The state-trait sense of self inventory: A psychometric study of self-experience and its relation to psychosis-like manifestations.

The sense of self is a fundamental construct in the study of the mind, yet its psychological nature remains elusive. We introduce a novel 25-item inventory to investigate selfhood both as an enduring trait and a temporary state. We hypothesized two foundational aspects of the self: identity (related to self-referencing and continuity over time) and agency (the perception of controlling own's actions and thoughts). Results from two population studies highlight a singular self-trait factor combining agency and identity. In contrast, self-state measures revealed a bifactorial structure with a high-order factor and three lower-order subfactors: state-identity, state-agency, and state-technology. These factors were predictive of psychosis-like experiences, schizotypal traits, and hopelessness. Mediation analysis demonstrated that the negative association between the sense of self and hopelessness is mediated by depressive manifestations. Our research provides a tool to shed new light on the complexity of the sense of self and its mental health implications.

Brain and behavioral contributions to individual choices in response to affective-cognitive persuasion.

Affective and cognitive information conveyed by persuasive stimuli is evaluated and integrated by individuals according to their behavioral predispositions. However, the neurocognitive structure that supports persuasion based on either affective or cognitive content is poorly understood. Here, we examine the neural and behavioral processes supporting choices based on affective and cognitive persuasion by integrating 4 information processing features: intrinsic brain connectivity, stimulus-evoked brain activity, intrinsic affective-cognitive orientation, and explicit target evaluations. We found that the intrinsic cross-network connections of a multimodal fronto-parietal network are associated with individual affective-cognitive orientation. Moreover, using a cross-validated classifier, we found that individuals' intrinsic brain-behavioral dimensions, such as affective-cognitive orientation and intrinsic brain connectivity, can predict individual choices between affective and cognitive targets. Our findings show that affective- and cognitive-based choices rely on multiple sources, including behavioral orientation, stimulus evaluation, and intrinsic functional brain architecture.

An integrative perspective on the role of touch in the development of intersubjectivity.

Touch concerns a fundamental component of sociality. In this review, we examine the hypothesis that somatomotor development constitutes a crucial psychophysiological element in the ontogeny of intersubjectivity. An interdisciplinary perspective is provided on how the communication channel of touch contributes to the sense of self and extends to the social self. During gestation, the transformation of random movements into organized sequences of actions with sensory consequences parallels the development of the brain's functional architecture. Brain subsystems shaped by the coordinated activity of somatomotor circuits to support these first body-environment interactions are the first brain functional arrangements to develop. We propose that tactile self-referring behaviour during gestation constitutes a prototypic mode of interpersonal exchange that supports the subsequent development of intersubjective exchange. The reviewed research suggests that touch constitutes a pivotal bodily experience that in early stages builds and later filters self-other interactions. This view is corroborated by the fact that aberrant social-affective touch experiences appear fundamentally associated with attachment anomalies, interpersonal trauma, and personality disorders. Given the centrality of touch for the development of intersubjectivity and for psychopathological conditions in the social domain, dedicated research is urged to elucidate the role of touch in the evolution of subjective self-other coding.

Appropriately Tuning Stochastic-Psychometric Properties of the Balloon Analog Risk Task.

The Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) allows to experimentally assess individuals' risk-taking profiles in an ecologically sound setting. Many psychological and neuroscientific studies implemented the BART for its simplicity and intuitive nature. However, some issues in the design of the BART are systematically unconsidered in experimental paradigms, which may bias the estimation of individual risk-taking profiles. Since there are no methodological guidelines for implementing the BART, many variables (e.g., the maximum explosion probabilities, the rationale underlying stochastic events) vary inconstantly across experiments, possibly producing contrasting results. Moreover, the standard version of the BART is affected by the interaction of an individual-dependent, unavoidable source of stochasticity with a trial-dependent, more ambiguous source of stochasticity (i.e., the probability of the balloon to explode). This paper shows the most appropriate experimental choices for having the lowest error in the approximation of risk-taking profiles. Performance tests of a series of simulated data suggest that a more controlled, eventually non-stochastic version of the BART, better approximates original risk-taking profiles. Selecting optimal BART parameters is particularly important in neuroscience experiments to optimize the number of trials in a time window appropriate for acquiring neuroimaging data. We also provide helpful suggestions to researchers in many fields to allow the implementation of optimized risk-taking experiments using the BART.

Probabilistically Weighted Multilayer Networks disclose the link between default mode network instability and psychosis-like experiences in healthy adults.

