Publications by authors named "James Wyngaarden"

Article Synopsis
  • Social relationships evolve throughout life, impacting how older adults perceive and respond to social and non-social rewards, which may influence their decision-making processes, including vulnerability to financial exploitation.
  • A 5-year study funded by the National Institute on Aging aims to explore neural responses to social rewards in adults aged 21-80 and examine the relationship between these responses and financial exploitation risks.
  • The preliminary data from 114 participants will be analyzed through multi-echo fMRI and various tasks to assess brain function related to social rewards and decision-making, with an emphasis on potential long-term impacts on the health and well-being of older adults.
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Many decisions happen in social contexts such as negotiations, yet little is understood about how people balance fairness versus selfishness. Past investigations found that activation in brain areas involved in executive function and reward processing was associated with people offering less with no threat of rejection from their partner, compared to offering more when there was a threat of rejection. However, it remains unclear how trait reward sensitivity may modulate activation and connectivity patterns in these situations.

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Aberrant levels of reward sensitivity have been linked to substance use disorder and are characterized by alterations in reward processing in the ventral striatum (VS). Less is known about how reward sensitivity and subclinical substance use relate to striatal function during social rewards (e.g.

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Trait reward sensitivity, risk for developing substance use, and mood disorders have each been linked with altered striatal responses to reward. Moreover, striatal response to reward is sensitive to social context, such as the presence of a peer, and drugs are often sought out and consumed in social contexts or as a result of social experiences. Thus, mood disorder symptoms, striatal responses to social context and social reward may play a role in substance use.

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Although prior research has demonstrated enhanced striatal response when sharing rewards with close social connections, less is known about how individual differences affect ventral striatal (VS) activation and connectivity when experiencing rewards within social contexts. Given that self-reported reward sensitivity and level of substance use have been associated with differences in VS activation, we set out to investigate whether these factors would be independently associated with enhancements to neural reward responses within social contexts. In this pre-registered study, participants (N=45) underwent fMRI while playing a card guessing game in which correct or incorrect guesses resulted in monetary gains and losses that were shared evenly with either a close friend, stranger (confederate), or non-human partner.

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Many decisions happen in social contexts such as negotiations, yet little is understood about how people balance fairness versus selfishness. Past investigations found that activation in brain areas involved in executive function and reward processing was associated with people offering less with no threat of rejection from their partner, compared to offering more when there was a threat of rejection. However, it remains unclear how trait reward sensitivity may modulate activation and connectivity patterns in these situations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aberrant levels of reward sensitivity have been linked to substance use disorder and are characterized by alterations in reward processing in the ventral striatum (VS). Less is known about how reward sensitivity and subclinical substance use relate to striatal function during social rewards (e.g.

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Perturbations in dopamine system function may increase risk of substance use disorder (SUD). We recently demonstrated that neuromelanin (NM) MRI signal in the substantia nigra, a non-invasive index of dopamine system function, is elevated in long term cocaine users (Cassidy et al., 2020).

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