Watching Eyes effects: When others meet the self Conty, Laurence; George, Nathalie; Hietanen, Jari K.
Consciousness and cognition,
October 2016, 2016-10-00, 20161001, Letnik:
45
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
•The effects of direct gaze on human cognition need a unified account.•We argue that direct gaze activates self-referential processing.•This may favor pro-social actions, positive appraisals, memory ...and self-awareness.•The belief of being watched gives direct gaze its self-referential power.•Direct gaze has a therapeutic potential that should be delineated.
The perception of direct gaze—that is, of another individual’s gaze directed at the observer—is known to influence a wide range of cognitive processes and behaviors. We present a new theoretical proposal to provide a unified account of these effects. We argue that direct gaze first captures the beholder’s attention and then triggers self-referential processing, i.e., a heightened processing of stimuli in relation with the self. Self-referential processing modulates incoming information processing and leads to the Watching Eyes effects, which we classify into four main categories: the enhancement of self-awareness, memory effects, the activation of pro-social behavior, and positive appraisals of others. We advance that the belief to be the object of another’s attention is embedded in direct gaze perception and gives direct gaze its self-referential power. Finally, we stress that the Watching Eyes effects reflect a positive impact on human cognition; therefore, they may have a therapeutic potential, which future research should delineate.
•We simulated evoked MEG experiments with variable number of subjects and trials.•We tested signal detectability at sensor-level (by amplitude, squared amplitude, GFP).•Statistical power varied by ...source distance, orientation & between-subject variability.•Consider source detectability at sensor-level when designing MEG studies.•Sample size for MEG studies? Consider source with lowest expected statistical power.
Statistical power is key for robust, replicable science. Here, we systematically explored how numbers of trials and subjects affect statistical power in MEG sensor-level data. More specifically, we simulated "experiments" using the MEG resting-state dataset of the Human Connectome Project (HCP). We divided the data in two conditions, injected a dipolar source at a known anatomical location in the "signal condition", but not in the "noise condition", and detected significant differences at sensor level with classical paired t-tests across subjects, using amplitude, squared amplitude, and global field power (GFP) measures. Group-level detectability of these simulated effects varied drastically with anatomical origin. We thus examined in detail which spatial properties of the sources affected detectability, looking specifically at the distance from closest sensor and orientation of the source, and at the variability of these parameters across subjects. In line with previous single-subject studies, we found that the most detectable effects originate from source locations that are closest to the sensors and oriented tangentially with respect to the head surface. In addition, cross-subject variability in orientation also affected group-level detectability, boosting detection in regions where this variability was small and hindering detection in regions where it was large. Incidentally, we observed a considerable covariation of source position, orientation, and their cross-subject variability in individual brain anatomical space, making it difficult to assess the impact of each of these variables independently of one another. We thus also performed simulations where we controlled spatial properties independently of individual anatomy. These additional simulations confirmed the strong impact of distance and orientation and further showed that orientation variability across subjects affects detectability, whereas position variability does not. Importantly, our study indicates that strict unequivocal recommendations as to the ideal number of trials and subjects for any experiment cannot be realistically provided for neurophysiological studies and should be adapted according to the brain regions under study.
Many functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have explored the neural correlates of social pain that results from social threat, exclusion, rejection, loss or negative evaluation. Although ...activations have consistently been reported within the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), it remains unclear which ACC subdivision is particularly involved. To provide a quantitative estimation of the specific involvement of ACC subdivisions in social pain, we conducted a voxel-based meta-analysis. The literature search identified 46 articles that included 940 subjects, the majority of which used the cyberball task. Significant likelihoods of activation were found in both the ventral and dorsal ACC for both social pain elicitation and self-reported distress during social pain. Self-reported distress involved more specifically the subgenual and pregenual ACC than social pain-related contrasts. The cyberball task involved the anterior midcingulate cortex to a lesser extent than other experimental tasks. During social pain, children exhibited subgenual activations to a greater extent than adults. Finally, the ventro-dorsal gradient of ACC activations in cyberball studies was related to the length of exclusion phases. The present meta-analysis contributes to a better understanding of the role of ACC subdivisions in social pain, and it could be of particular importance for guiding future studies of social pain and its neural underpinnings.
