Cognitive Diversity in a Healthy Aging Cohort: Cross-Domain Cognition in the Cam-CAN Project.

Studies of "healthy" cognitive aging often focus on a limited set of measures that decline with age. The current study argues that defining and supporting healthy cognition requires understanding diverse cognitive performance across the lifespan. Data from the Cambridge Centre for Aging and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) cohort was examined across a range of cognitive domains.

Age-related decline in positive emotional reactivity and emotion regulation in a population-derived cohort.

Human older age ushers in functional decline across the majority of cognitive domains. A notable exception seems to be affective processing, with older people reporting higher levels of emotional well-being. Here we evaluated age-related changes in emotional reactivity and regulation in a representative subsample (N = 104; age range: 23-88 years) of the population-derived Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience cohort.

Psychopathic traits influence amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex connectivity during facial emotion processing.

There is accumulating evidence that youths with antisocial behavior or psychopathic traits show deficits in facial emotion recognition, but little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying these impairments. A number of neuroimaging studies have investigated brain activity during facial emotion processing in youths with Conduct Disorder (CD) and adults with psychopathy, but few of these studies tested for group differences in effective connectivity-i.e.

You talkin' to me? Communicative talker gaze activates left-lateralized superior temporal cortex during perception of degraded speech.

Neuroimaging studies of speech perception have consistently indicated a left-hemisphere dominance in the temporal lobes' responses to intelligible auditory speech signals (McGettigan and Scott, 2012). However, there are important communicative cues that cannot be extracted from auditory signals alone, including the direction of the talker's gaze. Previous work has implicated the superior temporal cortices in processing gaze direction, with evidence for predominantly right-lateralized responses (Carlin & Calder, 2013).

Repetition Suppression and Memory for Faces is Reduced in Adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions.

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are associated with a number of atypicalities in face processing, including difficulties in face memory. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this difficulty are unclear. In neurotypical individuals, repeated presentation of the same face is associated with a reduction in activity, known as repetition suppression (RS), in the fusiform face area (FFA).

Mapping the structural organization of the brain in conduct disorder: replication of findings in two independent samples.

Background: Neuroimaging methods that allow researchers to investigate structural covariance between brain regions are increasingly being used to study psychiatric disorders. Structural covariance analyses are particularly well suited for studying disorders with putative neurodevelopmental origins as they appear sensitive to changes in the synchronized maturation of different brain regions. We assessed interregional correlations in cortical thickness as a measure of structural covariance, and applied this method to investigate the coordinated development of different brain regions in conduct disorder (CD).

Intact priors for gaze direction in adults with high-functioning autism spectrum conditions.

Background: Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) are associated with a range of perceptual atypicalities, including abnormalities in gaze processing. Pellicano and Burr (Trends Cogn Sci 16(10):504-10, 2012) have argued that these atypicalities might be explained within a Bayesian framework, in which perception represents the combination of sensory information with prior knowledge. They propose that the Bayesian priors of individuals with ASC might be attenuated, such that their perception is less reliant on prior knowledge than neurotypical individuals.

The effect of perceptual expectation on repetition suppression to faces is not modulated by variation in autistic traits.

There is substantial variation in the magnitude of the repetition suppression (RS) effects across individuals; however the causes of this variation remain unclear. In a recent study, we found that RS in occipitotemporal cortex was negatively related to individual variation in autistic traits in a neurotypical population. Recent proposals have considered autistic behaviours within a Bayesian framework, suggesting that individuals with autism may have 'attenuated priors' (i.

Cortical thickness, surface area, and folding alterations in male youths with conduct disorder and varying levels of callous-unemotional traits.

Purpose: Previous studies have reported changes in gray matter volume in youths with conduct disorder (CD), although these differences are difficult to interpret as they may have been driven by alterations in cortical thickness, surface area (SA), or folding. The objective of this study was to use surface-based morphometry (SBM) methods to compare male youths with CD and age and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs) in cortical thickness, SA, and folding. We also tested for structural differences between the childhood-onset and adolescence-onset subtypes of CD and performed regression analyses to assess for relationships between CD symptoms and callous-unemotional (CU) traits and SBM-derived measures.

The "where" of social attention: Head and body direction aftereffects arise from representations specific to cue type and not direction alone.

Human beings have remarkable social attention skills. From the initial processing of cues, such as eye gaze, head direction, and body orientation, we perceive where other people are attending, allowing us to draw inferences about the intentions, desires, and dispositions of others. But before we can infer why someone is attending to something in the world we must first accurately represent where they are attending.

How distinct is the coding of face identity and expression? Evidence for some common dimensions in face space.

Traditional models of face perception emphasize distinct routes for processing face identity and expression. These models have been highly influential in guiding neural and behavioural research on the mechanisms of face perception. However, it is becoming clear that specialised brain areas for coding identity and expression may respond to both attributes and that identity and expression perception can interact.

Reflected glory and failure: the role of the medial prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum in self vs other relevance during advice-giving outcomes.

Despite the risks, people enjoy giving advice. One explanation is that giving beneficial advice can result in reflected glory, ego boosts or reputation enhancement. However, giving poor advice can be socially harmful (being perceived as incompetent or untrustworthy).

How is facial expression coded?

