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The need for social connection is a pervasive and powerful human drive. When this fundamental need is not fulfilled, people place greater emphasis on forming social bonds and are motivated to behave in ways consistent with accomplishing these social goals. The present thesis leverages knowledge of the specific cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in the processing of nonsocial rewards and related motivational behaviors to examine how social interactions may similarly be conceptualized as a class of rewards responsible for shaping instrumental learning and evoking approach behaviors. In nonsocial domains, the rewarding properties of stimuli are crucially involved in the development and implementation of goal-directed behaviors, and function to guide animals towards resources that can satisfy unmet needs. Previous research has identified a specific set of brain regions (i.e., the mesolimbic dopamine circuit including the ventral striatum) that are responsible for coding information about rewards and facilitating learned associations between cues and subsequent rewards. The experiments described here provide evidence that 1) the same neural mechanism that facilitates associative learning and reward detection in nonsocial domains similarly functions in the social domain, 2) activity in this neural system tracks the motivational relevance of social stimuli, and 3) these motivational influences bias the perception and interpretation of social cues. Taken together, these results suggest that the neural reward system is highly attuned to social context and functions to advantageously support social relations by translating the value of social cues into motivated action.
Individuals do not always perform to their full capability on cognitive tasks. When this occurs, the usual explanation is that the individual was not properly motivated. But this begs the important question: How and why does motivation interact with and influence cognitive processing and the control processes that regulate it? What are the underlying mechanisms that govern such interactions? Motivation has been an important component of psychology and neuroscience throughout the history of the field, but has recently been rejuvenated by rapidly accelerating research interest in the nature of motivation-cognition interactions, particularly as they impact control processes and goal-directed behavior. This volume provides an up-to-date snapshot of the state of research in this exciting, expanding area. The contributors to the volume are internationally-renowned researchers that lead the field in conducting groundbreaking studies. Moreover, they represent a variety of research perspectives and traditions: cognitive psychology and neuroscience, animal learning, social, affective, and personality psychology, and development, lifespan, and aging studies. This book summarizes our current state of understanding of the relationship between motivation and cognitive control, and serves as an essential reference for both students and researchers.
This volume provides new insight into motivation theory by integrating noteworthy neuroscience research findings on motivation. This volume is dedicated to advancing our understanding of brain mechanisms of underlying motivational phenomena, including reward, approach, autonomy, intrinsic motivation, learning, effort, curiosity, and self-control.
This volume presents a rare occasion where scholars from Europe, North Africa and North America share their research programs and findings revolving around an important theme: integration. Despite different research foci and methodologies, there is a strong consensus that we need to understand a psychological phenomenon in all its complexity, involving its neural, psychological, and social dimensions, involving perception and conception, and decision processes, involving motivation, emotion, and cognition – all in complex interaction. This volume is intended to reach out to basic and applied psychological researchers, cognitive and affective scientists, learning scientists, biologists, sociologists, neuropsychological researchers, and philosophers, who have an interest in an integrated understanding of the mind at work, particularly pertaining to explanations of real-life phenomena that have social and practical significance. A distinct feature of this volume is that most research involved is heavily built on neuropsychological evidence, while loyal to the experimental tradition with its focus on functional behavior in various situations and conditions that mimic or resemble real life. The viability of this approach to doing cutting-edge research that is relevant and applicable to many real-life phenomena should also make this body of research useful for a wide range of human endeavor, from religion, education, to industrial and organizational psychology.
If we want to understand people’s responses to threats in social interactions we can distinguish between three levels of analysis: On a social level of analysis we can describe people’s interpersonal behavior, on a cognitive level we can identify corresponding information processing mechanisms, and on a neural level we can specify neural systems, which underlie these processes. In this Research Topic we want to present research connecting these three levels of analysis and propose their functional interconnection in social interaction. We propose that threats in social interactions activate basic motivational processes, which manifest in neural processes related to behavioral inhibition vs. activation in a social situation. This shapes our attention to new information, and affects our cognitions about social identities, belief systems and worldviews. These changes in social cognition in turn affect people’s behavior in social interactions and lead to corresponding reactions on behalf of the interaction partner. Thus, we assume that people’s reactions to threat in interactions can be described as sequences of broader attentional processes resulting from basic motivational tendencies leading to specific social cognitions and subsequent behavior within social interactions. We can analyze this sequence in order to contribute to a better understanding of social interactions. The three levels of analyses (social, cognitive, neural) shed light on social interactions from different angles: On the social level we can analyze how the behaviors of the interaction partners mutually affect each other and how this is accompanied by specific cognitive, emotional and motivational processes. On the cognitive level we can analyze people’s perception of a social situation leading to attentional and reasoning processes with regard to their interaction partner/s, which may be accompanied by certain emotional and motivational processes and determines the behavior towards the partner/s. Finally, we can focus on the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes in social interactions.
