Clip lecture 1.1 Psychological Methods
Psychological methods of SNS:
Subjective measures
o Emotional experience
o Personality questionnaires
Observational measures
o Frequency of behaviors
Performance measures
o Reaction time
o Accuracy
these measures are not extremely fancy, but essential! Biological measures without additional
information make no sense in social neuroscience!
Subjective measures
Emotional experience
o Interview/questionnaire to determine how individual experienced an experiment.
o POMS (profile of mood states).
Personality questionnaires
o STAI/STAS (state-trait anxiety/anger)
o LSAS (Liebowitz social anxiety scale)
o EQ-SQ (empathy/systemizing)
o BIS/BAS (beh. Inhibition/activation)
o … many more.
How to use in SNS:
o Useful as control variable.
o Useful for correlation with other measure.
o Compare different studies (validated questionnaires)
Observational measures (what will the participant do?)
Scoring and counting behaviors.
Animal studies.
Infant studies.
Camera (blinding, inter-rater reliability)
Eye tracking
Performance measures
Speed and accuracy
o Speed-accuracy trade-off. (the faster, the more errors)
o Restricted, but ‘real’ behavior.
o Stable because of many, many, measurements.
IQ-tests
(emotion) Recognition Tests
Selective attention
o Implicit association task
o (Gaze) cueing tasks.
From Stroop to fear and anger
Classical Stroop
o Interference of the word
, Emotional Stroop
o Interference of emotion
Facial fear Stroop
o Interference of expression
! Mistake in book ! Page 308
They stated that participants with high trait angriness are faster at naming the color after
presentation of an angry face (relative to a neutral face).
The truth: participants with high trait angriness are slower at naming the color after
presentation of an angry face (relative to a neutral face).
Clip Lecture 1.2 Physiological Methods
Measuring Psychophysiology: (bodily responses to emotion or arousal)
Controlled by the brain through the spinal cord.
(para)sympathetic nervous system.
o Arousal
(Electro)physiological methods:
Goal: measure bodily reactions that underlie/precede (social) behavior.
Skin conductance
o Sweat gland activity
Heart rate, respiration
o Preparation for fight/flight
Electromyography (EMG)
o (Involuntary/automatic) muscle activity.
Skin conductance resp. (SCR):
Sweat glands: related to sympathetic arousal.
Peak between 1-5s. after emotional event.
Can occur in absence of conscious perception.
Heart rate:
Deceleration
o Preparing for danger
Acceleration
o Active escape or attack
Heart rate variability (HRV)
o More variability = rest = parasympathetic
o Less = concentration enhanced attention = sympathetic
Electromyography (EMG):
Measure potential between pairs of close electrodes.
Muscle activity.
Mimicking facing expressions (affective empathy).
Startle potentiation (also EMG)
Eye blink startle potentiation
,Clip Lecture 1.3: Brain Imaging - Electrophysiology
Structure of the neuron:
All neurons have same basic structure:
o Cell body, axon, and dendrites
Axon: action potentials
Single-cell recordings
Very small electrode implanted into axon (intracellular) or outside axon membrane
(extracellular).
Records neural activity, number of action potentials per second (but doesn’t stimulate it).
Only done in animals.
Electroencephalography (EEG)
Picks up neural activity of a large number of cells
Possible due to the column-like organization of the cortex.
o Therefore also limited to the cortex.
EEG: Frequency bands:
Delta waves (1-4Hz)
o Motivational system: bottom-up drive.
Beta waves (12-30 Hz)
o Cortex: top-down modulation.
EEG: Event-Related Potentials:
EEG signal is averaged over many trials. (one doesn’t tell much, because it is noisy).
o Synchronized with some event.
The resulting ERP is a series of positive and negative peaks.
o Location, amplitude and timing reflect brain activity in response to the event.
ERP in face processing: N170
The N120 is relatively specialized for faces.
o Fusiform face area (FFA)
o For research one can manipulate emotion, visibility, familiarity, etc.
(Dis)advantages of ERP:
Directly related to neural activity.
Thus, ERP has an excellent temporal resolution.
o One can measure the timing of events.
Derived from multiple sources in the brain at the same time.
Therefore, ERP has a poor spatial resolution.
o One can measure location only very crudely.
