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| Open AccessBiased sequential sampling underlies the effects of time pressure and delay in social decision making
It has been proposed that humans make unselfish decisions if constrained to decide quickly, but other research has suggested that time constraint makes us selfish. Here, the authors reconcile these two views showing that pro-social people become more pro-social under time pressure, but selfish subjects do the opposite.
- Fadong Chen
- & Ian Krajbich
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Article
| Open AccessDevelopment of MPFC function mediates shifts in self-protective behavior provoked by social feedback
People insulate themselves against negative social feedback via self-protective behaviors. Here, the authors show that early adolescents react against immediate social feedback, but adults also consider accumulated past negative evaluations, a function mediated by the rostromedial prefrontal cortex (RMPFC).
- Leehyun Yoon
- , Leah H. Somerville
- & Hackjin Kim
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Article
| Open AccessExploiting a cognitive bias promotes cooperation in social dilemma experiments
The decoy effect refers to the fact that the presence of a third option can shift people’s preferences between two other options even though the third option is inferior to both. Here, the authors show how the decoy effect can enhance cooperation in a social dilemma, the repeated prisoner’s dilemma.
- Zhen Wang
- , Marko Jusup
- & Stefano Boccaletti
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Article
| Open AccessDifferential temporal salience of earning and saving
Economists have observed that many people seem unwilling to save for the future. Here, the authors show that earning and saving are subject to a basic asymmetry in attentional choice, such that cues that are associated with saving are perceived as occurring later than cues associated with earning.
- Kesong Hu
- , Eve De Rosa
- & Adam K. Anderson
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Article
| Open AccessSingle-dose testosterone administration increases men’s preference for status goods
Testosterone is believed to be involved in social rank-related behavior. Here, the authors show that one dose of testosterone increases men’s preference for “high status” goods and brands, suggesting a role for testosterone in modern consumer behavior in men.
- G. Nave
- , A. Nadler
- & H. Plassmann
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Article
| Open AccessDissociable neural mechanisms track evidence accumulation for selection of attention versus action
Decision-making involves parallel information processing regarding what stimulus dimension to pay attention to and what action to take. Here, the authors show that vmPFC tracks the value of the attended attribute while dACC tracks the degree to which it is attended.
- Amitai Shenhav
- , Mark A. Straccia
- & Matthew M. Botvinick
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Article
| Open AccessReciprocity of social influence
Humans give and receive social influence—e.g. advice—in many situations, but it is not known whether social influence is a reciprocal process, like trade. Here, the authors show that people are more likely to follow a partner's advice if that partner has previously complied with their advice.
- Ali Mahmoodi
- , Bahador Bahrami
- & Carsten Mehring
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Article
| Open AccessDispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment
Strong positive and strong negative reciprocators reward cooperation and punish defection, respectively, regardless of future benefits. Here, Weber and colleagues demonstrate that dispositions towards strong positive and strong negative reciprocity are not correlated within individuals.
- Till O. Weber
- , Ori Weisel
- & Simon Gächter
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Article
| Open AccessInnovation and cumulative culture through tweaks and leaps in online programming contests
The cumulative development of culture has proven difficult to study in the laboratory. Here, the authors examine entries to a series of large programming contests to show that successful entries are usually ‘tweaks’ of existing solutions, but occasional ‘leaps’ can bring larger benefits.
- Elena Miu
- , Ned Gulley
- & Luke Rendell
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Article
| Open AccessTolerance to ambiguous uncertainty predicts prosocial behavior
Ambiguous uncertainty refers to situations where the likelihood of specific outcomes are not known. Here, the authors show that people tolerant to ambiguous uncertainty are more likely to make costly decisions to cooperate with or trust others.
- Marc-Lluís Vives
- & Oriel FeldmanHall
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Article
| Open AccessEarly deprivation disruption of associative learning is a developmental pathway to depression and social problems
Early childhood deprivation such as institutionalization can greatly affect early development. Here, the authors study children who were raised in institutions but later randomly placed in foster care vs. not, to understand how early-life deprivation affects associative learning in adolescence.
- Margaret A. Sheridan
- , Katie A. McLaughlin
- & Charles A. Nelson
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Article
| Open AccessUncertainty about social interactions leads to the evolution of social heuristics
Humans are known to use social heuristics to make intuitive decisions on whether to cooperate. Here, the authors show with evolutionary simulations that social heuristics can be an adaptive solution to uncertainties about the consequences of cooperation and can greatly increase cooperation levels.
- Pieter van den Berg
- & Tom Wenseleers
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Article
| Open AccessInharmonic speech reveals the role of harmonicity in the cocktail party problem
Harmonicity is associated with a single sound source and may be a useful cue with which to segregate the speech of multiple talkers. Here the authors introduce a method for perturbing the constituent frequencies of speech and show that violating harmonicity degrades intelligibility of speech mixtures.
