Article
Biology
Ella Podvalny, Leana E. King, Biyu J. He
Summary: This study explores the relationship between arousal markers such as pupil size and frequency content of brain activity, as well as their impact on human behavior. The results show that pupil size is related to brain activity across large-scale resting state cortical networks, and the baseline pupil size correlates with subsequent shifts in detection bias and sensitivity. Additionally, fast spontaneous pupil constriction and dilation correlate with large-scale brain activity but not with perceptual behavior.
Article
Geriatrics & Gerontology
Margot D. Sullivan, Ringo Huang, Joseph Rovetti, Erika P. Sparrow, Julia Spaniol
Summary: The study found that arousal has a significant impact on decision-making behavior in both younger and older adults. Higher arousal levels were associated with shorter response times and risk preferences, with younger adults showing more risk aversion and older adults showing more risk seeking in high-arousal conditions.
NEUROBIOLOGY OF AGING
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Irma T. Kurniawan, Marcus Grueschow, Christian C. Ruff
Summary: Pupil-dilation rate and dmPFC fMRI activity increase with anticipated effort level during decision-making processes, and these increases vary based on the choice outcome. This suggests that the nervous system plays a crucial role in guiding effort-based decisions.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Engineering, Biomedical
Sharath Koorathota, Jia Li Ma, Josef Faller, Linbi Hong, Pawan Lapborisuth, Paul Sajda
Summary: This study investigates the neural predictors of motor actions in a realistic driving task, finding that oscillatory power in the visual cortex, DLPFC, and ACC can predict steering behavior. The results suggest that the DLPFC plays a key role in arousal circuitry and sensorimotor decisions.
JOURNAL OF NEURAL ENGINEERING
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Subodh Gnyawali, Beatrix Feigl, Prakash Adhikari, Andrew J. Zele
Summary: A decision during a visual task is marked by pupil dilation, which is linked to the global cortical arousal state. Melanopsin activation influences mood and arousal and increases activity in decision-making brain areas. Optical photostimulation experiments showed that active covert attention can be modulated by visual information mediated via the melanopsin pathway, but pupil dilation responses are not increased by higher levels of melanopsin activation.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Engineering, Biomedical
Pawan Lapborisuth, Sharath Koorathota, Paul Sajda
Summary: This study investigated the relationship between pupil-linked arousal and electroencephalography (EEG) brain dynamics, as well as the correlation between this relationship and multitasking performance. Through a multitasking driving experiment conducted in virtual reality, it was found that task difficulty was not strongly correlated with pupil-linked arousal, but overall task performance increased with increasing arousal levels. The study also revealed a relationship between high pupil-linked arousal and EEG functional connectivity, especially in brain regions associated with the dorsal attention network and ventral attention network.
JOURNAL OF NEURAL ENGINEERING
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Silvia U. Maier, Marcus Grueschow
Summary: This study suggests that increasing central arousal through the brain's locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system can enhance cognitive control and memory, while also playing a role in emotion regulation. The pupil diameter serves as a proxy for central arousal state, and its increase during emotion regulation predicts success in regulation and other self-control tasks. This common arousal-based facilitation mechanism may support self-control abilities across different domains.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Didrika S. van de Wouw, Ryan T. McKay, Bruno B. Averbeck, Nicholas Furl
Summary: Undersampling biases are common in the literature on optimal stopping, especially for economic full choice problems. However, a recent study found an oversampling bias in a different optimal stopping task - choosing potential romantic partners from facial images. This study tested whether different image-based decision-making domains reflect different biases or depend on the moments of the generating distributions. The results showed that participants oversampled to the same degree across domains and their sampling rates depended on the generating distribution mean and skewness, similar to number-based paradigms. Oversampling is not specific to mate choice and sampling rate depends on the generating distribution.
JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
P. Pajkossy, G. Gesztesi, M. Racsmany
Summary: During decision making, we face two types of uncertainty: expected uncertainty, which arises from probabilistic expectations, and unexpected uncertainty, which occurs due to sudden changes in the environment. Pupil-linked brain arousal plays a role in processing uncertainty and updating models after unexpected changes. In a study using a probabilistic reversal learning task, pupil responses were influenced by both forms of uncertainty, and high levels of expected uncertainty hindered the detection of sudden changes.
COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Stephanie Mertens, Mario Herberz, Ulf J. J. Hahnel, Tobias Brosch
Summary: Choice architecture interventions, based on insights from behavioral sciences, aim to facilitate desirable decision-making by designing choice environments without limiting freedom of choice. A comprehensive analysis of over 200 studies suggests that these interventions have an overall small to medium effect size in promoting behavior change, with food choices particularly responsive to such interventions.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Niklas Dietze, Lukas Recker, Christian H. Poth
Summary: The benefits of alerting for action were examined in both a sequential action task and a simple choice reaction task. The results showed that alerting sped up responding in both tasks, but the benefit was limited to the first action in the sequential task.
COGNITIVE RESEARCH-PRINCIPLES AND IMPLICATIONS
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Social
Willem W. A. Sleegers, Travis Proulx, Ilja van Beest
Summary: Research demonstrates that expectancy violating information triggers a stronger arousal response, motivating individuals to engage in compensation efforts. This arousal response is positively related to the amount of hindsight bias being displayed.
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PERSONALITY SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Letizia Amodeo, Jan R. Wiersema, Marcel Brass, Annabel D. Nijhof
Summary: The study found significant correlations in self-bias magnitude between memory and attention, as well as between attention and perception. However, there was no significant relationship between memory and perception in terms of self-bias magnitude. Additionally, there was no significant correlation between autistic traits and self-bias magnitude in the neurotypical sample.
Article
Neurosciences
Yuxiang Liu, Shreya Narasimhan, Brian J. Schriver, Qi Wang
Summary: This study found that pupil size and heart rate were correlated with behavioral outcomes in rats, and the use of both as inputs allowed for better prediction of behavior, indicating that the effects of the two arousal systems on behavior are not completely redundant.
FRONTIERS IN SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Kristian Rotaru, Petko S. Kalev, Nitin Yadav, Peter Bossaerts
Summary: This study examines the impact of Theory of Mind on cognitive biases in investors, finding that in individuals with high scores on the social-cognitive ToM dimension, good ToM function can successfully help reduce the disposition effect. This suggests that leveraging cognitive talent in one domain can alleviate deficiencies in other cognitive areas.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Olympia Colizoli, Jan Willem de Gee, Wietske van der Zwaag, Tobias H. Donner
Summary: The study evaluated the relative benefit of 7T over 3T fMRI for assessing responses evoked in different brain regions by a cognitive task, demonstrating a generally bigger advantage of 7T in subcortical structures. Stronger responses were also found at 7T for easier decisions in dopaminergic midbrain nuclei, in line with reward expectation, showcasing the potential of 7T fMRI in understanding cognitive computations in the human brain.
HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING
(2022)
Article
Psychology
Hannah Tickle, Konstantinos Tsetsos, Maarten Speekenbrink, Christopher Summerfield
Summary: When making decisions, animals must balance the benefits of information gathering with the costs of deliberation. A study found that human behavior can be described by a model that adaptively weights sensory signals and integrates them into a decision threshold. This adaptive weighting may help achieve optional stopping in unpredictable natural environments.
PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Anna-Maria Grob, Branka Milivojevic, Arjen Alink, Christian F. Doeller, Lars Schwabe
Summary: Memories are not stored in isolation. Insight into the relationship of initially unrelated events may trigger a flexible reconfiguration of the mnemonic representation of these events. However, stress impairs this process and leads to fragmented memories in PTSD. In this study, acute stress was found to reduce brain activity and disrupt the reconfiguration of memories, but interestingly, it enhanced long-term memory performance. These findings have implications for understanding memory distortions in stress-related mental disorders.
Article
Neurosciences
Anna Cremer, Felix Kalbe, Jana Christina Mueller, Klaus Wiedemann, Lars Schwabe
Summary: In this study, the distinct roles of dopamine and noradrenaline in the exploration-exploitation tradeoff during human choice were investigated. The results showed that amisulpride increased the sensitivity to critical choice features, while propranolol was associated with a reduced tendency to use value information. These findings provide new insights into the regulation of human choice behavior, indicating the critical involvement of dopamine in directed exploration and a role of noradrenaline in more random exploration.
NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Angelo Pirrone, Konstantinos Tsetsos
Summary: A central goal in Cognitive Science is to understand the mechanisms that underlie cognition. However, despite multidisciplinary efforts, there have been limited insights into these mechanisms. This is attributed to cognitive scientists focusing on complex behaviors and seeking validation through elusive notions of optimality and biological plausibility. It is proposed that progress in Cognitive Science will accelerate by focusing on simpler explananda and charting an atlas of elementary cognitive operations. The next challenge will be understanding how these elementary processes can explain complex behavior.
