Brain activity of professional investors signals future stock performance.

A major aspiration of investors is to better forecast stock performance. Interestingly, emerging "neuroforecasting" research suggests that brain activity associated with anticipatory reward relates to market behavior and population-wide preferences, including stock price dynamics. In this study, we extend these findings to professional investors processing comprehensive real-world information on stock investment options while making predictions of long-term stock performance.

The acute effects of stress on dishonesty are moderated by individual differences in moral default.

In daily life we regularly must decide whether to act dishonestly for personal gain or to be honest and maintain a positive image of ourselves. While evidence suggests that acute stress influences moral decisions, it is unclear whether stress increases or decreases immoral behavior. Here, we hypothesize that stress, through its effects on cognitive control, has different effects on moral decision making for different individuals, depending on their moral default.

A multivariate brain signature for reward.

The processing of reinforcers and punishers is crucial to adapt to an ever changing environment and its dysregulation is prevalent in mental health and substance use disorders. While many human brain measures related to reward have been based on activity in individual brain regions, recent studies indicate that many affective and motivational processes are encoded in distributed systems that span multiple regions. Consequently, decoding these processes using individual regions yields small effect sizes and limited reliability, whereas predictive models based on distributed patterns yield larger effect sizes and excellent reliability.

Resting-state BOLD signal variability is associated with individual differences in metacontrol.

Numerous studies demonstrate that moment-to-moment neural variability is behaviorally relevant and beneficial for tasks and behaviors requiring cognitive flexibility. However, it remains unclear whether the positive effect of neural variability also holds for cognitive persistence. Moreover, different brain variability measures have been used in previous studies, yet comparisons between them are lacking.

Can we have a second helping? A preregistered direct replication study on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying self-control.

Self-control is of vital importance for human wellbeing. Hare et al. (2009) were among the first to provide empirical evidence on the neural correlates of self-control.

Cognitive control and dishonesty.

Dishonesty is ubiquitous and imposes substantial financial and social burdens on society. Intuitively, dishonesty results from a failure of willpower to control selfish behavior. However, recent research suggests that the role of cognitive control in dishonesty is more complex.

Individual differences in (dis)honesty are represented in the brain's functional connectivity at rest.

Measurement of the determinants of socially undesirable behaviors, such as dishonesty, are complicated and obscured by social desirability biases. To circumvent these biases, we used connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) on resting state functional connectivity patterns in combination with a novel task which inconspicuously measures voluntary cheating to gain access to the neurocognitive determinants of (dis)honesty. Specifically, we investigated whether task-independent neural patterns within the brain at rest could be used to predict a propensity for (dis)honest behavior.

Cognitive Control Promotes Either Honesty or Dishonesty, Depending on One's Moral Default.

Cognitive control is crucially involved in making (dis)honest decisions. However, the precise nature of this role has been hotly debated. Is honesty an intuitive response, or is will power needed to override an intuitive inclination to cheat? A reconciliation of these conflicting views proposes that cognitive control enables dishonest participants to be honest, whereas it allows those who are generally honest to cheat.

Different Neural Mechanisms Underlie Non-habitual Honesty and Non-habitual Cheating.

There is a long-standing debate regarding the cognitive nature of (dis)honesty: Is honesty an automatic response or does it require willpower in the form of cognitive control in order to override an automatic dishonest response. In a recent study (Speer et al., 2020), we proposed a reconciliation of these opposing views by showing that activity in areas associated with cognitive control, particularly the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), helped dishonest participants to be honest, whereas it enabled cheating for honest participants.

Measuring Neural Arousal for Advertisements and Its Relationship With Advertising Success.

Abundant research has established the important role of ad-evoked feelings on consumers' reaction to advertising. However, measurement of feelings through explicit self-report is not without its limitations. The current study adds to previous work by showing a sophisticated way of first estimating how arousal is represented in the brain via an independent task (using EEG), and thereafter using this representation to measure arousal in response to advertisements.

Cognitive control increases honesty in cheaters but cheating in those who are honest.

Every day, we are faced with the conflict between the temptation to cheat for financial gains and maintaining a positive image of ourselves as being a "good person." While it has been proposed that cognitive control is needed to mediate this conflict between reward and our moral self-image, the exact role of cognitive control in (dis)honesty remains elusive. Here we identify this role, by investigating the neural mechanism underlying cheating.

Neural Mechanisms of Choice Diversification.

When asked to select several options at once, people tend to choose a greater diversity of items than when they are asked to make these selections one at a time. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we provide novel insight into the neural mechanisms underlying diversification in portfolio choices. We found that, as participants made multiple selections from a menu of different options, the current state of their choice portfolio (i.