Clip Lecture 1.4 Brain Imaging - MRI
Magnetic resonance imaging
MRI relies on the alignment of water molecules
o Molecules are first aligned in a strong magnet.
o Misaligned with a radio pulse.
o Realignment to the magnetic field emits a recordable radio pulse.
o Realignment depends on tissue properties.
, Functional MRI
Hemodynamic method: neural activity consumes oxygen, thus needs blood.
Functional MRI measures the blood oxygenation.
o Oxygen slows re-alignment of water molecules.
o Non-invasive (unlike PET – positron emission tomography – scans).
What does ‘a brain region is active’ mean?
o A region is ‘active’ if it shows a greater response in one condition relative to another.
o If inappropriate conditions the activity will be meaningless (junk in, junk out) –
functional imaging isn’t foolproof!
Good spatial resolution!
o Voxel-size can be as low as 1mm^3
Bad temporal resolution
o BOLD response: Blood Oxygen Level Dependent contrast.
o Hemodynamic response function (change in BOLD signal over time).
o Thus, temporal resolution in the order of a couple of seconds.
o If trials are placed close together, then the HRFs are superimposed.
Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI)
Used to map the white matter microstructure.
Gray matter (unmyelinated neurons).
White matter (myelinated neurons).
communication bundles.
Diffusion of water molecules.
DTI is also MRI, but from multiple angles and time-points.
Resolution ~2.5mm^3
o Only big fibers.
Brain imaging
Using MRI we can measure:
o Brain structure (MRI)
o Brain connections (DTI)
o Activation location (fMRI)
If we also want timing of activation we can use event related potentials (EEG-ERP)
o Only in the cortex.
Subcortical brain imaging with high temporal resolution is currently not available.
o Deep brain electrodes: highly invasive, only applicable in combination with
specialized treatment of disease.
Clip Lecture 1.5: Brain Imaging- Lesion and Disruption
Lesion methods:
Acquired sociopathy
o Famous case of Phineas Cage
o Damasio et al. (1990) many patients with orbital frontal cortex (OFC) damage (also
known as ventromedial prefrontal cortex, vmPFC) meet diagnosis of sociopathy (now
Antisocial Personality Disorder; ASPD)
Reversed engineering
o Infer the function of a region (or cognitive mechanism) by removing it and measuring
the effect on the rest of the system.
Animal models
Psychological methods of SNS:
Subjective measures
o Emotional experience
o Personality questionnaires
Observational measures
o Frequency of behaviors
Performance measures
o Reaction time
o Accuracy
these measures are not extremely fancy, but essential! Biological measures without additional
information make no sense in social neuroscience!
Subjective measures
Emotional experience
o Interview/questionnaire to determine how individual experienced an experiment.
o POMS (profile of mood states).
Personality questionnaires
o STAI/STAS (state-trait anxiety/anger)
o LSAS (Liebowitz social anxiety scale)
o EQ-SQ (empathy/systemizing)
o BIS/BAS (beh. Inhibition/activation)
o … many more.
How to use in SNS:
o Useful as control variable.
o Useful for correlation with other measure.
o Compare different studies (validated questionnaires)
Observational measures (what will the participant do?)
Scoring and counting behaviors.
Animal studies.
Infant studies.
Camera (blinding, inter-rater reliability)
Eye tracking
Performance measures
Speed and accuracy
o Speed-accuracy trade-off. (the faster, the more errors)
o Restricted, but ‘real’ behavior.
o Stable because of many, many, measurements.
IQ-tests
(emotion) Recognition Tests
Selective attention
o Implicit association task
o (Gaze) cueing tasks.
From Stroop to fear and anger
Classical Stroop
o Interference of the word
, Emotional Stroop
o Interference of emotion
Facial fear Stroop
o Interference of expression
! Mistake in book ! Page 308
They stated that participants with high trait angriness are faster at naming the color after
presentation of an angry face (relative to a neutral face).
The truth: participants with high trait angriness are slower at naming the color after
presentation of an angry face (relative to a neutral face).
Clip Lecture 1.2 Physiological Methods
Measuring Psychophysiology: (bodily responses to emotion or arousal)
Controlled by the brain through the spinal cord.
(para)sympathetic nervous system.
o Arousal
(Electro)physiological methods:
Goal: measure bodily reactions that underlie/precede (social) behavior.
Skin conductance
o Sweat gland activity
Heart rate, respiration
o Preparation for fight/flight
Electromyography (EMG)
o (Involuntary/automatic) muscle activity.