Facial expression is theorized to be visually represented in a multidimensional expression space, relative to a norm. This norm-based coding is typically argued to be implemented by a two-pool opponent coding system. However, the evidence supporting the opponent coding of expression cannot rule out the presence of a third channel tuned to the center of each coded dimension.

The Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) study protocol: a cross-sectional, lifespan, multidisciplinary examination of healthy cognitive ageing.

Background: As greater numbers of us are living longer, it is increasingly important to understand how we can age healthily. Although old age is often stereotyped as a time of declining mental abilities and inflexibility, cognitive neuroscience reveals that older adults use neural and cognitive resources flexibly, recruiting novel neural regions and cognitive processes when necessary. Our aim in this project is to understand how age-related changes to neural structure and function interact to support cognitive abilities across the lifespan.

Obesity-associated melanocortin-4 receptor mutations are associated with changes in the brain response to food cues.

Context: Mutations in the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) represent the commonest genetic form of obesity and are associated with hyperphagia.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether melanocortin signaling modulates anticipatory food reward by studying the brain activation response to food cues in individuals with MC4R mutations. Design/Setting/Participants/Main Outcome Measure: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure blood oxygen level-dependent responses to images of highly palatable, appetizing foods, bland foods, and non-food objects in eight obese individuals with MC4R mutations, 10 equally obese controls, and eight lean controls with normal MC4R genotypes.

Overlapping and distinct representations of advantageous and disadvantageous inequality.

Advantageous inequality (AI) aversion, or paying at a personal cost to achieve equal reward distribution, represents a unique feature of human behavior. Here, we show that individuals have strong preferences for fairness in both disadvantageous (DI) and advantageous inequality (AI) situations, such that they alter others' payoff at a personal financial cost. At the neural level, we found that both types of inequality activated the putamen, orbitofrontal cortex, and insula, regions implicated in motivation.

Repetition Suppression in Ventral Visual Cortex Is Diminished as a Function of Increasing Autistic Traits.

Repeated viewing of a stimulus causes a change in perceptual sensitivity, known as a visual aftereffect. Similarly, in neuroimaging, repetitions of the same stimulus result in a reduction in the neural response, known as repetition suppression (RS). Previous research shows that aftereffects for faces are reduced in both children with autism and in first-degree relatives.

Atypical neural responses during face processing in female adolescents with conduct disorder.

Objective: Conduct disorder (CD) in females is associated with negative adult outcomes including mental health problems and personality disorders. Although recent neuroimaging studies have reported changes in neural activity during facial emotion processing in males with CD or callous-unemotional (CU) traits, there have been no neuroimaging studies specifically assessing females with CD. We addressed this gap by investigating whether female adolescents with CD show atypical neural activation when processing emotional or neutral faces.

Network Interactions Explain Sensitivity to Dynamic Faces in the Superior Temporal Sulcus.

The superior temporal sulcus (STS) in the human and monkey is sensitive to the motion of complex forms such as facial and bodily actions. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore network-level explanations for how the form and motion information in dynamic facial expressions might be combined in the human STS. Ventral occipitotemporal areas selective for facial form were localized in occipital and fusiform face areas (OFA and FFA), and motion sensitivity was localized in the more dorsal temporal area V5.

Dual-route model of the effect of head orientation on perceived gaze direction.

Previous studies on gaze perception have identified 2 opposing effects of head orientation on perceived gaze direction-1 repulsive and the other attractive. However, the relationship between these 2 effects has remained unclear. By using a gaze categorization task, the current study examined the effect of head orientation on the perceived direction of gaze in a whole-head condition and an eye-region condition.

The neural signature of escalating frustration in humans.

Mammalian studies show that frustration is experienced when goal-directed activity is blocked. Despite frustration's strongly negative role in health, aggression and social relationships, the neural mechanisms are not well understood. To address this we developed a task in which participants were blocked from obtaining a reward, an established method of producing frustration.

Top-down control of visual responses to fear by the amygdala.

The visual cortex is sensitive to emotional stimuli. This sensitivity is typically assumed to arise when amygdala modulates visual cortex via backwards connections. Using human fMRI, we compared dynamic causal connectivity models of sensitivity with fearful faces.

Research review: evaluating and reformulating the developmental taxonomic theory of antisocial behaviour.

Background: The developmental taxonomic theory proposes that there are two subtypes of antisocial behaviour. The first is a neurodevelopmental disorder which emerges in early childhood and follows a life-course persistent course, whereas the second emerges in adolescence, remits in early adulthood and reflects peer processes such as mimicry of antisocial peers. The aim of this review was to evaluate the developmental taxonomic theory in the light of recent empirical research.

Eye gaze is not coded by cardinal mechanisms alone.

Gaze is an important social cue in regulating human and non-human interactions. In this study, we employed an adaptation paradigm to examine the mechanisms underlying the perception of another's gaze. Previous research has shown that the interleaved presentation of leftwards and rightwards gazing adaptor stimuli results in observers judging a wider range of gaze deviations as being direct.

Gaze categorization under uncertainty: psychophysics and modeling.

The accurate perception of another person's gaze direction underlies most social interactions and provides important information about his or her future intentions. As a first step to measuring gaze perception, most experiments determine the range of gaze directions that observers judge as being direct: the cone of direct gaze. This measurement has revealed the flexibility of observers' perception of gaze and provides a useful benchmark against which to test clinical populations with abnormal gaze behavior.