Decoding dynamic affective responses to naturalistic videos with shared neural patterns.

This study explored the feasibility of using shared neural patterns from brief affective episodes (viewing affective pictures) to decode extended, dynamic affective sequences in a naturalistic experience (watching movie-trailers). Twenty-eight participants viewed pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) and, in a separate session, watched various movie-trailers. We first located voxels at bilateral occipital cortex (LOC) responsive to affective picture categories by GLM analysis, then performed between-subject hyperalignment on the LOC voxels based on their responses during movie-trailer watching.

Neural similarity at temporal lobe and cerebellum predicts out-of-sample preference and recall for video stimuli.

The extent to which brains respond similarly to a specific stimulus, across a small group of individuals, has been previously found to predict out-of-sample aggregate preference for that stimulus. However, the location in the brain where neural similarity predicts out-of-sample preference remains unclear. In this article, we attempt to identify the neural substrates in three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies.

Implicit measurement of emotional experience and its dynamics.

Although many studies revealed that emotions and their dynamics have a profound impact on cognition and behavior, it has proven difficult to unobtrusively measure emotions. In the current study, our objective was to distinguish different experiences elicited by audiovisual stimuli designed to evoke particularly happy, sad, fear and disgust emotions, using electroencephalography (EEG) and a multivariate approach. We show that we were able to classify these emotional experiences well above chance level.

Neurobiological Mechanisms of Responding to Injustice.

People are particularly sensitive to injustice. Accordingly, deeper knowledge regarding the processes that underlie the perception of injustice, and the subsequent decisions to either punish transgressors or compensate victims, is of important social value. By combining a novel decision-making paradigm with functional neuroimaging, we identified specific brain networks that are involved with both the perception of, and response to, social injustice, with reward-related regions preferentially involved in punishment compared with compensation.

Exogenous testosterone in women enhances and inhibits competitive decision-making depending on victory-defeat experience and trait dominance.

The present experiment tested the causal impact of testosterone on human competitive decision-making. According to prevailing theories about testosterone's role in social behavior, testosterone should directly boost competitive decisions. But recent correlational evidence suggests that testosterone's behavioral effects may depend on specific aspects of the context and person relevant to social status (win-lose context and trait dominance).

Testosterone inhibits trust but promotes reciprocity.

The steroid hormone testosterone has been associated with behavior intended to obtain or maintain high social status. Although such behavior is typically characterized as aggressive and competitive, it is clear that high social status is achieved and maintained not only through antisocial behavior but also through prosocial behavior. In the present experiment, we investigated the impact of testosterone administration on trust and reciprocity using a double-blind randomized control design.

Peer influence: neural mechanisms underlying in-group conformity.

People often conform to the behavior of others with whom they identify. However, it is unclear what fundamental mechanisms underlie this type of conformity. Here, we investigate the processes mediating in-group conformity by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Translating upwards: linking the neural and social sciences via neuroeconomics.

The social and neural sciences share a common interest in understanding the mechanisms that underlie human behaviour. However, interactions between neuroscience and social science disciplines remain strikingly narrow and tenuous. We illustrate the scope and challenges for such interactions using the paradigmatic example of neuroeconomics.

The herding hormone: oxytocin stimulates in-group conformity.

People often conform to others with whom they associate. Surprisingly, however, little is known about the possible hormonal mechanisms that may underlie in-group conformity. Here, we examined whether conformity toward one's in-group is altered by oxytocin, a neuropeptide often implicated in social behavior.

Downregulation of the posterior medial frontal cortex prevents social conformity.

We often change our behavior to conform to real or imagined group pressure. Social influence on our behavior has been extensively studied in social psychology, but its neural mechanisms have remained largely unknown. Here we demonstrate that the transient downregulation of the posterior medial frontal cortex by theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces conformity, as indicated by reduced conformal adjustments in line with group opinion.

Reinforcement learning signal predicts social conformity.

We often change our decisions and judgments to conform with normative group behavior. However, the neural mechanisms of social conformity remain unclear. Here we show, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, that conformity is based on mechanisms that comply with principles of reinforcement learning.

Brain mechanisms of persuasion: how 'expert power' modulates memory and attitudes.

Human behaviour is affected by various forms of persuasion. The general persuasive effect of high expertise of the communicator, often referred to as 'expert power', is well documented. We found that a single exposure to a combination of an expert and an object leads to a long-lasting positive effect on memory for and attitude towards the object.