Article
Neurosciences
Rachel Rac-Lubashevsky, Anna Cremer, Anne G. E. Collins, Michael J. Frank, Lars Schwabe
Summary: Human learning and decision-making rely on multiple parallel systems. Recent studies have shown a trade-off between reinforcement learning (RL) and working memory (WM). A computational model predicts that high WM load slows behavioral acquisition but enhances robustness and retention through larger prediction errors in the RL system.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Biological
Li Lin, Lars Schwabe, Xiaoyu Wang, Lei Zhan, Liang Zhang
Summary: Chronic exposure to daily stress can have negative effects on mental health, particularly when individuals lack adaptive adjustment mechanisms. This study investigated how adaptive capacities in cognition and emotion, as well as their neural signatures, can moderate stress reactivity in daily life. The results showed that a larger adaptation effect in reaction times of a conflict task predicted a stronger negative affect in response to stress on the same day. The adaptation effect in brain activity components elicited by the conflict task also predicted a weaker influence of today's stress on the next day's stress level, indicating better stress adaptation. These findings have implications for early screening of stress-vulnerable populations and the prevention and intervention of stress-related mental disorders.
Review
Behavioral Sciences
Blazej M. Baczkowski, Jan Haaker, Lars Schwabe
Summary: Learning about threats relies on Pavlovian conditioning, but this method has limitations in detecting known threats and involves the risk of danger. Individuals use mnemonic processes to expand our ability to recognize danger, even in novel situations with minimal aversive experience. The interplay between these memories allows us to infer danger and protect ourselves.
TRENDS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCES
(2023)
Editorial Material
Biology
Anne E. Urai, Clare Kelly
Summary: Addressing the climate crisis requires radical and urgent action at all levels of society. Universities, in particular, have a responsibility to take the lead in such action, but they are falling short. Academic scientists also face obstacles such as bureaucracy and excessive competition, hindering their work. Drawing on Doughnut Economics, we propose new principles for scientific practice and urge academics to create a scientific enterprise that is capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century.
Article
Neurosciences
Stefan Schulreich, Anita Tusche, Philipp Kanske, Lars Schwabe
Summary: Our study provides a comprehensive account of the socio-cognitive and neural mechanisms through which socioeconomic status affects charitable giving. We found that both charitable giving and social cognition were status-dependent, and the link between SES and charitable giving was mediated by individuals' mentalizing capacity. At the neural level, higher subjective SES was associated with stronger value coding in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), which predicted charitable giving and was linked to mentalizing.
Review
Behavioral Sciences
Nina Rouhani, Yael Niv, Michael J. Frank, Lars Schwabe
Summary: This article reviews the prioritization of events associated with aversive or rewarding outcomes and attributes the memory boost to the elicited affective response, which is closely linked to noradrenergic and dopaminergic modulation of hippocampal plasticity. In addition, it compares this 'affect' mechanism to a recently discovered 'prediction' mechanism where memories are strengthened by prediction errors (PEs) that deviate from expectations. The mnemonic impact of PEs is separate from the affective outcome and has a distinct neural signature, and both mechanisms have different and sometimes opposing predictions for memory integration.
TRENDS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Valentina Krenz, Arjen Alink, Tobias Sommer, Benno Roozendaal, Lars Schwabe
Summary: Memories undergo a time-dependent neural reorganization, with a transformation characterized by a semantic nature and reflected in pattern reinstatement in the hippocampus and event representations in the neocortex.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2023)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Lars Schwabe
Summary: Memory is controlled by competing brain systems, and acute stress can bias this competition towards habit learning over cognitive learning. Recent research suggests that stress not only affects memory formation, but also modulates the engagement of multiple memory systems during retrieval. The specific shift in brain systems during retrieval depends on the intensity of initial training and may enhance efficient responding during stressful encounters.
CURRENT OPINION IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Anna-Maria Grob, Denise Ehlers, Lars Schwabe
Summary: This study examined the effects of stress on individual event memory and found that stress can enhance the memory of individual events but impair the memory of the temporal sequence between events. This suggests that acute stress has an impact on memory formation.
Article
Neurosciences
Anna-Maria Grob, Branka Milivojevic, Arjen Alink, Christian F. Doeller, Lars Schwabe
Summary: Gaining insight through imagination and observation contributes to the integration of separate events into coherent episodes. In this study, fMRI and representational similarity analysis were used to investigate the behavioral and neural effects of insight through imagination. The results revealed that insight through imagination was weaker than insight through observation, but the imagination group had better detail memory. Additionally, the imagination group exhibited different neural activation patterns compared to the observation group, suggesting that imagination hinders concurrent mnemonic integration but may enhance long-term memory.
