Affective prediction errors in persistence and escalation of aggression.

People generally empathize with others and find harm aversive. Yet aggression, for example, between groups, abounds. How do people learn to overcome this aversion in order to aggress? Many models of learning emphasize outcome prediction errors-deviations from expected outcomes in the environment-but aggression may also be fueled by affective prediction errors (affective PEs)-deviations from how we expect to feel.

Hidden Reward: Affect and Its Prediction Errors as Windows Into Subjective Value.

Scientists increasingly apply concepts from reinforcement learning to affect, but which concepts should apply? And what can their application reveal that we cannot know from directly observable states? An important reinforcement learning concept is the difference between reward expectations and outcomes. Such reward prediction errors have become foundational to research on adaptive behavior in humans, animals, and machines. Owing to historical focus on animal models and observable reward (e.

Activating episodic simulation increases affective empathy.

Affective empathy, feeling what others feel, is a powerful emotion that binds us to one another. Here we ask whether how we mentally represent the scene in which another suffers informs our emotions. For example, when we learn about someone suffering outside of the here and now, such as a refugee devastated by violence or famine, does a manipulation potentiating our ability to simulate the scene around the victim heighten our empathic response? Expanding recent advances in the memory literature, we investigate the link between activating our ability to imagine events-episodic simulation-and empathy for in-group and out-group members in a series of online and laboratory studies (N = 1010).

Endoscopic or Surgical Myotomy in Patients with Idiopathic Achalasia.

Background: Pneumatic dilation and laparoscopic Heller's myotomy (LHM) are established treatments for idiopathic achalasia. Peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) is a less invasive therapy with promising early study results.

Methods: In a multicenter, randomized trial, we compared POEM with LHM plus Dor's fundoplication in patients with symptomatic achalasia.

The neuroscience of intergroup emotion.

What happens to our emotions and in our brains when we experience the world through the lens of our group memberships rather than as individuals? Here we review recent advances in social and affective neuroscience that have identified potential input variables and processing mechanisms underlying one widely studied emotion in intergroup contexts: empathy. There is a well-documented in-group bias in empathy but the mental processes that generate it are poorly understood. Drawing from recent insights in memory research, we suggest that episodic simulation-the ability to imagine events-is an underexplored candidate process that is likely to be involved in shaping emotional experience in intergroup settings.

How learning shapes the empathic brain.

Deficits in empathy enhance conflicts and human suffering. Thus, it is crucial to understand how empathy can be learned and how learning experiences shape empathy-related processes in the human brain. As a model of empathy deficits, we used the well-established suppression of empathy-related brain responses for the suffering of out-groups and tested whether and how out-group empathy is boosted by a learning intervention.