This compelling volume provides a broad and accessible overview of the emerging field of social neuroscience. Showcasing an array of cutting-edge research programs, leading investigators present new approaches to the study of how the brain and body influence social behavior, and vice versa. Each authoritative chapter clearly describes the methods used: lesion studies, neuroimaging techniques, hormonal methods, event-related brain potential methods, and others. The contributors discuss the theoretical advantages of taking a social neuroscience perspective and analyze what their findings reveal about core social psychological phenomena. Essential topics include emotion, motivation, attitudes, person perception, stereotyping and prejudice, and interpersonal relationships.
Motivational incentives play a central role in human decision-making and the pursuit of behavioral and cognitive task goals [1,2]. Moreover, the ability to integrate diverse incentives to modulate goal pursuit is essential for healthy cognitive function. A potential mechanism of motivational influence may be via cognitive control, the set of processes that coordinate and regulate cognition and action based on currently maintained goals [3,4]. However, it is currently unknown whether and how different types of incentives are combined in the brain to modulate cognitive control, and how this putative integrated value signal influences goal-directed behavior. In the current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we utilized an innovative incentive integration task paradigm that establishes dissociable and additive effects of liquid (e.g., juice, neutral, saltwater) and monetary incentives on cognitive task performance, and applied innovative fMRI analysis approaches to elucidate the neural mechanisms that underlie the interaction between motivational and cognitive control process. First, we applied univariate parcel-based approaches to test whether a priori regions of interest (e.g., ventromedial prefrontal cortex, striatum, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) represented the integrated value of the 'bundled incentives', and whether these regions were also associated with variability in cognitive task performance (Aim 1). Second, we applied representational similarity analysis - an innovative multivariate approach - to test whether and how the combined values from diverse motivational incentives are represented in the similarity of neural patterns in fMRI BOLD activity (Aim 2). Moreover, we aimed to examine whether such multivariate approaches were more sensitive to motivational incentive effects compared to univariate approaches, or alternatively provided complementary information to the univariate results in motivational incentive effects. This is the first study, to our knowledge, that investigates the neural mechanisms underlying whether and how value integration of primary/consummatory and secondary/abstract incentives in a cognitive control context guide goal-directed behavior. Importantly, these results provide critical knowledge into the basic neural mechanisms underlying interactions between motivational incentive integration and cognitive control, which can inform subsequent hypotheses about neuromodulatory influences (e.g., dopamine) in such interactions, as well as inform key predictions about targeted neural mechanisms in age-related changes in motivation-cognition interactions as well as maladaptive motivational processes in psychopathology (e.g., depression, addiction).
One of the most pressing questions in neuroscience, psychology and economics today is how does the brain generate preferences and make choices? With a unique interdisciplinary approach, this volume is among the first to explore the cognitive and neural mechanisms mediating the generation of the preferences that guide choice. From preferences determining mundane purchases, to social preferences influencing mating choice, through to moral decisions, the authors adopt diverse approaches to answer the question. Chapters explore the instability of preferences and the common neural processes that occur across preferences. Edited by one of the world's most renowned cognitive neuroscientists, each chapter is authored by an expert in the field, with a host of international contributors. Emphasis on common process underlying preference generation makes material applicable to a variety of disciplines - neuroscience, psychology, economics, law, philosophy, etc. Offers specific focus on how preferences are generated to guide decision making, carefully examining one aspect of the broad field of neuroeconomics and complementing existing volumes Features outstanding, international scholarship, with chapters written by an expert in the topic area
This volume covers the current status of research in the neurobiology of motivated behaviors in humans and other animals in healthy condition. This includes consideration of the psychological processes that drive motivated behavior and the anatomical, electrophysiological and neurochemical mechanisms which drive these processes and regulate behavioural output. The volume also includes chapters on pathological disturbances in motivation including apathy, or motivational deficit as well as addictions, the pathological misdirection of motivated behavior. As with the chapters on healthy motivational processes, the chapters on disease provide a comprehensive up to date review of the neurobiological abnormalities that underlie motivation, as determined by studies of patient populations as well as animal models of disease. The book closes with a section on recent developments in treatments for motivational disorders.
With this proven approach based on of 20 years of research, educators and therapists will use natural learning opportunities to help children with autism enjoy more positive interactions, more effective communication, and higher academic achievement.