The brain is a complex system in which the functional interactions among its subunits vary over time. The trajectories of this dynamic variation contribute to inter-individual behavioral differences and psychopathologic phenotypes. Despite many methodological advancements, the study of dynamic brain networks still relies on biased assumptions in the temporal domain. The current paper has two goals. First, we present a novel method to study multilayer networks: by modelling intra-nodal connections in a probabilistic, biologically driven way, we introduce a temporal resolution of the multilayer network based on signal similarity across time series. This new method is tested on synthetic networks by varying the number of modules and the sources of noise in the simulation. Secondly, we implement these probabilistically weighted (PW) multilayer networks to study the association between network dynamics and subclinical, psychosis-relevant personality traits in healthy adults. We show that the PW method for multilayer networks outperforms the standard procedure in modular detection and is less affected by increasing noise levels. Additionally, the PW method highlighted associations between the temporal instability of default mode network connections and psychosis-like experiences in healthy adults. PW multilayer networks allow an unbiased study of dynamic brain functioning and its behavioral correlates.

Intrinsic Shapes of Empathy: Functional Brain Network Topology Encodes Intersubjective Experience and Awareness Traits.

Trait empathy is an essential personality feature in the intricacy of typical social inclinations of individuals. Empathy is likely supported by multilevel neuronal network functioning, whereas local topological properties determine network integrity. In the present functional MRI study (N = 116), we aimed to trace empathic traits to the intrinsic brain network architecture. Empathy was conceived as composed of two dimensions within the concept of pre-reflective, intersubjective understanding. Vicarious experience consists of the tendency to resonate with the feelings of other individuals, whereas intuitive understanding refers to a natural awareness of others' emotional states. Analyses of graph theoretical measures of centrality showed a relationship between the fronto-parietal network and psychometric measures of vicarious experience, whereas intuitive understanding was associated with sensorimotor and subcortical networks. Salience network regions could constitute hubs for information processing underlying both dimensions. The network properties related to empathy dimensions mainly concern inter-network information flow. Moreover, interaction effects implied several sex differences in the relationship between functional network organization and trait empathy. These results reveal that distinct intrinsic topological network features explain individual differences in separate dimensions of intersubjective understanding. The findings could help understand the impact of brain damage or stimulation through alterations of empathy-related network integrity.

The Role of Gender in the Association Among the Emotional Intelligence, Anxiety and Depression.

Recent epidemiological data show an increase of depression and anxiety that cause a loss of about 3-4% of the gross domestic product in Europe, as a consequence of a reduced productivity and a premature death of people. Gender differences in both psychopathologies were found from mid-to-late adolescence until 55 years, and data indicate an increase of depression in women. Considering these data, new interventions focused on promoting psychological well-being were designed. A predictive factor of psychological disorders is Emotional Intelligence (EI), the ability to understand and regulate our own emotions, as well as those of others. EI is associated with psychological well-being, as well as with the treatment of mental illness, but gender differences in the association among EI, anxiety and depression remains unclear. The present study aims at analyzing the nomological associations among EI, anxiety and depression. Furthermore, the possible moderating role of gender in the relation between EI, depression and anxiety is investigated in a sample of 1725 healthy participants. Our results show that the ability to recognize and to control emotions in the social context helps us to reduce the risk to be affected by depression and anxiety. Moreover, our study shows that the association of EI with anxiety and depression wasn't gender moderated. In conclusion, the findings highlight that EI can help people to manage emotions linked to negative events and to successfully understand emotions in others. In addition, we found no moderation role of gender in the association between EI, anxiety and depression.

The Self and Its Nature: A Psychopathological Perspective on the Risk-Reducing Effects of Environmental Green Space for Psychosis.

Epidemiological studies have shown that environmental green space contributes to the reduction of psychosis incidence in the population. Clarifying the psychological and neuro-functional mechanisms underlying the risk-decreasing effects of green surroundings could help optimize preventive environmental interventions. This perspective article specifically aims to open a new window on the link between environmental green space and psychosis by considering its core psychopathological features. Psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, are essentially characterized by self-disturbances. The psychological structure of the self has been described as a multidimensional phenomenon that emerges from the reciprocal interaction with the environment through intrinsic and extrinsic self-processes. The intrinsic self refers to the experience of mental activity and environmental information as inherently related to one's own person, which involves self-referential processing, self-reflection, memory, interoception, and emotional evaluation. The extrinsic self refers to sensorimotor interactions with the environment and the sense of agency, that is, the experience of being the source of one's own actions and the multisensory consequences thereof. In psychosis, anomalous self-processing has been related to a functional fragmentation of intrinsic and extrinsic self-processes and related brain networks. Moreover, evidence from cognitive neuroscience suggests that green space could have beneficial effects on self-related processing. Based on the literature, it could be hypothesized that self-processing is involved in mediating the beneficial effects of green space for psychosis. Considering the multidimensionality of the self, it is proposed that urban green space design aimed at improving mental health ideally impacts the complexity of self-facets and thus restores the individual's self.

