Psychology
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Item Examining Associations between Neural Sensitivity to Social Feedback with Trait and State Loneliness in Adolescents(2024) Alleluia Shenge, Victoire; Redcay, Elizabeth; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Loneliness can be defined as the negative emotional response to an experience of discrepancy between the desired and actual quality or quantity of one’s relationships. Loneliness is associated with many negative outcomes, including depression and self-harm. This phenomenon tends to increase in adolescence and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at even greater risk for developing loneliness during this time than their neurotypical peers. The present study examined how neural sensitivity to both positive and negative feedback from peers is related to loneliness and social experiences among adolescents with and without autism. In a sample of 94 adolescents (22 autistic and 72 non-autistic) ages 11-14, we used an innovative ecologically valid paradigm for fMRI task along with real-world experience sampling to assess self-reported interaction quality and state loneliness, as well as surveys to examine reports of “trait” (or stable levels of) loneliness.The results indicated group differences in both state and trait loneliness, with the autistic group showing high levels of loneliness. In addition, the autistic group had lower interaction quality compared to their non-autistic peers. However, we did not find support for associations between neural sensitivity to feedback and interaction quality or loneliness across our full group. This work provides an important first step in understanding the relation between loneliness, neural sensitivity to social feedback and social experiences and can further inform intervention for adolescents at risk for negative mental health outcomes depending on which mechanism shows an association effect on social experiences and lonelinessItem INVESTIGATING THE RELATION BETWEEN PATTERN SEPARATION AND HIPPOCAMPAL SUBREGION ACTIVATION(2022) Dunstan, Jade; Riggins, Tracy; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Pattern separation is a key component of episodic memory as it allows us to distinguish between similar events that share overlapping features. Therefore, understanding the development of pattern separation processes can help elucidate individual differences in memory development. Research in children and adults has shown relations between hippocampal structure and pattern separation, indexed behaviorally through a mnemonic discrimination task where participants distinguished between similar stimuli. However, there has been less research investigating relations between hippocampal function and pattern separation processes, all in adult samples. Thus, the current study sought to pilot a child-friendly mnemonic discrimination fMRI paradigm in adults before recruiting a child sample. Results provided some evidence of pattern separation processes as greater differences in activation for Targets relative to Lures predicted better memory performance. Future studies will recruit a child sample to assess group differences in pattern separation processes as well as go beyond mean activation for the conditions by using techniques such as representational similarity analysis to assess patterns of representations for Targets, Lures, and Foils across the voxels of the hippocampus.Item fMRI Meta-Analysis of Social Interaction via Joint Attention Paradigms(2022-04-27) Edakoth, Esha; Glaros, Sophia; Harris, Riley; McGovern, Chelsea; Merchant, Junaid S; Tchangalova, Nedelina; Redcay, ElizabethJoint Attention (JA) is the sharing of attention on a common object or event by two or more people. JA is an important precursor to the development of social cognitive skills needed for more sophisticated forms of social interaction. The brain regions involved in JA during social interactive contexts are not well known because original studies of JA used tasks that are not interactive, such as engaging with the eye gaze of a static image outside of a social interactive context. Recent studies have used fMRI to understand the different brain regions associated with JA in interactive contexts, but there are inconsistent findings across studies. Therefore, this study uses meta-analytic methods to aggregate findings across JA studies using social interactive approaches to identify brain regions that are commonly activated.Item THE NEURAL CORRELATES OF SOCIAL MOTIVATION IN AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER DURING A REAL-TIME PEER INTERACTION(2018) Kirby, Laura Anderson; Redcay, Elizabeth; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulties with social motivation and social interaction. However, the neural underpinnings of these processes are poorly understood, and past studies investigating this subject have significant methodological limitations. This study is the first to investigate the neural correlates of social interaction in children and adolescents diagnosed with ASD using a naturalistic “chat” paradigm that mimics real-world reciprocal conversations. Despite core weaknesses in social interaction, participants with ASD showed similar brain activation to their neurotypical counterparts while initiating conversations and receiving replies from peers. Two notable group differences emerged, however. Participants with ASD showed blunted responses in the amygdala while initiating conversations and receiving replies, and they showed hyperactive responses in the temporal parietal junction (TPJ) while initiating conversations with peers. Findings have implications for how we understand social motivational and social cognitive weaknesses in ASD.Item Understanding the anxiolytic effects of alcohol on the central extended amygdala in humans(2017) Kaplan, Claire Marjorie; Shackman, Alexander J; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The anxiety-reducing properties of alcohol are thought to contribute to development of alcohol dependence, particularly among individuals with anxiety disorders. Remarkably little is known, however, about the neural circuitry underlying anxiolytic effects of alcohol in humans. In a sample of 72 healthy adults, we employed the novel MultiThreat Countdown (MTC) task to investigate the dose-dependent consequences of acute alcohol intoxication (BAL range: 0.061 - 0.145%) during anticipation of certain or uncertain threat, compared to placebo. Focal analyses of the central extended amygdala revealed significant activation during threat in the right, but not left, hemisphere for both the central nucleus [Ce] and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis [BST]. Increasing BALs were associated with decreasing activation in right BST and self-reported fear/anxiety levels during threat. This effect did not differ between certain and uncertain threat. These results build upon converging lines of evidence and suggest involvement of BST in alcohol-induced anxiolysis.Item Functional Neuroimaging of the Social Regulation of Emotion in Schizophrenia(2016) McCarthy, Julie McCarthy; Blanchard, Jack J; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Negative symptoms in schizophrenia are characterized by deficits in normative experiences and expression of emotion. Social anhedonia (diminished pleasure from social experiences) is one negative symptom that may impact patients’ motivation to engage in meaningful social relationships. Past research has begun to examine the mechanisms that underlie social anhedonia, but it is unclear how this lack of social interest may impact the typically positive effects of social buffering and social baseline theory whereby social support attenuates stress. The present pilot study examines how social affiliation through hand holding is related to subjective and neural threat processing, negative symptoms, and social functioning. Twenty-one participants (14 controls; 7 schizophrenia) developed social affiliation with a member of the research staff who served as the supportive partner during the threat task. Participants displayed greater subjective benefit to holding the hand of their partner during times of stress relative to being alone or with an anonymous experimenter, as indicated by self-reported increased positive valence and decreased arousal ratings. When examining the effects of group, hand holding, and their interaction on the neurological experience of threat during the fMRI task, the results were not significant. However, exploratory analyses identified preliminary data suggesting that controls experienced small relative increases in BOLD signal to threat when alone compared to being with the anonymous experimenter or their partner, whereas the schizophrenia group results indicated subtle relative decreases in BOLD signal to threat when alone compared to either of the hand holding conditions. Additionally, within the schizophrenia group, more positive valence in the partner condition was associated with less severe negative symptoms, better social functioning, and more social affiliation, whereas less arousal was correlated with more social affiliation. Our pilot study offers initial insights about the difficulties of building and using social affiliation and support through hand holding with individuals with schizophrenia during times of stress. Further research is necessary to clarify which types of support may be more or less beneficial to individuals with schizophrenia who may experience social anhedonia or paranoia with others that may challenge the otherwise positive effects of social buffering and maintaining a social baseline.Item Developmental Neural Correlates of Social Interaction(2016) Rice, Katherine Ann; Redcay, Elizabeth; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Children develop in a sea of reciprocal social interaction, but their brain development is predominately studied in non-interactive contexts (e.g., viewing photographs of faces). This dissertation investigated how the developing brain supports social interaction. Specifically, novel paradigms were used to target two facets of social experience—social communication and social motivation—across three studies in children and adults. In Study 1, adults listened to short vignettes—which contained no social information—that they believed to be either prerecorded or presented over an audio-feed by a live social partner. Simply believing that speech was from a live social partner increased activation in the brain’s mentalizing network—a network involved in thinking about others’ thoughts. Study 2 extended this paradigm to middle childhood, a time of increasing social competence and social network complexity, as well as structural and functional social brain development. Results showed that, as in adults, regions of the mentalizing network were engaged by live speech. Taken together, these findings indicate that the mentalizing network may support the processing of interactive communicative cues across development. Given this established importance of social-interactive context, Study 3 examined children’s social motivation when they believed they were engaged in a computer-based chat with a peer. Children initiated interaction via sharing information about their likes and hobbies and received responses from the peer. Compared to a non-social control, in which children chatted with a computer, peer interaction increased activation in mentalizing regions and reward circuitry. Further, within mentalizing regions, responsivity to the peer increased with age. Thus, across all three studies, social cognitive regions associated with mentalizing supported real-time social interaction. In contrast, the specific social context appeared to influence both reward circuitry involvement and age-related changes in neural activity. Future studies should continue to examine how the brain supports interaction across varied real-world social contexts. In addition to illuminating typical development, understanding the neural bases of interaction will offer insight into social disabilities such as autism, where social difficulties are often most acute in interactive situations. Ultimately, to best capture human experience, social neuroscience ought to be embedded in the social world.Item CORTICOLIMBIC FUNCTIONING, NICOTINE DEPENDENCE CHARACTERISTICS, AND SMOKING LAPSE HISTORY: AN FMRI STUDY(2014) Richards, Jessica Margaret; Lejuez, Carl W; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Nicotine dependence is a prevalent and costly disorder characterized by notoriously high relapse rates. Extant research implicates stress as a key mechanism driving smoking across the stages of addiction, and neurobiological models of stress and addiction emphasize the role of overlapping corticolimbic circuits in both emotion dysregulation and compulsive drug seeking. However, neuroimaging research examining the neural correlates of stress processing in human smokers is limited and lacking in some areas, leaving key questions unanswered. Specifically, it is unclear how neural responses to stress may explain individual differences in nicotine dependence severity and cessation attempt outcomes. Moreover, more recent theoretical and empirical work has highlighted the importance of looking beyond functioning in discreet neural regions and has emphasized the importance of examining