Lecture 3

Question 1

Self-referential processing

Answer 1

Self-referential thinking, thinking about your self-image, thinking of yourself in relation to others.

(dorsal) medial PFC

Question 2

What changes in adolescence concerning who we spend time with?

Answer 2

There is in increase of spending time with friends and a decrease in spending time with family.

Question 3

What happens in the brain when you win compared to when you lose?

Answer 3

Winning compared to losing relates to higher levels of activity in the ventral striatum, specifically in the Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) - the primary component in the circuitry of reward.

Question 4

What brain regions are involved in reward processing?

Answer 4

The striatum (general construct), ventral striatum (reward center) and nucleus accumbens (more specific).

Question 5

When does reward processing peak?

Answer 5

Around age 16 (mid-adolescence), then decreases.

Question 6

What were the results of the study that compared brain activity of adolescents when money could be won for your best friend or for your mother compared to a neutral condition.

Answer 6

When you win for yourself you see a little bit of an increase of activity in the nucleus accumbens, but when you lose money there is a decrease in activity.

When you win for your friend you see a similar amount of increase in activity as for yourself. When you lose money for your friend there is less of a decrease in activity, so it’s harder to lose money for yourself than for someone else.

If you look at the activity for an antagonist, for someone else, you see a decrease in activity for winning, and a lower decrease for losing money.

Question 7

What modulates the activity in the brain during winning and losing money?

Answer 7

How active the nucleus accumbens is during winning or losing money depends on the social context.

Question 8

What was found in the study on winning and losing money for a family member versus a stranger?

Answer 8

If you win money for a family member you see increased neuro-activity in the striatum compared to winning money for a stranger.

Question 9

What becomes increasingly important during adolescence?

Answer 9

Peer relationships

Question 10

Why do peer relationships become increasingly important during adolescence?

Answer 10

• Because adolescents spent more time with peers.
• Because the relationships with peers are more intimate and emotionally supportive.
• Furthermore, there is a higher susceptibility to peer influences.

Question 11

What is the influence of the social context of peers on brain activation and related behaviour?

Answer 11

Being with peers rewards them, you can see this in the nucleus accumbens when adolescents interact with peers.

Question 12

Social evaluation by peers (Somerville et al., 2013)

Answer 12

The participants were given cues as to whether the camera in the room was off, filming them or projecting their image to a peer, all while they were doing tasks in an fMRI scanner. They also had to report feelings.

Question 13

What are the results of the social evaluation by peers (Somerville et al., 2013)?

Answer 13

Mid-adolescents reported more embarrassment. This is explained by an increase in self-consciousness at that time.

Question 14

What brain regions are activated during social evaluation by peers? And what does this mean?

Answer 14

The medial PFC, with a peak at 15 years. This is in line with the idea that there is a self-related thinking in this brain region in adolescence.

Question 15

Context with familiar peers (Güroglu et al., 2008)

Answer 15

Participants from an orchestra were asked to say which persons in a group they liked. In the fMRI they could choose between approaching, being neutral or going away. They also did this with celebrities (those who they are not familiar with as a neutral condition).

Question 16

What did the study on the context with familiar peers investigate (Güroglu et al., 2008)?

Answer 16

The differences in brain activity between people they like and celebrities they are not familiar with.

Question 17

What are the results of the study on the context with familiar peers (Güroglu et al., 2008)?

Answer 17

Seeing people you know elicit higher activity in a number of brain regions than seeing faces of celebrities (you might recognize them but you don’t know them)

Question 18

What brain regions become active when you see someone you know?

Answer 18

• Amygdala
• Hippocampus
• Nucleus accumbens
• Ventro-medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)

Question 19

What networks are involved when seeing someone you know?

Answer 19

The mentalizing, affective and cognitive networks

Question 20

What are the amygdala and hippocampus related to?

Answer 20

Emotional arousal and memory retrieval

Question 21

What is the nucleus accumbens related to?

Answer 21

Reward center

Question 22

What is the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) related to?

Answer 22

Emotion-regulation/reward

Question 23

What do we know so far about the effects of social context on neural activation patterns?

