Distorted empathic processing has been observed across multiple psychiatric disorders. Simulation theory provides a theoretical framework that proposes a mechanism through which empathy difficulties ...may arise. Specifically, introspection-centric simulation theory (IST) predicts that an inability to accurately interpret and describe internal affective states may lead to empathy difficulties. The purpose of this review is to synthesize and summarize an empirical literature suggesting that simulation theory provides insights into a cognitive and neurobiological mechanism (i.e., alexithymia and insula pathology) that negatively impacts empathic processing, in addition to how disruptions in these processes manifest across psychiatric disorders. Specifically, we review an emerging non-clinical literature suggesting that consistent with IST, alexithymia and associated insula pathology leads to empathy deficits. Subsequently, we highlight clinical research suggesting that a large number of disorders characterized by empathy pathology also feature alexithymia. Collectively, these findings motivate the importance for future work to establish the role of alexithymia in contributing to empathy deficits across clinical symptoms and disorders. The current review suggests that simulation theory provides a tractable conceptual platform for identifying a potential common cognitive and neural marker that is associated with empathy deficits across a wide array of diagnostic classes.
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common and serious psychiatric condition that typically emerges during adolescence and persists into adulthood if left untreated. Prevailing interventions focus on ...modulating threat and arousal systems but produce only modest rates of remission. This gap in efficacy suggests that most mainstream treatment concepts do not sufficiently target core processes involved in the onset and maintenance of SAD. This idea has further driven the development of new theoretical models that target dopamine (DA)-driven reward circuitry and motivational deficits that appear to be systematically altered in SAD. Most of the available data linking systemic alterations in DA neurobiology to SAD in humans, although abundant, remains at the level of correlational evidence. Accordingly, the purpose of this brief review is to critically evaluate the relevance of experimental work in rodent models that link details of DA function to symptoms of social anxiety. We conclude that, despite certain systematic limitations inherent in animal models, these approaches provide useful insights into human biomarkers of social anxiety including that (1) adolescence may serve as a critical period for the convergence of neurobiological and environmental factors that modify future expectations about social reward through experience dependent changes in DA-ergic circuitry, (2) females may show unique susceptibility to social anxiety symptoms when encountering relational instability that influences DA-related neural processes, and (3) separate from fear and arousal systems, the functional neurobiology of central DA systems contribute uniquely to susceptibility and maintenance of anhedonic factors relevant to human models of SAD.
Affective immunology of the skin is a growing area; however, established protocols for measuring individual differences in cutaneous inflammation are lacking. To address this, we present a ...preliminary validation of Precision Implementation of Minimal Erythema Dose (PI-MED) testing as a method for measuring cutaneous inflammation. PI-MED is a recently adapted protocol, optimized for reproducibility and individual differences research, that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to evoke cutaneous erythema, or inflammatory skin reddening. PI-MED's novel UV dosage schedule produces standardized erythema responses across different skin pigmentation types and shows strong internal consistency within person and good test-retest reliability across 8-10 weeks. In line with predictions, increased PI-MED erythema was associated with heightened anhedonia, across several measures, beyond influences of non-affective covariates. While future work should further refine the dosage schedule for the lightest and darkest skin types, overall, evidence supports PI-MED as a protocol for inducing and measuring individual differences in cutaneous inflammation. Further, PI-MED-induced erythema can expand psychoneuroimmunology research by offering a complementary assessment for general inflammatory tone. This work adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating a distinct relationship between inflammation and anhedonia.
Only a portion of individuals experiencing chronic stress and associated increases in inflammation go on to develop pathological elevations in mood and anxiety symptoms. Some prevailing models ...suggest that the outcomes of chronic stress may largely depend on individual differences in perceived control. In the current study, we used this theoretical framework to disambiguate the influence of autonomic arousal and perceived control on inflammatory and psychological outcomes in a large sample of adults from the Midlife in the United States dataset (wave 2; MIDUS-2) (Final N = 1030), and further replicated our approach in a second (MIDUS-Refresher) cohort (Final N = 728). Using k-means clustering we created subgroups systematically differing in subjective arousal (high/low) and perceived control (low/high) and compared these subgroups on inflammatory markers and psychological outcomes. Overall results showed that individuals in the high subjective arousal subgroups had higher levels of IL-6, CRP, and FIB, independent of level of CNTL. However, distinctive, and pathological psychological symptom patterns became more apparent when individuals were characterized by both subjective arousal and perceived control. These findings suggest that subtyping individuals based on subjective arousal and perceived control can help us disentangle pathological versus adaptive mental health outcomes in those with co-occurring inflammation and may help identify those vulnerable to psychopathology in the context of physical or psychological stressor exposure.
