Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
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Automatic pupillary responses to pain perception in adults and children: The influence of race and autistic traits
No full textThe ability to understand and share others' emotional states (e.g., feeling of pain) plays a fundamental role in survival and prosocial behavior. The current study utilized pupillometry to assess automatic psychophysiological responses to others' painful facial expressions in both adults and children (N = 72). Results revealed that pupil size significantly increased when perceiving painful versus neutral expressions, independent of low-level visual features. Notably, both adults and children exhibited a racial in-group bias, with pupil dilation effects observed only for same-race painful faces. Furthermore, individuals' Autism Spectrum Quotient scores were negatively correlated with pupil dilation effects toward painful expressions of same-race faces. These findings suggest that pupillary responses might reflect automatic empathic arousal to others' pain and are modulated by racial group membership and autistic traits, providing a potential physiological indicator, at least at the group level, for probing affective resonance in children or individuals with socio-cognitive disorders (e.g., autism spectrum disorder)
Impact of antipsychotics on prolactin and its associations with neurocognition in patients with schizophrenia
No full textBackground and objectives: Cognitive impairment is a core feature of schizophrenia (SCZ). Previous studies suggest a close relationship between prolactin and neurocognition. However, antipsychotics have a great impact on prolactin dysregulation. This study investigates how antipsychotics modulate prolactin and its associations with neurocognition in SCZ patients. Methods: A total of 425 SCZ patients were recruited from psychiatric hospitals. Neurocognition was assessed using the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status. Blood samples were collected after an overnight fast to measure prolactin levels. Analyses were conducted using moderated regression models with two moderators: prolactin-raising antipsychotics and hyperprolactinemia. Results: The prolactin-raising group showed significantly higher prolactin levels than the prolactin-sparing group. Prolactin levels showed significant negative associations with immediate memory and delayed memory. Moreover, the association between prolactin levels and immediate memory was modulated by prolactin-raising antipsychotics and the interaction between prolactin-raising antipsychotics and hyperprolactinemia. Specifically, the negative association was significant only in patients taking prolactin-raising antipsychotics, especially when their prolactin levels exceeded the threshold of hyperprolactinemia. Conclusions: These findings underscore the need for regular serum prolactin monitoring in patients receiving prolactin-raising antipsychotics, particularly those with confirmed hyperprolactinemia. Clinicians should exercise particular caution when prescribing such agents to patients with memory impairment and consider prolactin-sparing alternatives where clinically appropriate.</p
Shared neurogenetic architecture links adolescent neurodevelopmental deviations to adult psychopathological procrastination
No full textWhile general procrastination is common, psychopathological procrastination, a debilitating phenotype often indicative of subclinical psychiatric conditions, remains poorly understood in terms of its neurobiological underpinning. Challenging its traditional conceptualization as a mere behavioral deficit, we investigated the neurogenetic architecture of psychopathological procrastination. Leveraging a prospective adolescent twin cohort (N = 71 twin pairs) with neuroanatomical imaging (baseline) and psychopathological procrastination phenotyping in young adulthood (8-year follow-up), we first established moderate heritability for psychopathological procrastination (h(2) = 0.47, 95% CI: 0.14 - 0.71). Employing normative modeling of brain morphology, we found that adolescent neurodevelopmental deviations, specifically within the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), predicted adult psychopathological procrastination. Crucially, these predictive adolescent NAcc deviations exhibited a strong shared genetic basis with adult psychopathological procrastination (rg = 0.89, 95% CI: 0.89 - 1.00). Beyond regional effects, psychopathological-procrastination-specific whole-brain deviation patterns were identified, which showed neurobiological enrichment with cortical functional gradient and key dopaminergic (DAT/D1) and serotonergic (5-HT receptors) neurotransmitter systems. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal transcriptomic integration of these neuroimaging signatures with human brain gene expression data pinpointed significant associations with molecular transport, neuroimmune responses, and neuroinflammation, further implicating dysregulation within serotonergic and dopaminergic pathways. Collectively, our findings delineate a multisystem neurogenetic architecture of psychopathological procrastination, providing supportive evidence that recontextualizes this debilitating phenotype from a simple behavioral issue to a condition with neurodevelopmental antecedents, potentially suggesting its conceptualization as a subclinical brain disorder