how brain functioning at a network level, through the use of resting state functional connectivity, might explain addictive behavior. However, research examining the relationship between functional connectivity and clinically-relevant smoking measures is also limited. As a first step toward addressing these gaps in the literature, the current study utilized a novel fMRI-compatible psychological stress induction task to examine the relationships between stress-induced neural activation, as well as resting state functional connectivity within stress-related corticolimbic circuits, and clinically-relevant smoking characteristics among a sample of adult cigarette smokers. Analysis of the fMRI data collected during administration of the novel stress induction task revealed significant stress-induced activation in the right insula, a region previously implicated in the interoceptive experience of negative affective states, as well as visceral symptoms of nicotine withdrawal and craving. Contrary to expectations, there were no significant relationships identified between stress-induced neural functioning, or functional connectivity within stress-related circuits, and the clinically-relevant smoking measures that were assessed. Findings are discussed in light of several study limitations and directions for future research are enumerated.Item The Effect of Social Interaction on the Neural Correlates of Language Processing and Mentalizing(2014) Rice, Katherine Ann; Redcay, Elizabeth; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recent behavioral and neuroscience evidence suggests that studying the social brain in detached and offline contexts (e.g., listening to prerecorded stories about characters) may not capture real-world social processes. Few studies, however, have directly compared neural activation during live interaction to conventional recorded paradigms. The current study used a novel fMRI paradigm to investigate whether real-time social interaction modulates the neural correlates of language processing and mentalizing. Regions associated with social engagement (i.e., dorsal medial prefrontal cortex) were more active during live interaction. Processing live versus recorded language increased activation in regions associated with narrative processing and mentalizing (i.e., temporal parietal junction). Regions associated with intentionality understanding (i.e., posterior superior temporal sulcus) were more active when mentalizing about a live partner. These results have implications for quantifying and understanding the neural correlates of real-world social behavior in typical adults, in developmental populations, and in individuals with social disabilities such as autism.Item Effects of Prenatal Drug Exposure on Adolescent Brain Activation During a Visuospatial Working Memory Task(2008-11) Riggins, Tracy; Schweitzer, Julie; Kurup, Pradeep; Ross, Thomas; Black, Maureen; Salmeron, Betty JoBackground: Previous research examining effects of prenatal drug exposure (PDE) has yielded mixed results regarding cognitive performance during school age years. Associations between PDE and tests of global functioning (IQ and academic achievement) tend to be minimal and are typically attenuated by environmental variables (e.g., caregiving environment). On the other hand, significant negative associations have been reported in tests of executive functioning (sustained attention, inhibitory control, and behavioral regulation), even with covariate control. These findings are consistent with animal models of PDE that report developmental abnormalities in brain regions associated with strong dopaminergic innervation including the striatum, anterior cingulate cortex, and prefrontal cortex. In humans, these regions are putatively involved in executive functions that coordinate the basic cognitive processes required for goal-directed action (e.g., attention inhibitory control, planning, working memory). The objective of the present study was to assess the effects of PDE on brain functioning during adolescence. Methods: fMRI was used to examine visuospatial working memory (VSWM) in 35 adolescents (mean: 14.3 years); 20 with intrauterine exposure to cocaine, heroin, or both and 15 unexposed children from the same community. All participants performed a 2-back VSWM paradigm that required dynamic storage and manipulation of spatial information. Whole-brain functional EPI scans were acquired using a 3T Siemens Scanner with standard parameters. Participants completed one 6-minute block-design run that alternated between a 30 second control condition (which required observation of visual stimuli, sustained attention, and a motor response) and 30 seconds of the VSWM condition. Brain responses were analyzed using the AFNI software package with appropriate contrasts and p < 0.05 corrected for multiple comparisons. Results: Across all participants, the VSWM task activated the frontal-parietal attention network including bilateral superior parietal lobules, precuneus, middle frontal gyri, superior frontal gyri, and insular cortex. Significant deactivations were observed in regions of the “default network,” including the left anterior cingulate gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, posterior cingulate, and bilateral parahippocampal cortices. Whole-brain between group comparisons with both age and gender entered as covariates revealed 3 regions that were differentially activated in the drug-exposed compared to the non-exposed group. These regions included right inferior parietal lobe, right precentral gryus, and left cuneus. The drug-exposed group showed deactivation of the right inferior parietal lobule compared to no change in the non-exposed group. The non-exposed group showed activations in both the right precentral gyrus and left cuneus compared to no change in the drug-exposed group. These differences in activations were detected despite equivalent behavioral performance on the task (i.e., accuracy and response time) and after statistically controlling environmental variables that differed between the groups, including placement in nonmaternal care, maternal age at time of birth and prenatal exposure to cigarettes. Discussion: Despite similar task performance, adolescents with a history of PDE showed different neural activations than the comparison group. Regions that were differentially activated are implicated in sequencing task information (i.e., right parietal lobe), working memory performance in healthy control children (i.e., right precentral gyrus), and visual attention (i.e., left cuneus). These results suggest regions and components of working memory processing that may be differentially affected by PDE in adolescence.