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The Adolescent Brain > Lecture 2 > Flashcards

Lecture 2 Flashcards

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1
Q

The social brain in children

A

Humans are social beings from the moment we are born, we are very much dependent on our caregivers. If we wouldn’t be able to interact with our caregivers, we wouldn’t survive.

Children are able to think about and understand the intention of others at a very young age. But there is a lot of growth in the complexity of understanding these intentions, specifically during adolescence.

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2
Q

Definition of social cognition

A

A (uniquely) human trait that is the ability to understand each other as conscious beings with internal states.

Cognitive processes are required to understand and interact with others.

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3
Q

What kind of term is social cognition?

A

An umbrella term for different social constructs.

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4
Q

What is a key factor in the development of adequate emotional regulation of abilities?

A

The ability to mentalize

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5
Q

What is important with social cognition?

A
  • Recognizing, understanding, and interpreting social cues from others, including mental states (intentions, desires, beliefs), feelings, traits, and goal-oriented actions.
  • Using this knowledge can guide your own interactions and the way you approach someone.
  • An important part is that you need to be able to understand that your state of mind differs from someone else’s.
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6
Q

How do young children show that they understand that their state of mind is different from someone else’s?

A

Young children start crying when other people start crying. They can show supporting behaviour, this shows that they can separate their own mental state from yours. This develops early but show continuous development.

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7
Q

How do people interpret interactions? And how do people with autistic traits do this?

A

Most people will interpret interactions spontaneously.

People with autistic traits can have some difficulty with spontaneously interpreting interactions, if you give them instructions they can interpret it.

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8
Q

What is the social brain?

A

A network of brain regions that underlie these processes.

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9
Q

What brain regions does the social brain include?

A

Among others, it includes the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), precuneus, posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and the anterior temporal cortex (ATC).

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10
Q

How can we measure ‘mentalizing’ in a scanner?

A

By using a condition with social cognition and a condition without social cognition. The contrast between these conditions is ‘mentalizing’. This is a challenging design.

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11
Q

What are examples of mentalizing tasks?

A
  • Reflecting on one’s intentions
  • Thinking about preferences
  • Judging others’ intentions
  • Reflecting on emotional responses
  • Understanding sarcasm
  • Economic games
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12
Q

mPFC

A

Medial prefrontal cortex

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13
Q

TPJ

A

Temporoparietal cortex

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14
Q

pSTS

A

Posterior superior temporal sulcus

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15
Q

What decreases from childhood into the early 20s? And are there differences in these regions?

A

Gray matter volume and cortical thickness in the pSTS, TPJ and dmPFC.

There are also individual differences in these regions.

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16
Q

What predicted a stronger increase in friendship quality across adolescence?

A

Faster cortical thinning of mPFC. We do not know the direction of this relationship.

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17
Q

What brain regions are more active in adults than in adolescents in mentalizing tasks (functional development)?

A

Temporal/posterior regions (STS, TPJ)

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18
Q

What happens to brain regions when they decrease because of pruning?

A

They become more efficient.

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19
Q

What brain regions are more active in adolescents than in adults in mentalizing tasks (functional development)?

A

(d)mPFC/anterior rostral PFC

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20
Q

Compare the mentalizing effort of children, adolescents and adults.

A

Adolescents might put more effort in understanding mentalizing, in adults this might be more automatic. In children it is also less active, they understand mentalizing less.

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21
Q

What is the mentalizing strategy of adolescents?

A

They use cognitive strategies that rely more on explicit reflection about the self and others, subserved by the dmPFC.

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22
Q

What is the mentalizing strategy of adults?

A

They rely more on the automatic processing of social scripts, subserved by the temporal lobes.

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23
Q

What do mentalizing strategies relate to?

A

Changes in mentalizing proficiency: adults can process social information along with other tasks more efficiently.

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24
Q

What might contribute to the changes in mentalizing strategy between adolescents and adults?

A

Maturing inhibitory control

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25
Q

Why do researchers use economic games?

A

Researchers studying social constructs like fairness, trust, and reciprocity use economic games to measure how people think about themselves compared to how they think about others.

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26
Q

What economic games are used by researchers to measure thinking of the self versus thinking of others?

A
  • The dictator game
  • The ultimatum game
  • The trust game
27
Q

What is the set up of the economic games?

A

It involves 2 players, (one-shot) interaction, rules and division of stakes.

28
Q

Why are economic games helpful?

A
  • It can be used across a wide age range.
  • Structured nature of the games makes it possible to quantify complex social behaviour.
  • They provide experimental designs that can be easily used in neuroimaging studies and thus examine the underlying neural substrates of social behaviour.
  • Individual differences in behaviour and neural activation can be related to measures of cognitive control or perspective-taking.
29
Q

What are games are about the division of stakes?

A
  • The dictator game
  • The ultimatum game
  • The multi-ultimatum game
30
Q

The dictator game

A

There is a division of stake. There are 2 players: an allocator and a recipient. The allocator makes an offer (he chooses from some options), the recipient passively receives. The stake is shared according to the allocator’s decision.

31
Q

What is the prediction of the dictator game and what actually happened?

A

Prediction: the allocator keeps everything to themselves.

Result in adult population: the allocators give 20-30% of the stake to anonymous others.

32
Q

What is the dictator game an indicator of?

A

The dictator game is an indicator of prosocial behaviour.

33
Q

What are the results of the dictator game?