Answer 23

• Social evaluation (expectation) involves activation of the mPFC, which increases with age across adolescence (adolescent-emergent) (Sommerville et al., 2013).
• Social context of familiar peers involves increased spontaneous activation of the ‘social brain’ networks.
• Social context of friends involves increased activation in striatum and vmPFC (Güroglu et al., 2008).

Question 24

Risk-taking in the peer context (Chein et al., 2011)

Answer 24

This study looked into risk taking behaviour in adolescents by using a car simulation. In this simulation participants had to make a choice to go through the yellow light and be on time but risk being involved in a car crash, or stop for the yellow light and be late.

Question 25

What are the results of the study on risk-taking in the peer context (Chein et al., 2011)?

Answer 25

• Adolescents (with a mean age of 16 years) make more risky decisions (and thus cause more car crashes) in the presence of peers than adults.
• During decisions in the stoplight task, the ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex were activated to a greater extent for adolescents than adults in the presence of peers, but not when participants were playing alone.
• During decisions in the stoplight task, the lateral PFC was activated to a greater extent for older participants than for younger participants.

Question 26

What do the findings of the study on risk-taking in the peer context suggest (Chein et al., 2011)?

Answer 26

• Adolescents are more sensitive to the reward value of decisions in a task when a peer is present than adults.
• That adults more robustly recruited the cognitive control system.

Question 27

What are the conclusions of the study on risk-taking in the peer context (Chein et al., 2011)?

Answer 27

• Peer presence increases risk-taking behaviour in adolescence.
• Risk-raking behaviour in adolescence is related to increased striatum activation in adolescents.
• During decision-making in risky contexts there is higher activation of the lPFC in adults than in adolescents, regardless of the social context.
• Reward sensitivity of the adolescent brain (striatum) in the social context, coupled with lower activation in the regulatory brain regions (IPFC) can explain increased risk-taking by adolescents in the presence of friends.

Question 28

What did the study of van Hoorn et al., 2016 investigate?

Answer 28

Prosocial peer influence

Question 29

Study of van Hoorn et al., 2016

Answer 29

Everyone gets three tokens. You can either keep this for yourself or contribute to the public goods pot, which in the end gives the optimal results, because it is multiplied by 2 and divided equally among the group members.

Question 30

What are the results of the study of van Hoorn et al., 2016?

Answer 30

• For both age groups (12-13 and 15-16), prosocial behaviour increased in the presence of peers, and even more when participants received prosocial feedback.
• When participants faced the choice of how many tokens to donate, they engaged in increased activation in the social brain networks when spectators were present and when they were being evaluated.
• When participants faced the choice of how many tokens to donate, peer evaluation effects were larger for younger adolescents in dmPFC.
• TPJ activation correlated positively with the number of tokens donated.

Question 31

What are the conclusions of the study of van Hoorn et al., 2016?

Answer 31

• Peer presence increases prosocial behaviour, especially when peers provide prosocial feedback.
• The social brain network is involved when making choices such as how many tokens to donate. Evaluation by peers related to larger effects on behaviour and dmPFC and STS activation in younger adolescents. Higher TPJ activation is related to more prosocial behaviour.

Question 32

What did the study of Güroglu et al., 2014 investigate?

Answer 32

Whether there is an influence of age on interaction with friends, neutral others, disliked others or unfamiliar others.

Question 33

Study of Güroglu et al., 2014

Answer 33

There were 4 age groups (9 years, 12, 15 and 18) and the interaction partner was either a friend, a disliked peer, a neutral peer or an unfamiliar peer. Then there were two conditions: giving and sharing.

With the giving condition, the participant has one coin, and they can give another player a coin without losing their own coin.

In the sharing condition, the participant has two coins, and they can choose if they give one of these coins to the other player.

Question 34

In the study of Güroglu et al., 2014, what are the giving and sharing conditions in terms of costly and prosocial behaviour?

Answer 34

Giving is non-costly and not prosocial behaviour.

Sharing is costly prosocial behaviour.

Question 35

What are the results of the study of Güroglu et al., 2014?

Answer 35

• 9-year-olds do not differentiate social contexts; differentiation between interaction partners increases with age.
• There is an increase in non-costly ‘giving’ for friends and neutral classmates.
• There is a decrease in costly ‘sharing’ for unfamiliar peers.

