Neural mechanisms of economic commitment in the human medial prefrontal cortex.

Neurobiologists have studied decisions by offering successive, independent choices between goods or gambles. However, choices often have lasting consequences, as when investing in a house or choosing a partner. Here, humans decided whether to commit (by acceptance or rejection) to prospects that provided sustained financial return. BOLD signals in the rostral medial prefrontal cortex (rmPFC) encoded stimulus value only when acceptance or rejection was deferred into the future, suggesting a role in integrating value signals over time. By contrast, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) encoded stimulus value only when participants rejected (or deferred accepting) a prospect. dACC BOLD signals reflected two decision biases-to defer commitments to later, and to weight potential losses more heavily than gains-that (paradoxically) maximised reward in this task. These findings offer fresh insights into the pressures that shape economic decisions, and the computation of value in the medial prefrontal cortex.

So far so good: emotion in the peripersonal/extrapersonal space.

Current accounts of spatial cognition and human-object interaction suggest that the representation of peripersonal space depends on an action-specific system that remaps its representation according to action requirements. Here we demonstrate that this mechanism is sensitive to knowledge about properties of objects. In two experiments we explored the interaction between physical distance and object attributes (functionality, desirability, graspability, etc.) through a reaching estimation task in which participants indicated if objects were near enough to be reached. Using both a real and a cutting-edge digital scenario, we demonstrate that perceived reaching distance is influenced by ease of grasp and the affective valence of an object. Objects with a positive affective valence tend to be perceived reachable at locations at which neutral or negative objects are perceived as non-reachable. In addition to this, reaction time to distant (non-reachable) positive objects suggests a bias to perceive positive objects as closer than negative and neutral objects (exp. 2). These results highlight the importance of the affective valence of objects in the action-specific mapping of the peripersonal/extrapersonal space system.

Nonsuicidal self-injury and diminished pain perception: the role of emotion dysregulation.

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is the deliberate destruction of one's own body tissue in the absence of suicidal intent (e.g., cutting or burning the skin). Previous studies have found that people with a history of NSSI display diminished pain perception. However, it remains unclear why this effect occurs. In the present study, we used a sample of participants with (n = 25) and without (n = 47) a history of NSSI to test the hypothesis that emotion dysregulation partially explains why NSSI is associated with diminished pain perception. Pain perception was quantified as pain threshold, pain tolerance, and pain intensity ratings assessed during the cold pressor task. Nonsuicidal self-injury was associated with increased emotion dysregulation and diminished pain perception. Results showed that emotion dysregulation was correlated with diminished pain perception within both groups, demonstrating that this association exists regardless of NSSI history. Results also specified that emotion dysregulation partially accounted for the association between NSSI and pain tolerance but not other pain variables. Overall, results were consistent with the hypothesis that emotion dysregulation may increase NSSI risk in part by increasing the willingness to experience the pain involved in self-injury. Studies are needed to more directly investigate this hypothesis.