This research explored the effect of explicit Interoceptive Attentiveness manipulation on hemodynamic brain correlates during a task involving interpersonal motor coordination framed with a social goal. Participants performed a task requiring interpersonal movement synchrony with and without a social framing in both explicit IA and control conditions. Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy was used to record oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin changes during the tasks. According to the results, the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in high-order social cognition and interpersonal relations processing, was (...) more responsive when inducing the explicit focus on the breath during the socially framed motor task requiring synchronization, as indicated by increased O2Hb. In the absence of a broader social frame, this effect was not significant for the motor task. Overall, the present study suggests that when a joint task is performed and the individual focuses on his/her physiological body reactions, the brain hemodynamic correlates are “boosted” in neuroanatomical regions that support sustained attention, reorientation of attention, social responsiveness, and synchronization. Furthermore, the PFC responds significantly more as the person consciously focuses on physiological interoceptive correlates and performs a motor task requiring synchronization, particularly when the task is socially framed. (shrink)

Social media platforms offer convenient, instantaneous social sharing on a mass scale with tremendous impact on public perceptions, opinions, and behavior. There is a need to understand why information spreads including the human motivations, cognitive processes, and neural dynamics of large-scale sharing. This study introduces a novel approach for investigating the effect social media messaging and in-person discussion has on the inter-brain dynamics within small groups of participants. The psychophysiological impact of information campaigns and narrative messaging within a closed social (...) media environment was assessed using 24-channel wireless EEG. Data were acquired from three- or four-person groups while subjects debated contemporary social issues framed by four scenarios of varying controversy: investing in ethical vs. unethical corporations, selecting travel destination based on social awareness, determining verdict in a murder trial and the punishment of life in prison or death penalty, and decision to vaccinate. Pre-/post-scenario questionnaires assess the effects of the social media information. Inter-brain coherence between subject pairs on each social issue discussed by subjects was analyzed by concordance, agreement vs. disagreement, and by group unanimity, unanimous vs. not unanimous. Subject pairs that agreed on the social issues raised in the scenarios had significantly greater inter-brain coherence in gamma frequency range than disagreeing pairs over cortical regions known to be involved in social interactions. These effects were magnified when comparing groups where subject pairs were unanimous in their stance on the social issues for some but not all scenarios. While there was considerable overlap between scenarios in what EEG channels were significant, there was enough variability to indicate the possibility of scenario-specific effects on inter-brain coherence. (shrink)

Neuroscience and Faith: The belief system as a venue of interdisciplinary meeting: The present paper offers contributions from neuroscience to faith experience and vice versa. First of all, we look for a meeting point between them for beginning the interdisciplinary dialog. Personal system of beliefs is proposed as the meeting point. PSB has to do with both disciplines. The relation between PSB and faith is assumed, but it is not treated here. Here we try to answer two questions: what can (...) be said from neuroscience about PSB?, and what can be useful for the experience of faith? To do that we make a conceptual redefinition of one neural system that neuroscience calls “default mode”. So, we need to clarify how neuroscience works. How several reductions of reality are made in order to be capable to study it. We also introduce some other elements which manifest the person as a unity. After this initial approach, a neuroanatomical presentation about the “default mode”, “precuneus”, and “rich-club” is presented. This is the starting point for the following reflection about contributions from cognitive neuropsychology to faith experience. They show the importance of keeping in contact faith experience with the whole life and reality, of human relationships, of emotions, and they also talk about personal processes for maturation, about the consequences for personal future and other relevant aspects like: conscience, forgiveness, cognitive dissonance / blame, and possible pathology of faith. The conceptual redefinition of “default mode network” as a personal system of beliefs is made in order to have a broad conception of making decisions. Neuroscience has reached the view that emotion, as body and perception are several elements for making decisions, but it is not yet assumed that our PSB is another element playing an important role. PSB would be the abstract representation about what is and what could be the world, my relationships, and myself. these beliefs are reached through a long process of reappraisal in which personal experiences, emotion, and relationships are settled down. When beliefs are formed thanks to abstraction they are no longer connected to a given and concrete experience but to a conceptualization of the whole world and myself. Thus, the PSB is one more element for making decisions. (shrink)

Rather than occurring abstractly (autonomously), ethical growth occurs in interpersonal relationships (IRs). It requires optimally functioning cognitive processes [attention, working memory (WM), episodic/autobiographical memory (AM), inhibition, flexibility, among others], emotional processes (physical contact, motivation, and empathy), processes surrounding ethical, intimacy, and identity issues, and other psychological processes (self-knowledge, integration, and the capacity for agency). Without intending to be reductionist, we believe that these aspects are essential for optimally engaging in IRs and for the personal constitution. While they are all integrated (...) into our daily life, in research and academic work, it is hard to see how they are integrated. Thus, we need better theoretical frameworks for studying them. That study and integration thereof are undertaken differently depending on different views of what it means to live as a human being. We rely on neuroscientific data to support the chosen theory to offer knowledge to understand human beings and interpersonal relational growth. We should of course note that to describe what makes up the uniqueness of being, acting, and growing as a human person involves something much more profound which requires too, a methodology that opens the way for a theory of the person that responds to the concerns of philosophy and philosophical anthropology from many disciplines and methods (Orón Semper, 2015;Polo, 2015), but this is outside the scope of this study. With these in mind, this article aims to introduce a new explanatory framework, called the Interprocessual-self (IPS), for the neuroscientific findings that allow for a holistic consideration of the previously mentioned processes. Contributing to the knowledge of personal growth and avoiding a reductionist view, we first offer a general description of the research that supports the interrelation between personal virtue in IRs and relevant cognitive, emotional, and ethic-moral processes. This reveals how relationships allow people to relate ethically and grow as persons. We include conceptualizations and descriptions of their neural bases. Secondly, with the IPS model, we explore neuroscientific findings regarding self-knowledge, integration, and agency, all psychological processes that stimulate inner exploration of the self concerning the other. We find that these fundamental conditions can be understood from IPS theory. Finally, we explore situations that involve the integration of two levels, namely the interpersonal one and the social contexts of relationships. (shrink)

According to the prevailing paradigm in social-cognitive neuroscience, the mental states of individuals become shared when they adapt to each other in the pursuit of a shared goal. We challenge this view by proposing an alternative approach to the cognitive foundations of social interactions. The central claim of this paper is that social cognition concerns the graded and dynamic process of alignment of individual minds, even in the absence of a shared goal. When individuals reciprocally exchange information about each other's (...) minds processes of alignment unfold over time and across space, creating a social interaction. Not all cases of joint action involve such reciprocal exchange of information. To understand the nature of social interactions, then, we propose that attention should be focused on the manner in which people align words and thoughts, bodily postures and movements, in order to take one another into account and to make full use of socially relevant information. (shrink)