•Clustering along subjective arousal and perceived control produced reliable subgroups in adults.•High arousal subgroups had higher IL-6 and CRP levels in both main and replication samples, independent of control.•Each of the four arousal/control subgroups showed distinct affective phenotypes.•Low perceived control subgroups uniquely reported low positive affect.•Effect of low perceived control on positive affect is dissociable from high negative affect and inflammation.
Information about sensations, actions, outcomes, and their associations is often unknown, imprecise, or subject to change. Bayesian theories of learning suggest that to minimize uncertainty and ...maintain adaptive control, the brain optimally combines new sensory input with past experience, to infer (form beliefs about) the causes and consequences of sensations and actions. The degree to which beliefs are updated to support exploitation of past knowledge or sensitivity to new sensory information depends on the strength of that information and associated confidence.
Sustaining attention to the task at hand is a crucial part of everyday life, from following a lecture at school to maintaining focus while driving. Lapses in sustained attention are frequent and ...often problematic, with conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder affecting millions of people worldwide. Recent work has had some success in finding signatures of sustained attention in whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) measures during basic tasks, but since FC can be dynamic and task-dependent, it remains unclear how fully these signatures would generalize to a more complex and naturalistic scenario. To this end, we used a previously defined whole-brain FC network – a marker of attention that was derived from a sustained attention task – to predict the ability of participants to recall material during a free-viewing reading task. Though the predictive network was trained on a different task and set of participants, the strength of FC in the sustained attention network predicted reading recall significantly better than permutation tests where behavior was scrambled to simulate chance performance. To test the generalization of the method used to derive the sustained attention network, we applied the same method to our reading task data to find a new FC network whose strength specifically predicts reading recall. Even though the sustained attention network provided significant prediction of recall, the reading network was more predictive of recall accuracy. The new reading network's spatial distribution indicates that reading recall is highest when temporal pole regions have higher FC with left occipital regions and lower FC with bilateral supramarginal gyrus. Right cerebellar to right frontal connectivity is also indicative of poor reading recall. We examine these and other differences between the two predictive FC networks, providing new insight into the task-dependent nature of FC-based performance metrics.
•Whole-brain FC marker of attention predicts reading recall in new subjects.•A new FC network derived from reading task data provides stronger prediction.•A limited set of 73 FC connections performs as well as a larger set.•The networks' spatial distributions are linked to specifics of their tasks.
Purposeof Review
Sensation seeking, a trait-like preference for intense experiences with a disregard for their potentially aversive consequences, is a risk factor for the development of substance use ...disorders and other hazardous activities. However, there remain several open questions regarding its neurophysiological characteristics, its precise effect on decision-making, and the clinical management of high sensation-seeking individuals.
Recent Findings
We review evidence, including recent neuropharmacological and neuroimaging work, which demonstrates a neurophysiological basis for the construct, particularly regarding reward-related and punishment-related processes. We then evaluate evidence for a relationship between sensation seeking and behavioral measures of risk taking, which supports a consistently modest increase in risk preference with higher trait sensation seeking. These small effect sizes imply the need both for more sensitive behavioral measures, as well as novel theoretical insights into when and why high sensation-seeking individuals might show a preference for risky options. Predictions derived from different theoretical approaches, including subjective utility, reinforcement learning, active inference, and contextually dependent risk taking, are outlined.
Summary
Novel theoretical approaches might help to derive more specific measures of sensation seeking via the generation of new paradigms. They might also clarify adaptive and harmful aspects of the decision-making style of high sensation seekers, which might help to develop and refine new clinical interventions.
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