Gaze direction is an important social signal for human beings. Beside the role of gaze in attention orienting, direct gaze (that is, gaze directed toward an observer) is a highly relevant biological ...stimulus that elicits attention capture and increases face encoding. Brain imaging studies have emphasized the role of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) in the coding of gaze direction and in the integration of gaze and head cues of social attention. The dynamics of the processing and integration of these cues remains, however, unclear. In order to address this question, we used deviated and frontal faces with averted and direct gaze in a combined electro- and magneto- encephalography (EEG–MEG) study. We showed distinct effects of gaze direction on the N170 and M170 responses. There was an interaction between gaze direction and head orientation between 134 and 162ms in MEG and a main effect of gaze direction between 171 and 186ms in EEG. These effects involved the posterior and anterior regions of the STS respectively. Both effects also emphasized the sensitivity to direct gaze. These data highlight the central role of the STS in gaze processing.
•We investigated the spatio-temporal dynamics of gaze perception using combined EEG and MEG.•The M170 was sensitive to gaze direction and head orientation.•The N170 was sensitive to gaze direction regardless of head orientation.•These modulations involved the pSTS and the aSTS respectively.
•Direct gaze was shown to increase bodily self-awareness.•We tested if the belief to be watched by another triggers similar effect.•Subjects’ accuracy in judging their body emotional arousal state ...was measured.•We show that the belief to be watched lead to increased interoceptive accuracy.•Basic mentalizing may be a key process in the self-awareness effect of direct gaze.
It has recently been demonstrated that eye contact influences bodily self-awareness. Here, we investigated if the belief of being the target of another person’s attention may also induce such influence. We created videos of an individual wearing two different pairs of sunglasses. We manipulated the participants to believe that they were in on-line connection with the individual and that one of the pairs of sunglasses was obstructed so that the individual could not see them through it. We demonstrated that the perception of an individual wearing see-through sunglasses, as compared to obstructed sunglasses or a low-level baseline condition, led to a greater correlation between the participants’ rating of the intensity of their bodily reactions and their skin conductance response to emotional pictures. This shows that the belief to be watched by another social agent increases bodily self-awareness and further suggests that such belief is embedded in direct gaze perception.
•ADAM17 is the main sheddase for cleavage of hTREM2 ectodomain.•ADAM17 cleaves TREM2 between histidine 157 and serine 158.•Cleavage does not change for human AD susceptibility mutation R47H.
...Triggering receptor expressed in myeloid cells (TREM2) is a member of the immunoglobulin superfamily and is expressed in macrophages, dendritic cells, microglia, and osteoclasts. TREM2 plays a role in phagocytosis, regulates release of cytokine, contributes to microglia maintenance, and its ectodomain is shed from the cell surface. Here, the question was addressed at which position sheddases cleave TREM2 and what are the proteases involved in this process. Using both pharmacological and genetic approaches we report that the main protease contributing to the release of TREM2 ectodomain is ADAM17, (a disintegrin and metalloproteinase domain containing protein, also called TACE, TNFα converting enzyme) while ADAM10 plays a minor role. Complementary biochemical experiments reveal that cleavage occurs between histidine 157 and serine 158. Shedding is not altered for the R47H-mutated TREM2 protein that confers an increased risk for the development of Alzheimers disease. These findings reveal a link between shedding of TREM2 and its regulation during inflammatory conditions or chronic neurodegenerative disease like AD in which activity or expression of sheddases might be altered.