- Sara Popham
- , Dana Boebinger
- & Josh H. McDermott
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Article
| Open AccessThe development of human social learning across seven societies
Social learning is a crucial human ability. Here, the authors examined children in 7 cultures and show that children’s reliance on social information and their preference to follow the majority vary across societies. However, the ontogeny of majority preference follows the same, U-shaped pattern across all societies.
- Edwin J. C. van Leeuwen
- , Emma Cohen
- & Daniel B. M. Haun
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Article
| Open AccessTrait paranoia shapes inter-subject synchrony in brain activity during an ambiguous social narrative
Reactions to the same event can vary vastly based on multiple factors. Here the authors show that people with high trait-level paranoia process ambiguous information in a narrative differently and this can be attributed to greater activity in mentalizing brain regions during the moments of ambiguity.
- Emily S. Finn
- , Philip R. Corlett
- & R. Todd Constable
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Article
| Open AccessDiffusion markers of dendritic density and arborization in gray matter predict differences in intelligence
Previous studies suggest that individual differences in intelligence correlate with circuit complexity and dendritic arborization in the brain. Here the authors use NODDI, a diffusion MRI technique, to confirm that neurite density and arborization are inversely related to measures of intelligence.
- Erhan Genç
- , Christoph Fraenz
- & Rex E. Jung
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Article
| Open AccessKnowledge acquisition is governed by striatal prediction errors
Trial and error learning requires the brain to generate expectations and match them to outcomes, yet whether this occurs for semantic learning is unclear. Here, authors show that the brain encodes the degree to which new factual information violates expectations, which in turn determines whether information is encoded in long-term memory.
- Alex Pine
- , Noa Sadeh
- & Avi Mendelsohn
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Article
| Open AccessMotor imagery involves predicting the sensory consequences of the imagined movement
Forward models predict and attenuate the sensory feedback of voluntary movement yet their involvement in motor imagery has only been theorized. Here the authors show that motor imagery recruits forward models to elicit sensory attenuation to the same extent as real movements.
- Konstantina Kilteni
- , Benjamin Jan Andersson
- & H. Henrik Ehrsson
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Article
| Open AccessPharmacologically induced amnesia for learned fear is time and sleep dependent
Emotional memory can change when retrieved, yet the conditions under which this can occur are not fully described. Here, authors show that taking a pill of propranolol taken during a specific time window can change the expression of fear memory in a person, and that sleep is necessary to forget learned fear.
- Merel Kindt
- & Marieke Soeter
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Article
| Open AccessThe human cortex possesses a reconfigurable dynamic network architecture that is disrupted in psychosis
Temporal changes in brain dynamics are linked with cognitive abilities, but neither their stability nor relationship to psychosis is clear. Here, authors describe the dynamic neural architecture in healthy controls and patients with psychosis and find that they are stable over time and can predict psychotic symptoms.
- Jenna M. Reinen
- , Oliver Y. Chén
- & Avram J. Holmes
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| Open AccessA browser-based tool for visualization and analysis of diffusion MRI data
Data sharing is an important component of reproducible research, but meaningful data sharing can be difficult. Here authors describe a new open source tool, AFQ-Browser, that builds an interactive website allowing visualization and exploratory data analysis of published diffusion MRI data.
- Jason D. Yeatman
- , Adam Richie-Halford
- & Ariel Rokem
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Review Article
| Open AccessPrediction complements explanation in understanding the developing brain
This review summarizes how predictive modeling, a method that uses brain features to predict individual differences in behavior, is used to understand developmental periods. Rosenberg et al focus specifically on adolescence and examples of characteristic adolescent behaviors such as risk-taking.
- Monica D. Rosenberg
- , B. J. Casey
- & Avram J. Holmes
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Article
| Open AccessCrosstalk in concurrent repeated games impedes direct reciprocity and requires stronger levels of forgiveness
Social interactions among people are often repeated, and yet it is assumed that simultaneous interactions are independent from one another. Here, Reiter and colleagues describe a conceptual framework where an action in one game can influence the decision in another.
- Johannes G. Reiter
- , Christian Hilbe
- & Martin A. Nowak
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Article
| Open AccessClosed-loop stimulation of temporal cortex rescues functional networks and improves memory
Memory lapses can occur due to ineffective encoding, but it is unclear if targeted brain stimulation can improve memory performance. Here, authors use a closed-loop system to decode and stimulate periods of ineffective encoding, showing that stimulation of lateral temporal cortex can enhance memory.
- Youssef Ezzyat
- , Paul A. Wanda
- & Michael J. Kahana
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Article
| Open AccessA cerebellar mechanism for learning prior distributions of time intervals
Human timing behavior is biased towards previously encountered intervals and is predicted by Bayesian models. Here, the authors develop a computational model based in properties of the cerebellum to show how we might encode time estimates based on prior experience.
