Slow echo: facial EMG evidence for the delay of spontaneous,but not voluntary,emotional mimicry in children with autism spectrum disorders

Spontaneous mimicry, including that of emotional facial expressions, is important for socio‐emotional skills such as empathy and communication. Those skills are often impacted in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Successful mimicry requires not only the activation of the response, but also its appropriate speed. Yet, previous studies examined ASD differences in only response magnitude. The current study investigated timing and magnitude of spontaneous and voluntary mimicry in ASD children and matched controls using facial electromyography (EMG). First, participants viewed and recognized happy, sad, fear, anger, disgust and neutral expressions presented at different durations. Later, participants voluntarily mimicked the expressions. There were no group differences on emotion recognition and amplitude of expression‐appropriate EMG activity. However, ASD participants’ spontaneous, but not voluntary, mimicry activity was delayed by about 160 ms. This delay occurred across different expressions and presentation durations. We relate these findings to the literature on mirroring and temporal dynamics of social interaction.     

Matrix representations for structural strengthenings of a propositional logic

The aim of this paper is to show that the operations of forming direct products and submatrices suffice to construct exhaustive semantics for all structural strengthenings of the consequence determined by a given class of logical matrices.     

How many ways can you die? Multiple biological deaths as a consequence of the multiple concepts of an organism

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - According to the mainstream position in the bioethical definition of death debate, death is to be equated with the cessation of an organism. Given such a...     

Qualitative differences between conscious and nonconscious processing? On inverse priming induced by masked arrows

In general, both consciously and unconsciously perceived stimuli facilitate responses to following similar stimuli. However, masked arrows delay responses to following arrows. This inverse priming has been ascribed to inhibition of premature motor activation, more recently even to special processing of nonconsciously perceived material. Here, inverse priming depended on particular masks, was insensitive to contextual requirements for increased inhibition, and was constant across response speeds. Putative signs of motor inhibition in the electroencephalogram may as well reflect activation of the opposite response. Consequently, rather than profiting from inhibition of primed responses, the alternative response is directly primed by perceptual interactions of primes and masks. Thus there is no need to assume separate pathways for nonconscious and conscious processing.     

Portfolio Decisions and Brain Reactions via the CEAD method

Decision making can be a complex process requiring the integration of several attributes of choice options. Understanding the neural processes underlying (uncertain) investment decisions is an important topic in neuroeconomics. We analyzed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from an investment decision study for stimulus-related effects. We propose a new technique for identifying activated brain regions: cluster, estimation, activation, and decision method. Our analysis is focused on clusters of voxels rather than voxel units. Thus, we achieve a higher signal-to-noise ratio within the unit tested and a smaller number of hypothesis tests compared with the often used General Linear Model (GLM). We propose to first conduct the brain parcellation by applying spatially constrained spectral clustering. The information within each cluster can then be extracted by the flexible dynamic semiparametric factor model (DSFM) dimension reduction technique and finally be tested for differences in activation between conditions. This sequence of Cluster, Estimation, Activation, and Decision admits a model-free analysis of the local fMRI signal. Applying a GLM on the DSFM-based time series resulted in a significant correlation between the risk of choice options and changes in fMRI signal in the anterior insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Additionally, individual differences in decision-related reactions within the DSFM time series predicted individual differences in risk attitudes as modeled with the framework of the mean-variance model.     

Theory of mind and wisdom: The development of different forms of perspective-taking in late adulthood

How does perspective-taking develop over the lifespan? This question has been investigated in two separate research traditions, dealing with theory of mind (ToM) and wisdom, respectively. Operating in almost complete isolation from each other, and using rather different conceptual approaches, these two traditions have produced seemingly contradictory results: While perspective-taking has been consistently found to decline in old age in ToM research, studies on wisdom have mostly found that perspective-taking remains constant or sometimes even increases in later adulthood. This study sought to integrate these two lines of research and clarify the seemingly contradictory patterns of findings by systematically testing for both forms of perspective-taking and their potential cognitive foundations. The results revealed (1) the dissociation in developmental patterns between ToM perspective-taking (declining with age) and wisdom-related perspective-taking (no decline with age) also held – documented here for the first time – in one and the same sample of younger versus older adults; (2) this dissociation was of limited generality: It did not (or only partly) hold once the material of the two types of tasks was more closely matched; and (3) the divergent developmental patterns of ToM perspective-taking versus wisdom-related perspective-taking could be accounted for to some degree by the fact that only TOM perspective-taking was related to developmental changes in fluid intelligence.