Combining local and global evolutionary trajectories of brain-behaviour relationships through game theory.

The study of the evolution of brain-behaviour relationships concerns understanding the causes and repercussions of cross- and within-species variability. Understanding such variability is a main objective of evolutionary and cognitive neuroscience, and it may help explaining the appearance of psychopathological phenotypes. Although brain evolution is related to the progressive action of selection and adaptation through multiple paths (e.g. mosaic vs. concerted evolution, metabolic vs. structural and functional constraints), a coherent, integrative framework is needed to combine evolutionary paths and neuroscientific evidence. Here, we review the literature on evolutionary pressures focusing on structural-functional changes and developmental constraints. Taking advantage of recent progress in neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience, we propose a twofold hypothetical model of brain evolution. Within this model, global and local trajectories imply rearrangements of neural subunits and subsystems and of behavioural repertoires of a species, respectively. We incorporate these two processes in a game in which the global trajectory shapes the structural-functional neural substrates (i.e. players), while the local trajectory shapes the behavioural repertoires (i.e. stochastic payoffs).

The Prospective Sense of Agency is Rooted in Local and Global Properties of Intrinsic Functional Brain Networks.

The sense of agency (SoA) refers to a constitutional aspect of the self describing the extent to which individuals feel in control over their actions and consequences thereof. Although the SoA has been associated with mental health and well-being, it is still unknown how interindividual variability in the SoA is embedded in the intrinsic brain organization. We hypothesized that the prospective component of an implicit SoA is associated with brain networks related to SoA and sensorimotor predictions on multiple spatial scales. We replicated previous findings by showing a significant prospective SoA as indicated by intentional binding effects. Then, using task-free fMRI and graph analysis, we analyzed associations between intentional binding effects and the intrinsic brain organization at regional, modular, and whole-brain scales. The results showed that intermodular connections of a frontoparietal module including the premotor cortex, supramarginal gyrus, and dorsal precuneus are associated with individual differences in prospective intentional binding. Notably, prospective intentional binding effects were also related to global brain modularity within a specific structural resolution range. These findings suggest that an implicit SoA generated through sensorimotor predictions relies on the intrinsic organization of the brain connectome on both local and global scales.

Sense or sensibility? The neuro-functional basis of the structural matching effect in persuasion.

The present study investigates the neural pathways underlying individual susceptibility to affective or cognitive information in persuasive communication, also known as the structural matching effect. Expanding on the presumed involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC) in persuasion, we hypothesized that the vMPFC contributes to the evaluation of persuasive information depending on its match with the recipient's affective or cognitive predominance. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, 30 participants evaluated 10 consumable products presented with both affective and cognitive persuasive messages. All participants were characterized on a continuum regarding their personal orientation in terms of individual differences in need for affect (NFA) and need for cognition (NFC). The results showed that the vMPFC, posterior cingulate cortex, and cerebellum are more strongly activated when the persuasive message content, either affective or cognitive, matched the recipient's individual affective or cognitive orientation. Interestingly, this effect in the vMPFC was found specifically when participants evaluated the products presented by the persuasive messages, whereas the correlation in the posterior cingulate cortex and cerebellum activity was detected when reading the messages. These results confirm the hypothesis that the vMPFC plays a role in subjectively weighting persuasive message content depending on individual differences in affective and cognitive orientation. Such a structural matching effect might involve the vMPFC particularly during explicit expressions of subjective valuations. These novel findings also further develop the conceptualization of the role of the vMPFC in self-related processing.

The evolving sense of agency: Context recency and quality modulate the interaction between prospective and retrospective processes.

Humans acquire a sense of agency through their interactions with the world and their sensory consequences. Previous studies have highlighted stable agency-related phenomena like intentional binding, which depend on both prospective, context-dependent and retrospective, outcome-dependent processes. In the current study, we investigated the interaction between prospective and retrospective processes underlying the adaptation of an ongoing sense of agency. The results showed that prospective intentional binding developed during a temporal window of up to 20 prior events was independent of the nature of the ongoing event. By contrast, the characteristics of the ongoing event retrospectively influenced prospective intentional binding developed during a temporal window narrower than 6 prior events. These findings characterize the interaction between prospective and retrospective mechanisms as a fundamental process to continuously update the sense of agency through sensorimotor learning. High psychosis-like experience traits weakened this interaction, suggesting that reduced adaption to the context contributes to altered self-experience.