- Devika Narain
- , Evan D. Remington
- & Mehrdad Jazayeri
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Article
| Open AccessSimilar neural responses predict friendship
Though we are often friends with people similar to ourselves, it is unclear if neural responses to perceptual stimuli are also similar. Here, authors show that the similarity of neural responses evoked by a range of videos was highest for close friends and decreased with increasing social distance.
- Carolyn Parkinson
- , Adam M. Kleinbaum
- & Thalia Wheatley
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Article
| Open AccessAcculturation orientations affect the evolution of a multicultural society
Cross-cultural interactions can cause cultural change, a process known as acculturation. Here, Erten et al. develop a model of cultural change under immigration, considering individuals’ orientations towards acculturation, and find that willingness to interact cross-culturally and resident cultural conservatism favour cultural coexistence.
- E. Yagmur Erten
- , Pieter van den Berg
- & Franz J. Weissing
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Article
| Open AccessDiscrete and continuous mechanisms of temporal selection in rapid visual streams
Humans can identify a target picture even when presented within a rapid stream of stimuli. Here the authors report that the neural activity initially supports parallel processing of multiple stimuli around the target in ventral visual areas followed later by isolated activation of reported images in parietal areas.
- Sébastien Marti
- & Stanislas Dehaene
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Article
| Open AccessWidespread theta synchrony and high-frequency desynchronization underlies enhanced cognition
Synchronous neural activity is related with memory encoding and retrieval, but it is not clear whether this happens across the whole brain. Here, authors use intracranial recordings to show that gamma networks are largely asynchronous, desynchronizing while theta synchronizes during memory encoding and retrieval.
- E. A. Solomon
- , J. E. Kragel
- & M. J. Kahana
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Article
| Open AccessPrior preferences beneficially influence social and non-social learning
People often assume that other people share their preferences, but how exactly this bias manifests itself in learning and decision-making is unclear. Here, authors show that a person's own preferences influence learning in both social and non-social situations, and that this bias improves performance.
- Tor Tarantola
- , Dharshan Kumaran
- & Benedetto De Martino
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Article
| Open AccessFormation and suppression of acoustic memories during human sleep
Though memory and sleep are related, it is still unclear whether new memories can be formed during sleep. Here, authors show that people could learn new sounds during REM or light non-REM sleep, but that learning was suppressed when sounds were played during deep NREM sleep.
- Thomas Andrillon
- , Daniel Pressnitzer
- & Sid Kouider
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Article
| Open AccessEfficient probabilistic inference in generic neural networks trained with non-probabilistic feedback
Behavioural tasks often require probability distributions to be inferred about task specific variables. Here, the authors demonstrate that generic neural networks can be trained using a simple error-based learning rule to perform such probabilistic computations efficiently without any need for task specific operations.
- A. Emin Orhan
- & Wei Ji Ma
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Article
| Open AccessA neural link between generosity and happiness
Generous behaviour increases happiness, but the neural underpinnings of this link are unknown. Here, authors show that promising to be generous changes the neural response in the temporo-parietal junction, and that the connection between this region and the ventral striatum was related to happiness.
- Soyoung Q. Park
- , Thorsten Kahnt
- & Philippe N. Tobler
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Article
| Open AccessNeural correlates of evidence accumulation during value-based decisions revealed via simultaneous EEG-fMRI
Parietal and prefrontal cortices gather information to make perceptual decisions, but it is not known if the same is true for value-based choices. Here, authors use simultaneous EEG-fMRI and modelling to show that during value- and reward-based decisions this evidence is accumulated in the posterior medial frontal cortex.
- M. Andrea Pisauro
- , Elsa Fouragnan
- & Marios G. Philiastides
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Article
| Open AccessEndogenous opioids regulate social threat learning in humans
Though humans often learn about negative outcomes from observing the response of others, the neurochemistry underlying this learning is unknown. Here, authors show that blocking opioid receptors enhances social threat learning and describe the brain regions underlying this effect.
- Jan Haaker
- , Jonathan Yi
- & Andreas Olsson
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Article
| Open AccessDecoding material-specific memory reprocessing during sleep in humans
Neuronal learning activity is reactivated during sleep but the dynamics of this reactivation in humans are still poorly understood. Here the authors show that memory processing occurs during all stages of sleep in humans but that reprocessing of memory content in REM and non-REM sleep has different effects on later memory performance.
- M. Schönauer
- , S. Alizadeh
- & S. Gais
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Article
| Open AccessPrior context in audition informs binding and shapes simple features
Perception can be swayed by prior context. Here the authors report an auditory illusion in which sounds with ambiguous pitch shifts are perceived as shifting upward or downward based on the preceding contextual sounds, explore the neural correlates, and propose a probabilistic model based on temporal binding.