A
  • Concern for others’ outcome emerges at a very young ages.
  • Size of donations increase with age between ages 3 and 8.
  • Donations no longer differ from adults after age 9.
34
Q

The ultimatum game

A

There is a division of stake. There are 2 players: a proposer and a responder. The proposer makes an offer (chosen from some options) and the responder can accept or reject the offer. If the offer is accepted, the stake is shared between the proposer and responder. If the stake is rejected, no one gets anything.

35
Q

What are the predictions of the ultimatum game and what are the results?

A

Prediction 1: proposers will offer the smallest offer greater than zero.

Result in adult population: proposers offer most often an equal split.

Prediction 2: responders accept every offer greater than zero.

Result in adult population: responders usually reject offers smaller than 20% of the stake (disadvantageous inequity aversion).

36
Q

What is the reasoning behind accepting or rejecting the offer in the ultimatum game?

A

Responders:

  • What’s my gain/other’s gain? (self vs. other interest)
  • Is it fair? (fairness considerations)
37
Q

How does the reaction of the responders to an unfair offer differ when the responder is human and when the responder is a computer?

A

Humans will often reject unfair offers, while a computer will probably still accept it because it is the logical thing to do economically speaking.

38
Q

What does the dictator game versus the ultimatum game show?

A

It shows that the difference of distribution is a measure of strategic social behaviour. In the DG it is possible to keep everything for yourself without consequences. However, in the UG it is possible that the other rejects, so this should be understood by the players.

39
Q

What is the difference between the dictator game and the ultimatum game among children and adolescents?

A

Young children often offer the same amount of money in both games, because they do not yet understand the possibility of rejection.

Adolescents offer more money to other in UG than DG.

Difference UG-DG offers increases with age across adolescence.

40
Q

What is the role of impulse control in strategic social decision-making?

A

Children are better at controlling a prepotent motor response and showed more strategic behaviour.

41
Q

dlPFC & impulse control

A

dlPFC activity correlates with impulse control.

dlPFC activity increases with age.

More strategic/fairness behaviour leads to heightened dIPFC activity.

42
Q

The multi-ultimatum game

A

A variation on the ultimatum game. The difference between the multi-ultimatum game and the ultimatum game is that the proposer gets to choose between two (different) distributions in each game. What distributions he can choose from depends on the condition. The responder can than see what options the proposer had and what was chosen.

43
Q

What are the distributions that the responders can choose from in the multi-ultimatum game in the different conditions?

A
  • Fair alternative condition: keeping more than half or a fair division
  • Hyper-fair alternative condition: keeping more than half or giving more than half
  • No alternative condition: keeping more than half or keeping more than half
44
Q

What can be seen in the results of the multi-ultimatum game?

A

There is an age-related increase in perspective-taking. The older the children get, the lower the percentage of rejection for the no-alternative distribution (‘They didn’t have another choice, so I will accept it’).

45
Q

What does decision-making as a responder of the multi-ultimatum game involve?

A
  • Perspective-taking (switch perspective self and other)
  • Impulse control (inhibiting automatic/prepotent response)
46
Q

What is the left dlPFC responsible for?

A

Cognitive control

47
Q

What is the right TPJ responsible for?

A

Perspective taking

48
Q

What brain regions increase with age (9-25 years) regarding the no-alternative condition of the multi-ultimatum game?

A

The left dlPFC and the right TPJ

49
Q

What mediates the relation between age and behaviour?

A

dlPFC and TPJ

There is an age-related increase in TPJ & dlPFC activity that is related to increasing perspective-taking (intentionally consideration & strategic behaviour) and impulse control skills.

50
Q

The trust game

A

The game has two players. The first player, the investor (trustor) sends an endowment to the second player (showing trust/no trust). If there is trust, the offer is multiplied and sent to the second player. The second player, the recipient (trustee) decides how much to return to the investor (reciprocate/defect).

51
Q

What does the trust game involve?

A

Perspective taking and impulse control

52
Q

What would be beneficial for both the trustor and trustee in the trust game?

A

If there is a lot of trust it is beneficial to give all your money to the other person, considering it then multiplies and you can split it 50/50.

53
Q

What does the trust game require of the trustee?

A
  • Perspective-taking (because the other has taken a risk to trust).
  • Impulse control (because not maximizing self-benefit).
54
Q

What are the results of the trust game?

A
  • Giving trust becomes more common with increasing age.
  • More reciprocity with age.
  • When older, participants were quicker to adapt their behaviour by lowering their offers quicker when playing with uncooperative/untrustworthy others.
55
Q

What are the results of the trust game regarding dlPFC, TPJ and mPFC?

A

There is an age-related increase in dlPFC and TPJ activation when receiving trust from investor.

Adolescents use the mPFC in more contexts when responding to the investors trust than adults.

  • Adolescents when reciprocating or defecting trust (more self-referential processing).
  • Adults only when defecting trust.
56
Q

What brain regions are part of the emotional network?

A

The insula and the striatum

57
Q

What brain regions are part of the regulatory network?

A

dlPFC, vlPFC, ACC and vmPFC

58
Q

What brain regions are part of the mentalizing network?

A

TPJ, STS, TP, dmPFC and vmPFC

59
Q

What is age related decrease in (d)MPFC activity related to?

A

Decreasing self-oriented processing

60
Q

When does strategic behaviour develop?

A

It develops with age during adolescence.

61
Q

What is important for strategic and prosocial behaviour?

A

Perspective-taking and impulse control abilities

62
Q

What are behavioural changes in strategic/prosocial behaviour accompanied by?

A

Increased recruitment of brain regions implicated in impulse control (dlPFC) and perspective taking (TPJ)

63
Q

What plays an important role with repeated interactions?

A

Reward anticipation (VS) and learning (DS)

The Adolescent Brain (7 decks)

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