Identification of risk features for methamphetamine dependence using a machine learning model and comprehensive multimodal measures
No full textAge-related spatial discrimination: Investigating hippocampal structural foundations
No full textSpatial discrimination is a key cognitive skill for navigating everyday environments, and a decline in spatial discrimination is considered an early sign of pathological aging. The present study aimed to explore the aging mechanisms of spatial discrimination ability for overlapping and non-overlapping routes and its hippocampal structural basis. Sixty participants (30 young adults and 30 older adults) participated in this study. They performed a passive navigation task that required learning and discriminating four different partly overlapping routes, including both overlapping and non-overlapping segments. Moreover, all participants received structural MRI scans. The volumes of the hippocampus and its four subfields, CA1 (cornu ammonis 1), CA2/3 (cornu ammonis 2/3), CA4/DG (cornu ammonis 4/dentate gyrus), and subiculum, were extracted. The results showed that older adults performed worse than young adults on all behavioral measures of spatial discrimination, including reaction time and accuracy of the whole route, overlapping route, and non-overlapping route. However, both age groups showed improved performance with increased learning blocks. Hippocampal subfields volume reductions occurred in CA4/DG (p = 0.002, q2 = 0.166), while CA1 showed a marginal trend toward atrophy (p = 0.053, q2 = 0.065), CA2/3 (p = 0.363, q2 = 0.015) and subiculum (p = 0.142, q2 = 0.038) remained preserved. Smaller hippocampal volume correlated with slower overlapping route reaction time (r = -0.399) and smaller CA4/DG correlated with lower non-overlapping route accuracy (r = 0.386). Mediation analysis revealed that hippocampus volume mediated the relationship between age and the reaction time of overlapping route, and CA4/DG volume mediated the relationship between age and the accuracy of non-overlapping route. The results demonstrate a decrement in spatial discrimination in older adults, and the structural atrophy in hippocampus and subfield CA4/DG may be the underlying mechanism of this decline. These findings demonstrate subfield-specific mediation effects in a passive navigation paradigm, highlighting CA4/DG as a potential biomarker for age-related spatial discrimination deficits and advancing understanding of the hippocampal structural basis of spatial cognitive decline.</p
Can this moldy fruit be eaten? Four-to six-year-old children's epistemic trust in food domain experts
No full textChildren's understanding of food is influenced by the information they receive from others. Two studies explored the trust of 180 Chinese children (90 girls and 90 boys; aged 4-6) in information providers with different levels of expertise in the food domain (fruit experts vs. fruit farmers vs. ordinary people) in nonconflict and conflict situations. The results showed that children of all ages were more likely to trust a fruit expert (Study 1) and a fruit farmer (Study 2) than a common person. However, if the statement provided by the expert conflicted with the children's pre-existing beliefs, less than half of the children (Study 1: 33%; Study 2: 46%) chose to accept the expert's statement and revised prior beliefs. The comparative analyses of Studies 1 and 2 indicated that 6-yearolds could accurately judge the level of expertise of fruit experts and fruit farmers, and they tended to trust fruit experts with a higher level of professional knowledge than fruit farmers with a slightly lower level of specialty. Study 3 further confirmed that both adults and children perceived the fruit expert as more knowledgeable than the fruit farmer. These suggest that the children could evaluate the learning situation, the information providers' expertise, and their prior experience when faced with the question of whether high-risk foods were edible
Biased minds, sensitive hearts: Divergent neural signatures of interpersonal sensitivity in atypical and non-atypical depression
No full textBackground: Atypical depression (AD) is a distinct subtype of depression, with interpersonal sensitivity as one of its core characteristics. However, the electrophysiological mechanisms that underlie interpersonal sensitivity in AD remain insufficiently explored. Therefore, in the present study, we systematically investigated the neurophysiological differences in interpersonal sensitivity between individuals with AD and non-atypical depression (non-AD) using electroencephalography (EEG). Methods: We assessed 93 patients (50 with AD and 43 with non-AD) using standardized scales, including the Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90) Interpersonal Sensitivity subscale. The Cyberball task combined with EEG recordings, followed by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, was used to evaluate electrophysiological and emotional responses. Exploratory analyses examined correlations between interpersonal sensitivity scores and behavioral/electrophysiological measures. In addition, a machine learning model was applied to identify key features for distinguishing between AD and non-AD. Results: The AD group had significantly higher scores on the SCL-90 Interpersonal Sensitivity subscale compared with the non-AD group. Electrophysiological analyses detected distinct response patterns in the P3 amplitude and theta wave activity during both inclusion and exclusion blocks in the AD group compared with the non-AD group. Moreover, a random forest model developed by using features such as Interpersonal Sensitivity subscale scores achieved an accuracy of 83.3 % in distinguishing between AD and non-AD. Conclusion: Thus, AD patients exhibited greater interpersonal sensitivity than non-AD patients, which was supported by cognitive and neurological evidence. Our findings provide critical insights for developing more precise diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for AD