Skin conductance resp. (SCR):
Sweat glands: related to sympathetic arousal.
Peak between 1-5s. after emotional event.
Can occur in absence of conscious perception.
Heart rate:
Deceleration
o Preparing for danger
Acceleration
o Active escape or attack
Heart rate variability (HRV)
o More variability = rest = parasympathetic
o Less = concentration enhanced attention = sympathetic
Electromyography (EMG):
Measure potential between pairs of close electrodes.
Muscle activity.
Mimicking facing expressions (affective empathy).
Startle potentiation (also EMG)
Eye blink startle potentiation
,Clip Lecture 1.3: Brain Imaging - Electrophysiology
Structure of the neuron:
All neurons have same basic structure:
o Cell body, axon, and dendrites
Axon: action potentials
Single-cell recordings
Very small electrode implanted into axon (intracellular) or outside axon membrane
(extracellular).
Records neural activity, number of action potentials per second (but doesn’t stimulate it).
Only done in animals.
Electroencephalography (EEG)
Picks up neural activity of a large number of cells
Possible due to the column-like organization of the cortex.
o Therefore also limited to the cortex.
EEG: Frequency bands:
Delta waves (1-4Hz)
o Motivational system: bottom-up drive.
Beta waves (12-30 Hz)
o Cortex: top-down modulation.
EEG: Event-Related Potentials:
EEG signal is averaged over many trials. (one doesn’t tell much, because it is noisy).
o Synchronized with some event.
The resulting ERP is a series of positive and negative peaks.
o Location, amplitude and timing reflect brain activity in response to the event.
ERP in face processing: N170
The N120 is relatively specialized for faces.
o Fusiform face area (FFA)
o For research one can manipulate emotion, visibility, familiarity, etc.
(Dis)advantages of ERP:
Directly related to neural activity.
Thus, ERP has an excellent temporal resolution.
o One can measure the timing of events.
Derived from multiple sources in the brain at the same time.
Therefore, ERP has a poor spatial resolution.
o One can measure location only very crudely.
Clip Lecture 1.4 Brain Imaging - MRI
Magnetic resonance imaging
MRI relies on the alignment of water molecules
o Molecules are first aligned in a strong magnet.
o Misaligned with a radio pulse.
o Realignment to the magnetic field emits a recordable radio pulse.
o Realignment depends on tissue properties.
, Functional MRI
Hemodynamic method: neural activity consumes oxygen, thus needs blood.
Functional MRI measures the blood oxygenation.
o Oxygen slows re-alignment of water molecules.
o Non-invasive (unlike PET – positron emission tomography – scans).
What does ‘a brain region is active’ mean?
o A region is ‘active’ if it shows a greater response in one condition relative to another.
o If inappropriate conditions the activity will be meaningless (junk in, junk out) –
functional imaging isn’t foolproof!
Good spatial resolution!
o Voxel-size can be as low as 1mm^3
Bad temporal resolution
o BOLD response: Blood Oxygen Level Dependent contrast.
o Hemodynamic response function (change in BOLD signal over time).
o Thus, temporal resolution in the order of a couple of seconds.
o If trials are placed close together, then the HRFs are superimposed.
Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI)
Used to map the white matter microstructure.
Gray matter (unmyelinated neurons).
White matter (myelinated neurons).
communication bundles.
Diffusion of water molecules.
DTI is also MRI, but from multiple angles and time-points.
Resolution ~2.5mm^3
o Only big fibers.
Brain imaging
Using MRI we can measure:
o Brain structure (MRI)
o Brain connections (DTI)
o Activation location (fMRI)
If we also want timing of activation we can use event related potentials (EEG-ERP)
o Only in the cortex.
Subcortical brain imaging with high temporal resolution is currently not available.
o Deep brain electrodes: highly invasive, only applicable in combination with
specialized treatment of disease.
Clip Lecture 1.5: Brain Imaging- Lesion and Disruption
Lesion methods:
Acquired sociopathy
o Famous case of Phineas Cage
o Damasio et al. (1990) many patients with orbital frontal cortex (OFC) damage (also
known as ventromedial prefrontal cortex, vmPFC) meet diagnosis of sociopathy (now
Antisocial Personality Disorder; ASPD)
Reversed engineering
o Infer the function of a region (or cognitive mechanism) by removing it and measuring
the effect on the rest of the system.
Animal models
