177 research outputs found
Psychobiology of Perceived Effort During Physical Tasks
No full textPerception of effort is the conscious sensation of the effort exerted during a physical task, and it is one of the subjective experiences that accompany voluntary actions. Perception of effort has an important role in the self-regulation of behavior. In physical tasks requiring endurance, perception of effort is one of the main determinants of pacing and performance and it is one of the barriers that prevent sedentary individuals from adopting an active lifestyle. Furthermore, high perception of effort is one of the main features of the disabling fatigue affecting patients with cancer and other medical conditions. The afferent feedback model postulates that perception of effort arises from sensory signals produced by peripheral receptors (e.g., group III–IV afferents). According to the corollary discharge model, perception of effort arises from corollary discharges of the central motor command to the working muscles (including the respiratory muscles). Current electrophysiological evidence, showing that motor-related brain activity correlates with perception of effort, corroborates the corollary discharge model of perception of effort. Preliminary evidence from neuroimaging studies suggests that the cingulate and insular cortices, and possibly the thalamus and precuneus, are brain areas that might be involved in perception of effort. Future research should focus on targets for interventions aimed at reducing perception of effort. Such interventions might benefit athletes involved in endurance performance, patients suffering from fatigue, and sedentary individuals wishing to adopt a more active lifestyle
Self-control in social decision making: A neurobiological perspective
No full textSelf-control is defined as the process in which thoughts, emotions, or prepotent responses are inhibited to efficiently enact a more focal goal. Self-control not only allows for more adaptive individual decision making but also promotes adaptive social decision making. In this chapter, we examine a burgeoning area of interdisciplinary research: the neuroscience of self-control in social decision making. We examine research on self-control in complex social contexts examined from a social neuroscience perspective. We review correlational evidence from neuroimaging studies and causal evidence from neuromodulation studies (i.e., brain stimulation). We specifically highlight research that shows that self-control involves the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) across a number of social domains and behaviors. Research has also begun to directly integrate nonsocial with social forms of self-control, showing that the basic neurobiological processes involved in stopping a motor response appear to be involved in social contexts that require self-control. Further, neural traits, such as baseline activation in the lateral PFC, can explain sources of individual differences in self-control capacity. We explore whether techniques that change brain functioning could target neural mechanisms related to self-control capacity to potentially enhance self-control in social behavior. Finally, we discuss several research questions ripe for examination. We broadly suggest that future research can now turn to exploring how neural traits and situational affordances interact to impact self-control in social decision making in order to continue to elucidate the processes that allow people to maintain and realize stable goals in a dynamic and often uncertain social environment
History of Cornelius
Get PDFA clean library copy of the History of Cornelius by Mattie Mann Smith. A picture of the author is included at the end
Overlapping neural systems underlying "incentive hope" and apprehension
No full textPositioning incentive hope in a general model of behavioral control systems removes artificial boundaries between mechanisms of incentive motivation in foraging behavior and other functions of the striatum and connected systems. Specifically, incentive hope may involve mechanisms of anticipation of both reward and threat, explaining why anxious individuals show stronger potentiation of incentive motivation under conditions of reward uncertainty
Are the insular cortex and cortisol implicated in Parkinsonian features?
No full textRecent studies implicate insular cortex and the hormone cortisol in Parkinsonian features. Dopaminergic alterations at the level of the insula may be involved in changes in personality (i.e. novelty seeking) and symptoms of hemispatial neglect. I discuss this evidence and suggest that attention in future research to a possible role of the insula and of cortisol in Parkinsonian features may yield valuable information regarding Parkinson's disease. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Protective inhibition of self-regulation and motivation: Extending a classic pavlovian principle to social and personality functioning
No full textHow can people master their own thoughts, feelings, and actions? This question is central to the scientific study of self-regulation. The behavioral side of self-regulation has been extensively investigated over the last decades, but the biological machinery that allows people to self-regulate has mostly remained vague and unspecified. Handbook of Biobehavioral Approaches to Self-Regulation corrects this imbalance. Moving beyond traditional mind-body dualities, the various contributions in the book examine how self-regulation becomes established in cardiovascular, hormonal, and central nervous systems. Particular attention is given to the dynamic interplay between affect and cognition in self-regulation. The book also addresses the psychobiology of effort, the impact of depression on self-regulation, the development of self-regulation, and the question what causes self-regulation to succeed or fail. These novel perspectives provide readers with a new, biologically informed understanding of self-awareness and self-agency. Among the topics being covered are: Self-regulation in an evolutionary perspective. The muscle metaphor in self-regulation in the light of current theorizing on muscle physiology. From distraction to mindfulness: psychological and neural mechanisms of attention strategies in self-regulation. Self-regulation in social decision-making: a neurobiological perspective. Mental effort: brain and autonomic correlates in health and disease. A basic and applied model of the body-mind system. Handbook of Biobehavioral Approaches to Self-Regulation provides a wealth of theoretical insights into self-regulation, with great potential for future applications for improving self-regulation in everyday life settings, including education, work, health, and interpersonal relationships. The book highlights a host of exciting new ideas and directions and is sure to provoke a great deal of thought and discussion among researchers, practitioners, and graduate-level students in psychology, education, neuroscience, medicine, and behavioral economics
Personality dynamics in the brain: Individual differences in updating of representations and their phylogenetic roots
No full textTo cope with changing and unfamiliar situations, individuals process novel information and integrate this information into internal models that were formed through previous experiences. We propose that the continuum of the degree to which people update these internal models when encountering novel information is central to personality dynamics. Personality traits therefore arise at both ends of this continuum. Personality dimensions and behavioral manifestations (such as those reflected in liberal and conservative political thought) are classified at different points along this continuum, as well as according to the availability and flexible situational accessibility of internal models. Our model is rooted in neurobiological evidence (interactions of large-scale brain networks in particular) and shows strong parallels with models of basic animal personality traits. The model thus permits to explain both personality traits and personality dynamics, including phasic and stable adaptations to environmental conditions. Moreover, the model sheds light on the development of personality and its origins through phylogenetic and ontogenetic time.</p
Does a single session of reading literary fiction prime enhanced mentalising performance? Four replication experiments of Kidd and Castano (2013)
No full textPrior experiments indicated that reading literary fiction improves mentalising performance relative to reading popular fiction, non-fiction, or not reading. However, the experiments had relatively small sample sizes and hence low statistical power. To address this limitation, the present authors conducted four high-powered replication experiments (combined N = 1006) testing the causal impact of reading literary fiction on mentalising. Relative to the original research, the present experiments used the same literary texts in the reading manipulation; the same mentalising task; and the same kind of participant samples. Moreover, one experiment was pre-registered as a direct replication. In none of the experiments did reading literary fiction have any effect on mentalising relative to control conditions. The results replicate earlier findings that familiarity with fiction is positively correlated with mentalising. Taken together, the present findings call into question whether a single session of reading fiction leads to immediate improvements in mentalising
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