Altered posterior mid-cingulate cortex activation during adaptive coding in individuals with schizotypal traits, subthreshold depression and autistic traits
No full textAnhedonia is a shared symptom for schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and autism spectrum disorder. Adaptive coding concerns the rescaling of the neural output to the range of values expected in the current context, and impaired adaptive coding may contribute to anhedonia. Previous research seldom compared the neural correlates of adaptive coding between individuals with schizotypal trait (ST), subthreshold depression (SD), autistic trait (AT). Thirty-five ST, 35 SD, 23 AT and 34 HC completed the adaptive version of the Monetary Incentive Delay Task in fMRI. Adaptive coding performance for the expected value (EV) and outcome value (OV) was recorded. Another separate task was used to measure the adaptive coding performance behaviourally. Anhedonia was measured using self-reported questionnaires. ST, SD and AT groups showed hyper-activation of the posterior mid-cingulate cortex (pMCC) during EV adaptation of reward as compared to HC. SD showed hyperactivation in supplementary motor area (SMA) as compared to HC during OV adaptation to rewards. The neural and behavioural performance of adaptive coding were correlated with self-reported pleasure experience in ST, SD and AT groups. These findings suggested shared and distinct aberrant neural patterns of adaptive coding in individuals with ST, SD and AT. The atypical adaptive coding performance was linked to anhedonia in all subclinical groups. Adaptive coding may have an important role in intervention or prevention of anhedonia symptoms
Taxonomic semantic relation prevails in object naming: Larger and earlier effects of taxonomic relation compared to thematic relation
No full textLong-term semantic systems are specialized for taxonomic and thematic relations. In the present study, we investigated the influence of taxonomic and thematic relations on object naming. Leveraging the existing dataset (N = 32) and expanding the sample (total N = 48). Using a blocked cyclic naming paradigm, we explored semantic effects within both taxonomic and thematic contexts, using an identical set of stimuli. A set of sixteen objects was categorized into either a taxonomic context or a thematic context. Our results show that both contexts trigger semantic interference, with a more pronounced interference in the taxonomic context than in the thematic context. The taxonomic context modulated event related potentials (ERPs) within the time windows of 134-456 msec after picture onset, while the thematic context modulated ERPs in 230-362 msec after picture onset. These results reveal larger and earlier effects of taxonomic relations compared to thematic relations, indicating that taxonomic relation prevails in object naming. (c) 2025 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies
Unforgettable food memories in overweight/obese individuals-Evidence from Think/No-Think experiment
No full textAppetite regulation is critically influenced by food-related memories, and the ability to inhibit retrieval of such mnemonic content may serve to attenuate cravings. While inhibitory control is often conceptualized in terms of motor response suppression, the specific mechanisms underlying the suppression of food-related memories remain poorly characterized in overweight and obese (OO) individuals. This study investigated the behavioral and neurophysiological correlates of direct memory suppression in this population. Forty-five young adults performed a Think/No-Think (TNT) task using highand low-calorie food images during electroencephalographic (EEG) recording. We analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) and time-frequency representations (TFRs). Behaviorally, the OO group demonstrated enhanced memory accuracy for food cues compared to normal-weight (NW) controls, specifically during Think trials. Neurophysiological data revealed a significant modulation of the N200 component by calorie content (p = 0.008). the late positive potential (LPP) was sensitive to both instruction (Think/No-Think; p = 0.04) and group membership (p= 0.029). Timefrequency analysis demonstrated that beta-band oscillatory power differentiated between Think and No-Think conditions (p = 0.001) and revealed a significant group-bycalorie interaction (p = 0.007). Collectively, these findings indicate that OO individuals exhibit altered neural dynamics and heightened engagement of neurocognitive resources during the suppression of food-related memories. This work elucidates a potential mnemonic mechanism contributing to maladaptive eating behaviors and posits that interventions targeting memory inhibition could offer a novel pathway for mitigating obesity-related cognitive dysregulation.</p
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