- Claire Chambers
- , Sahar Akram
- & Daniel Pressnitzer
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Article
| Open AccessPupil-linked arousal is driven by decision uncertainty and alters serial choice bias
Decision uncertainty is often associated with higher order cognition and can impact choices. Here the authors show that post-decision pupil dilation scales with uncertainty and predicts a change in upcoming choice patterns.
- Anne E. Urai
- , Anke Braun
- & Tobias H. Donner
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Article
| Open AccessQuantifying cerebral contributions to pain beyond nociception
Pain is affected by cerebral processes in addition to afferent nociceptive input. Here the authors develop an fMRI-based signature that predicts pain independent of the intensity of nociceptive signals and mediates the pain-modulating effects of several cognitive interventions.
- Choong-Wan Woo
- , Liane Schmidt
- & Tor D. Wager
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Article
| Open AccessCardiac afferent activity modulates the expression of racial stereotypes
Black individuals are racially stereotyped as threatening but how bodily signals may affect these misperceptions is not known. Here Azevedo and colleagues show that these race-driven responses are affected by the cardiac cycle, being more biased when arterial baroreceptor activation is maximal.
- Ruben T. Azevedo
- , Sarah N. Garfinkel
- & Manos Tsakiris
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Article
| Open AccessUniversal and uniquely human factors in spontaneous number perception
Perception of numerical quantities has been demonstrated in humans and animals; however, whether this is a natural ability is not clear. Here the authors show that human children and adults as well as monkeys spontaneously use number over surface area to categorize dot stimuli and this preference is enhanced with numerical literacy.
- Stephen Ferrigno
- , Julian Jara-Ettinger
- & Jessica F. Cantlon
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Article
| Open AccessResilient cooperators stabilize long-run cooperation in the finitely repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma
Studying the dynamics of learning in repeated games of cooperation is complicated by the short duration of traditional experiments. Here the authors perform a virtual prisoner's dilemma game over twenty consecutive days, finding that a minority of resilient co-operators can sustain cooperation indefinitely.
- Andrew Mao
- , Lili Dworkin
- & Duncan J. Watts
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Article
| Open AccessGlobal gain modulation generates time-dependent urgency during perceptual choice in humans
Decision-making balances the benefits of additional information with the cost of time, but it is unclear whether humans adjust this balance within individual decisions. Here, authors show that we do make such adjustments to suit contextual demands and suggest that these are driven by modulation of neural gain.
- Peter R. Murphy
- , Evert Boonstra
- & Sander Nieuwenhuis
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Article
| Open AccessFast ensemble representations for abstract visual impressions
Perceiving objects as lifelike is an inferential process but whether it occurs quickly and how it applies to groups of objects is not well understood. Here the authors show that observers’ percepts of crowd lifelikeness are fast and represent the average of the individual objects comprising that crowd.
- Allison Yamanashi Leib
- , Anna Kosovicheva
- & David Whitney
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Article
| Open AccessAltruistic punishment does not increase with the severity of norm violations in the field
Lab experiments have shown that people will punish violators of social norms, with the severity of punishment increasing with the degree of violation. Here, Balafoutas et al. show that, outside of the lab, larger violations are not punished more severely and are associated with a greater risk of reprisal.
- Loukas Balafoutas
- , Nikos Nikiforakis
- & Bettina Rockenbach
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Article
| Open AccessSocial learning strategies modify the effect of network structure on group performance
Previous studies have disagreed over whether efficient or inefficient network structures should be more effective in promoting group performance. Here, Barkoczi and Galesic demonstrate that which structure is superior depends on the social learning strategy used by individuals in the network.
- Daniel Barkoczi
- & Mirta Galesic
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Article
| Open AccessMotor cortex activity predicts response alternation during sensorimotor decisions
The motor cortex executes responses based on sensory choices, but it is unknown whether it also impacts response selection. Here, Pape and Siegel show that motor cortex activity present before decision making predicts responses and that this activity is influenced by previous button-presses.
- Anna-Antonia Pape
- & Markus Siegel
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Article
| Open AccessAgeing increases reliance on sensorimotor prediction through structural and functional differences in frontostriatal circuits
Decline in sensorimotor skills with age may be due to an overreliance on the prediction of the sensory consequences of one’s actions. Here the authors show that sensorimotor attenuation increases with age, and that this is associated with structural and functional changes in frontostriatal circuits.
- Noham Wolpe
- , James N. Ingram
- & James B. Rowe
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Article
| Open AccessSpontaneous perception of numerosity in humans
Humans as well as many other species have the ability to perceive the number of items, numerosity, but the mechanism by which this is achieved is unclear. Here the authors provide strong evidence in support of a spontaneous perception of numerosity without reliance on density and area estimation.
- Guido Marco Cicchini
- , Giovanni Anobile
- & David C. Burr