I am Me: Brain systems integrate and segregate to establish a multidimensional sense of self.

Humans experience a sense of self, which is proposed to emerge from the integration of intrinsic and extrinsic self-processing through the propagation of information across brain systems. Using a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm, we tested this hypothesis in a non-clinical sample by modulating the intrinsic and extrinsic self-relatedness of auditory action consequences in terms of identity and agency, respectively. In addition, the relevance of individual traits associated with altered self-experiences (e.g., psychosis-like experiences) was examined. The task-evoked fMRI results showed distinctive associations between the neural coding of identity and negative affect traits, and between agency and psychosis-like experiences. Most importantly, regarding the functional connectivity analysis, graph theoretical measures demonstrated that the simultaneous processing of identity and agency relies on the functional integration and segregation of default mode, sensorimotor, language, and executive brain networks. Finally, cross-network interactions mediated by executive and sensorimotor regions were negatively associated with psychosis-like experiences when the intrinsic and extrinsic self-relatedness of action consequences conflicted. These findings provide evidence that the self is a multidimensional phenomenon rooted in the functional interactions between large-scale neuronal networks. Such interactions may have particular relevance for self-experience alterations.

Environmental control and psychosis-relevant traits modulate the prospective sense of agency in non-clinical individuals.

The sense of agency concerns the experience of being the source of one's own actions and their consequences. An altered sense of agency can occur due to task automation and in psychosis. We tested in a non-clinical sample the hypothesis that reducing voluntary task control diminishes intentional binding as an implicit indicator of the sense of agency, possibly interacting with psychosis-relevant personality traits. Agent-device interactions were manipulated obtaining positive-control (voluntary interaction), no-control (automation), and negative-control (device-commanded interaction) groups. The main results showed reduced prospective intentional binding (predictive coding of action consequences) in the no-control and negative-control groups, compared to the positive-control group. Psychosis-like experiences covaried positively with intentional binding in the no-control group, but negatively in the negative-control group. Moreover, positive-social traits were associated with increased intentional binding in the positive-control group. These findings demonstrate the interplay between environmental and individual differences variables in establishing the implicit sense of agency.

A bidimensional measure of empathy: Empathic Experience Scale.

Empathy is a key notion in the study of sociality. A phenomenological perspective on empathy as intersubjective understanding offers a common ground for multiple dimensions. Corresponding to the dichotomy between perceptual and cognitive levels, two constructs can be distinguished: vicariously experiencing and intuitively understanding others' emotions. We developed and validated a new questionnaire for the assessment of individual differences in empathy. In a first study (N = 921), we created a questionnaire measuring empathy consisting of a pool of 75 items. Exploratory factor analysis suggested to retain two factors ("Intuitive Understanding" and "Vicarious Experience"), whereas a 30-item version of the questionnaire had satisfactory psychometric properties. In a second study (N = 504), we administered the 30-items questionnaire and several concurrent/divergent measures. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a two-factor structure best represented its latent factor structure. The results show that our questionnaire could be considered a reliable and valid measure of empathy with internal consistencies of 0.93 and 0.95 for Vicarious Experience and Intuitive Intuitive Understanding, respectively. Whereas our questionnaire mostly showed the expected convergence with existing scales of empathy, the correlations also suggest that it adds valuable new information to the assessment of empathy. The two-factor structure suggests that the perceptual (vicarious) experience and the basic (non-effortful) cognitive awareness of others' emotions can be assessed as distinct constructs. This bidimensional structure that distinguishes between the perceptual experience and the basic cognitive awareness of others' emotional states connects theoretical, empirical, and clinical data from psychology and neuroscience.

EEG microstates distinguish between cognitive components of fluid reasoning.

Fluid reasoning is considered central to general intelligence. How its psychometric structure relates to brain function remains poorly understood. For instance, what is the dynamic composition of ability-specific processes underlying fluid reasoning? We investigated whether distinct fluid reasoning abilities could be differentiated by electroencephalography (EEG) microstate profiles. EEG microstates specifically capture rapidly altering activity of distributed cortical networks with a high temporal resolution as scalp potential topographies that dynamically vary over time in an organized manner. EEG was recorded simultaneously with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in twenty healthy adult participants during cognitively distinct fluid reasoning tasks: induction, spatial relationships and visualization. Microstate parameters successfully discriminated between fluid reasoning and visuomotor control tasks as well as between the fluid reasoning tasks. Mainly, microstate B coverage was significantly higher during spatial relationships and visualization, compared to induction, while microstate C coverage was significantly decreased during spatial relationships and visualization, compared to induction. Additionally, microstate D coverage was highest during spatial relationships and microstate A coverage was most strongly reduced during the same condition. Consistently, multivariate analysis with a leave-one-out cross-validation procedure accurately classified the fluid reasoning tasks based on the coverage parameter. These EEG data and their correlation with fMRI data suggest that especially the tasks most strongly relying on visuospatial processing modulated visual and default mode network activity. We propose that EEG microstates can provide valuable information about neural activity patterns with a dynamic and complex temporal structure during fluid reasoning, suggesting cognitive ability-specific interplays between multiple brain networks.