Human self-awareness is arguably the most important and revealing question of modern sciences. Converging theoretical perspectives link self-awareness and social abilities in human beings. In ...particular, mutual engagement during social interactions-or social contact-would boost self-awareness. Yet, empirical evidence for this effect is scarce. We recently showed that the perception of eye contact induces enhanced bodily self-awareness. Here, we aimed at extending these findings by testing the influence of social contact in auditory and tactile modalities, in order to demonstrate that social contact enhances bodily self-awareness irrespective of sensory modality. In a first experiment, participants were exposed to hearing their own first name (as compared to another unfamiliar name and noise). In a second experiment, human touch (as compared to brush touch and no-touch) was used as the social contact cue. In both experiments, participants demonstrated more accurate rating of their bodily reactions in response to emotional pictures following the social contact condition-a proxy of bodily self-awareness. Further analyses indicated that the effect of social contact was comparable across tactile, auditory and visual modalities. These results provide the first direct empirical evidence in support of the essential social nature of human self-awareness.
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been largely developed to allow communication, control, and neurofeedback in human beings. Despite their great potential, BCIs perform inconsistently across ...individuals and the neural processes that enable humans to achieve good control remain poorly understood. To address this question, we performed simultaneous high-density electroencephalographic (EEG) and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings in a motor imagery-based BCI training involving a group of healthy subjects. After reconstructing the signals at the cortical level, we showed that the reinforcement of motor-related activity during the BCI skill acquisition is paralleled by a progressive disconnection of associative areas which were not directly targeted during the experiments. Notably, these network connectivity changes reflected growing automaticity associated with BCI performance and predicted future learning rate. Altogether, our findings provide new insights into the large-scale cortical organizational mechanisms underlying BCI learning, which have implications for the improvement of this technology in a broad range of real-life applications.
•We discovered that BCI skill acquisition depends on specific brain network changes.•These network changes predict the BCI learning rate in a longitudinal training.•Our results could pave the way to an improvement of the BCI performance.
Gaze is one of the most important cues for human communication and social interaction. In particular, gaze contact is the most primary form of social contact and it is thought to capture attention. A ...very early-differentiated brain response to direct versus averted gaze has been hypothesized. Here, we used high-density electroencephalography to test this hypothesis. Topographical analysis allowed us to uncover a very early topographic modulation (40-80 ms) of event-related responses to faces with direct as compared to averted gaze. This modulation was obtained only in the condition where intact broadband faces-as opposed to high-pass or low-pas filtered faces-were presented. Source estimation indicated that this early modulation involved the posterior parietal region, encompassing the left precuneus and inferior parietal lobule. This supports the idea that it reflected an early orienting response to direct versus averted gaze. Accordingly, in a follow-up behavioural experiment, we found faster response times to the direct gaze than to the averted gaze broadband faces. In addition, classical evoked potential analysis showed that the N170 peak amplitude was larger for averted gaze than for direct gaze. Taken together, these results suggest that direct gaze may be detected at a very early processing stage, involving a parallel route to the ventral occipito-temporal route of face perceptual analysis.
The impact of eye contact on the sense of agency Ulloa, José Luis; Vastano, Roberta; George, Nathalie ...
Consciousness and cognition,
September 2019, 2019-09-00, 20190901, 2019-09, Letnik:
74
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
•Possible links between the sense of agency and eye contact are tested.•Eye contact was found to increase the sense of agency as assessed by intentional binding.•The effect of eye contact was ...independent of whether the eye contact precedes or follows a key press.•The effect of eye contact is restricted to certain time frames.
Recent research suggests that eye contact can lead to enhanced self-awareness. A related phenomenon, the sense of agency deals with the notion of the self as the origin of our actions. Possible links between eye contact and agency have been so far neglected. Here, we investigated whether an implicit sense of agency could be modulated by eye gaze. We asked participants to respond (button press) to a face stimulus: looking or not at the participant (experiment 1); or displaying distinct eye gaze before or after a mask (experiment 2). After each trial, participants estimated the time between their key press and the ensuing effects. We found enhanced intentional binding for conditions that involved direct compared to averted gaze. This study supports the idea that eye contact is an important cue that affects complex cognitive processes and suggests that modulating self-processing can impact the sense of agency.
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