- Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Psychology, Social Cognition, Embodied Cognition, Grounded Cognition, and 14 moreConceptual Metaphor Theory, Development, Concepts, Cognitive Control, ERP (Cognitive Psychology), Feedback, Prefrontal Cortex, Performance Monitoring, Cognitive Linguistics, Neuropsychology, Child Development, Neuroimaging, Adolescent Development, and Mirror Neuronsedit
The neural correlates of rejection in bargaining situations when proposing a fair or unfair offer are not yet well understood. We measured neural responses to rejection and acceptance of monetary offers with event-related potentials... more
The neural correlates of rejection in bargaining situations when proposing a fair or unfair offer are not yet well understood. We measured neural responses to rejection and acceptance of monetary offers with event-related potentials (ERPs) in mid-adolescents (14-17 years) and early adults (19-24 years). Participants played multiple rounds of the Ultimatum Game as proposers, dividing coins between themselves and a second player (responder) by making a choice between an unfair distribution (7 coins for proposer and 3 for responder; 7/3) and one of two alternatives: a fair distribution (5/5) or a hyperfair distribution (3/7). Participants mostly made fair offers (5/5) when the alternative was unfair (7/3), but made mostly unfair offers (7/3) when the alternative was hyperfair (3/7). When participants´ fair offers (5/5; alternative was 7/3) were rejected this was associated with a larger Medial Frontal Negativity (MFN) compared to acceptance of fair offers and rejection of unfair offers (7/3; alternative was 3/7). Also, the MFN was smaller after acceptance of unfair offers (7/3) compared to rejection. These neural responses did not differbetween adults and mid-adolescents, suggesting that the MFN reacts as a neural alarm system to social prediction errors which is already prevalent during adolescence.
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An important component of creativity is divergent thinking, which involves the ability to generate novel and useful problem solutions. In this study, we tested the relation between resting-state functional connectivity of brain areas... more
An important component of creativity is divergent thinking, which involves the ability to generate novel and useful problem solutions. In this study, we tested the relation between resting-state functional connectivity of brain areas activated during a divergent thinking task (i.e., supramarginal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus) and the effect of practice in 32 adolescents aged 15-16. Over a period of two weeks, an experimental group (n = 16) conducted an 8-session Alternative Uses Task (AUT) training and an active control group (n = 16) conducted an 8-session rule switching training. Resting-state functional connectivity was measured before (pre-test) and after (post-test) training. Across groups at pre-test, stronger connectivity between the middle temporal gyrus and bilateral postcentral gyrus was associated with better divergent thinking performance. The AUT-training, however, did not significantly change functional connectivity. Post hoc analyses showed that ...
Research Interests: Engineering, Bioinformatics, Neuropsychology, Physics, Chemistry, and 24 moreCreativity, Cognition, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Biology, Life Sciences, Adolescent, Medicine, Multidisciplinary, Brain Mapping, Temporal Lobe, Brain, Thinking, Humans, Biomedical Research, Text, Female, Male, Child and Adolescent Psychology, PLoS one, Rest, Parietal Lobe, Functional Neuroimaging, Task Performance and Analysis, and Frontal Lobe
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Thinking about the abstract concept power may automatically activate the spatial up-down image schema (powerful up; powerless down) and consequently direct spatial attention to the image schema-congruent location. Participants indicated... more
Thinking about the abstract concept power may automatically activate the spatial up-down image schema (powerful up; powerless down) and consequently direct spatial attention to the image schema-congruent location. Participants indicated whether a word represented a powerful or powerless person (e.g ‘king’ or ‘servant’). Following each decision, they identified a target at the top or bottom of the visual field. In Experiment 1 participants identified the target faster when their spatial position was congruent with the perceived power of the preceding word than when it was incongruent. In Experiment 2 ERPs showed a higher N1 amplitude for congruent spatial positions. These results support the view that attention is driven to the image schema congruent location of a power word. Thus, power is partially understood in terms of vertical space, which demonstrates that abstract concepts are grounded in sensory-motor processing.