Question 36

What drives the relationship between age and non-costly prosocial behaviour (friends) in the study of Güroglu et al., 2014?

Answer 36

There is a direct effect of prosocial choices (giving) increasing with age.

There is also an indirect effect of age on perspective-taking and perspective-taking on non-costly prosocial behaviour (friends).

Perspective-taking skills also

• relate positively to prosocial behaviour.
• mediate the age-related change in behaviour.

Question 37

What can be concluded from the study of Güroglu et al., 2014?

Answer 37

Prosocial choices (giving) increase with age.

Prosocial behaviour becomes increasingly more context sensitive.

Perspective-taking skills

• increase with age.
• mediate the age-related change in behaviour.
• relate positively to prosocial behaviour.

Question 38

What did a study by Schreuders et al. conclude?

Answer 38

That higher levels of negative friendship quality related to lower putamen activation for prosocial choice for friends.

Question 39

Due to what does prosocial behaviour become increasingly more context sensitive with increasing age?

Answer 39

• Increasing differentiation between interaction partners in prosocial behaviour.
• Increasingly prosocial behaviour towards friends.

Question 40

How can the age-related increase in prosocial giving towards friends be explained?

Answer 40

By an increase in perspective-taking skills. There is higher putamen activity during prosocial behaviour to friends, which correlates with friendship quality.

Question 41

What task is used in the study on social exclusion (Qualter et al., 2010)?

Answer 41

The cyberball task, where a participant throws a ball with two others online and suddenly the other two continue together, excluding the participant.

Question 42

What is demonstrated in the task in the study on social exclusion (Qualter et al., 2010)? And what does this result in?

Answer 42

The feeling of exclusion, which results in less feeling of belonging and control, lower self-esteem and feeling less meaningful.

Also observing someone else being excluded results to some extent in these feelings.

Question 43

What are the results of studies on social exclusion?

Answer 43

• Loneliness at the ages of 5 and 9 is related to depression around the age of 13.
• Neural activation related to exclusion is similar to that of physical pain (dACC and anterior insula).
• Chronically rejected adolescents are more sensitive to rejection in dACC.
• In adolescent girls a higher activity in the vACC was associated with higher levels of internalizing symptoms, which is driven by victimization.
• A low preferred group (who do you dislike?) had a lower mood than a high preferred group (who do you like?).

Question 44

What are the results of a meta-analysis of social exclusion in the cyberball game (Mwilambwe-Tshilobo & Spreng, 2021)?

Answer 44

• IFG is specific for adolescents
• IFG and vACC are related to enhanced feelings of distress

Question 45

What is neural activation related to exclusion similar to?

Answer 45

Physical pain => activation of regions involved in (negative) affect, conflict (norms, errors) and their regulation, saliency => anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) & insula

Question 46

Study of Achterberg et al., 2020

Answer 46

The social network aggression task is used in which participants had to fill out a friendship book, which means they got social evaluation of peers. Feedback could be given by an annoying noise blast. They always had to give a noise blast, but the participant could choose how long and how loud this noise blast was to the peers that filled in the friendship book. The peers either had a positive, neutral, or negative evaluation.

Question 47

What did the study of Achterberg et al., 2020 study?

Answer 47

The behaviour that appears after being socially rejected and the influence of social media.

Question 48

What are the results of the study of Achterberg et al., 2020?

Answer 48

• Negative evaluation resulted in more aggression.
• At older age, participants differentiate more between conditions: shorter noise blast after positive feedback.
• An increase in dlPFC activation is found after negative feedback was associated with less subsequent aggression.

Question 49

Conclusions about social exclusion by peers

Answer 49

• Both being excluded and observing social exclusion is related to a decrease in mood in all age groups.
• Social rejection relates to robust activity in the IFG and vACC.
• Social exclusion involves activation of the same brain regions involved in experiences of physical pain (dACC and insula).
• Chronically rejected children show increased neural sensitivity to experiences of social exclusion. Adolescents with a history in social adversity are particularly vulnerable to social exclusion: more vACC activity relates to higher levels of internalizing symptoms and high levels of IFG activity at the start of social exclusion.
• dlPFC plays an important role in regulating retaliatory behaviour (aggression) after negative social feedback.
• Friendships can serve as a buffer against negative peer experiences.