Spontaneous Brain Activity Predicts Task-Evoked Activity During Animate Versus Inanimate Touch.

The spontaneous activity of the brain is characterized by an elaborate temporal structure with scale-free properties as indexed by the power law exponent (PLE). We test the hypothesis that spontaneous brain activity modulates task-evoked activity during interactions with animate versus inanimate stimuli. For this purpose, we developed a paradigm requiring participants to actively touch either animate (real hand) or inanimate (mannequin hand) stimuli. Behaviorally, participants perceived the animate target as closer in space, temporally more synchronous with their own self, and more personally relevant, compared with the inanimate. Neuronally, we observed a modulation of task-evoked activity by animate versus inanimate interactions in posterior insula, in medial prefrontal cortex, comprising anterior cingulate cortex, and in medial superior frontal gyrus. Among these regions, an increased functional connectivity was shown between posterior insula and perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (PACC) during animate compared with inanimate interactions and during resting state. Importantly, PLE during spontaneous brain activity in PACC correlated positively with PACC task-evoked activity during animate versus inanimate stimuli. In conclusion, we demonstrate that brain spontaneous activity in PACC can be related to the distinction between animate and inanimate stimuli and thus might be specifically tuned to align our brain with its animate environment.

Brain network profiling defines functionally specialized cortical networks.

Neuroimaging research made rapid advances in the study of the functional architecture of the brain during the past decade. Many proposals endorsed the relevance of large-scale brain networks, defined as ensembles of brain regions that exhibit highly correlated signal fluctuations. However, analysis methods need further elaboration to define the functional and anatomical extent of specialized subsystems within classical networks with a high reliability. We present a novel approach to characterize and examine the functional proprieties of brain networks. This approach, labeled as brain network profiling (BNP), considers similarities in task-evoked activity and resting-state functional connectivity across biologically relevant brain subregions. To combine task-driven activity and functional connectivity features, principal components were extracted separately for task-related beta values and resting-state functional connectivity z-values (data available from the Human Connectome Project), from 360 brain parcels. Multiple clustering procedures were employed to assess if different clustering methods (Gaussian mixtures; k-means) and/or data structures (task and rest data; only rest data) led to improvements in the replication of the brain architecture. The results indicated that combining information from resting-state functional connectivity and task-evoked activity and using Gaussian mixtures models for clustering produces more reliable results (99% replication across data sets). Moreover, the findings revealed a high-resolution partition of the cerebral cortex in 16 networks with unique functional connectivity and/or task-evoked activity profiles. BNP potentially offers new approaches to advance the investigation of the brain functional architecture.

Disrupted relationship between "resting state" connectivity and task-evoked activity during social perception in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia has been described as a self-disorder, whereas social deficits are key features of the illness. Changes in "resting state" activity of brain networks involved in self-related processing have been consistently reported in schizophrenia, but their meaning for social perception deficits remains poorly understood. Here, we applied a novel approach investigating the relationship between task-evoked neural activity during social perception and functional organization of self-related brain networks during a "resting state". "Resting state" functional MRI was combined with task-related functional MRI using a social perception experiment. Twenty-one healthy control participants (HC) and 21 out-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia (SCH) were included. There were no significant differences concerning age, IQ, education and gender between the groups. Results showed reduced "resting state" functional connectivity between ventromedial prefrontal cortex and dorsal posterior cingulate cortex in SCH, compared to HC. During social perception, neural activity in dorsal posterior cingulate cortex and behavioral data indicated impaired congruence coding of social stimuli in SCH. Task-evoked activity during social perception in dorsal posterior cingulate cortex co-varied with dorsal posterior cingulate cortex-ventromedial prefrontal cortex functional connectivity during a "resting state" in HC, but not in SCH. Task-evoked activity also correlated with negative symptoms in SCH. These preliminary findings, showing disrupted prediction of social perception measures by "resting state" functioning of self-related brain networks in schizophrenia, provide important insight in the hypothesized link between self and social deficits. They also shed light on the meaning of "resting state" changes for tasks such as social perception.