. Regardless of attributed sender, positive feedback increased responses in the striatum and bilateral amygdalae, while negative compared to neutral feedback elicited stronger insula and somatosensory responses. These results reveal the recruitment of an extensive mentalizing and social brain network by mere sender attributions and the activation of brain structures related to reward and punishment by verbal feedback, demonstrating its embodied processing.

Emotion in Context: How Sender Predictability and Identity Affect Processing of Words as Imminent Personality Feedback

“…The procedure was highly similar to previous studies (Schindler et al, 2015, 2018a; Schindler and Kissler, 2016a). Participants were told that they would be either evaluated by an unknown other person or randomly by a computer algorithm.…”

Close yet independent: Dissociation of social from valence and abstract semantic dimensions in the left anterior temporal lobe

“…Several recent studies have examined the neural correlates of real-life social interactions (e.g., Eisenberger, Inagaki, Muscatell, Haltom, & Leary, 2011;Hughes & Beer, 2013;Schindler, Kruse, Stark, & Kissler, 2019), contrasting the same words in different social contexts (perspective taking; i.e., subtracting out the words' general semantic activation), and reported widespread activations in regions such as the medial prefrontal or anterior cingulate cortex depending on the specific contrast of interest, but not the left aSTS. Several recent studies have examined the neural correlates of real-life social interactions (e.g., Eisenberger, Inagaki, Muscatell, Haltom, & Leary, 2011;Hughes & Beer, 2013;Schindler, Kruse, Stark, & Kissler, 2019), contrasting the same words in different social contexts (perspective taking; i.e., subtracting out the words' general semantic activation), and reported widespread activations in regions such as the medial prefrontal or anterior cingulate cortex depending on the specific contrast of interest, but not the left aSTS.…”

“…What is the relationship between the social semantics preferred by the left aSTS found here and those involved in social interactions? Several recent studies have examined the neural correlates of real-life social interactions (e.g., Eisenberger, Inagaki, Muscatell, Haltom, & Leary, 2011;Hughes & Beer, 2013;Schindler, Kruse, Stark, & Kissler, 2019), contrasting the same words in different social contexts (perspective taking; i.e., subtracting out the words' general semantic activation), and reported widespread activations in regions such as the medial prefrontal or anterior cingulate cortex depending on the specific contrast of interest, but not the left aSTS. Our experiments here, being interested in the representation of social information in general word semantics, contrasted different words (with or without social knowledge) in neutral contexts.…”

“…On the other hand, the regions intrinsically connected with the left aSTS anatomically overlap with the default mode network (Yeo et al, 2011), which has been associated with a range of cognitive tasks that are related to loosely defined social processing: Autobiographical memory retrieval, prospection, theory of mind (Spreng, Mar, & Kim, 2008), social interaction perception (Centelles et al, 2011;Iacoboni et al, 2004), and human-specific interaction (Schindler et al, 2019). Taken together, it is possible that this aSTS region processes social semantics that are abstracted away from perceptual aspects (e.g., the human form or motion) of interpersonal interactions, but are tightly related to regions preferentially responding to social interaction, together forming a network for social processing.…”

Vocal threat enhances visual perception as a function of attention and sex

“…The conflict ignited by this original work inspired much subsequent research. Some of this research leveraged on the spatial sensitivity of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which allows for a fairly detailed differentiation of emotion systems (Straube et al, 2011; Schindler et al, 2018b). Additionally, research was accumulated using the electroencephalogram (EEG) and its event-related potential (ERP) technique.…”