Biology subjects

Chein, J.

Publications and source records attributed to Chein, J..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Striatal Social Reward Sensitivity Predicts Trust-Related Brain Responses Depending on Closeness and Depression

BackgroundDepression is associated with social dysfunction, but the mechanisms linking affective symptoms to disrupted close relationships remain poorly understood. One possibility is that depression alters how people experience rewards shared with close others and how they interpret partners actions. It remains unclear whether neural sensitivity to shared reward predicts social valuation during more complex interactions such as reciprocated trust. MethodsIn this preregistered fMRI study, participants completed a reward-sharing task and a Trust Game with a close friend, a stranger, and a computer. We measured striatal shared reward sensitivity (SRS; friend > computer) and tested whether it related to subsequent investment behavior and brain responses to trust reciprocation. Depressive symptoms and perceived closeness were assessed via self-report. ResultsIn a final sample of n = 123, participants reporting more depressive symptoms invested more in their friend than in the computer. Striatal SRS predicted temporoparietal junction responses to reciprocated trust, but this association depended jointly on social closeness and depression -- with depression reversing the expected pattern among individuals reporting closer relationships. Striatal SRS was also inversely associated with connectivity between the default mode network and cerebellum during reciprocity. ConclusionsThese findings suggest that closeness calibrates the striatal SRS link to regional activity and network-level responses during social exchange, while depression alters how striatal SRS relates to regional activity, potentially disrupting how individuals interpret and respond to close others.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Social Context and Reward Sensitivity Enhance Corticostriatal Function during Experiences of Shared Rewards

Although prior research has demonstrated enhanced striatal response when sharing rewards with close social connections, less is known about how individual differences affect ventral striatal (VS) activation and connectivity when experiencing rewards within social contexts. Given that self-reported reward sensitivity and level of substance use have been associated with differences in VS activation, we set out to investigate whether these factors would be independently associated with enhancements to neural reward responses within social contexts. In this pre-registered study, participants (N=45) underwent fMRI while playing a card guessing game in which correct or incorrect guesses resulted in monetary gains and losses that were shared evenly with either a close friend, stranger (confederate), or non-human partner. Consistent with our prior work, we found increased VS activation when sharing rewards with a socially close peer as opposed to an out-of-network stranger. As self-reported reward sensitivity increased, the difference in VS response to rewards shared with friends and strangers decreased. We also found enhanced connectivity between the VS and temporoparietal junction when sharing rewards with close friends as opposed to strangers. Finally, exploratory analyses revealed that as reward sensitivity and sub-clinical substance use increase, the difference in VS connectivity with the right fusiform face area increases as a function of social context. These findings demonstrate that responsivity to the context of close friends may be tied to individual reward sensitivity or sub-clinical substance use habits; together these factors may inform predictions of risk for future mental health disorders.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Awake Hippocampal-Cortical Co-reactivation Is Associated with Forgetting

Systems consolidation theories posit that consolidation occurs primarily through a coordinated communication between hippocampus and neocortex (McClelland and OReilly 1995; Kumaran et al., 2016; Moscovitch and Gilboa, 2022). Recent sleep studies in rodents have shown that hippocampus and visual cortex replay the same information at temporal proximity ("co-replay") (Ji & Wilson, 2007; Lansink et al., 2009; Wierzynski et al., 2009; Peyrache et al., 2009). We developed a novel TR-based co-reactivation (TRCR) analysis method to study hippocampal-cortical co-replays in humans using functional MRI. Thirty-six young adults completed an image (face or scene)-location paired associate encoding task in the scanner, which were preceded and followed by resting state scans. We identified post-encoding rest TRs (+/- 1) that showed neural reactivation of each image-location trials in both hippocampus (HPC) and category-selective cortex (fusiform face area, FFA). This allowed us to characterize temporally proximal coordinated reactivations ("co-reactivations") between HPC and FFA. Moreover, we found that increased HPC-FFA co-reactivations were associated with incorrectly recognized trials after a 1-week delay (p = 0.004). Finally, we found that these HPC-FFA co-reactivations were also associated with trials that were initially correctly recognized immediately after encoding but were later forgotten in 1-day (p = 0.043) and 1-week delay period (p = 0.031). We discuss these results from a trace transformation perspective (Winocur and Moscovitch, 2011; Sekeres et al., 2018) and speculate that HPC-FFA co-reactivations may be integrating related events, at the expense of disrupting event-specific details, hence leading to forgetting.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2017

Connecting Brain Responsivity And Real-World Risk Taking: Strengths And Limitations Of Current Methodological Approaches

In line with the goal of limiting health risk behaviors in adolescence, a growing literature investigates whether individual differences in functional brain responses can be related to vulnerability to engage in risky decision-making. We review this body of work, investigate when and in what way findings converge, and provide best practice recommendations. We identified 23 studies that examined individual differences in brain responsivity and adolescent risk taking. Findings varied widely in terms of the neural regions identified as relating to risky behavior. This heterogeneity is likely due to the abundance of approaches used to assess risk taking, and to the disparity of fMRI tasks. Indeed, brain-behavior correlations were typically found in regions showing a main effect of task. However, results from a test of publication bias suggested that region of interest approaches lacked evidential value. The findings suggest that neural factors differentiating riskier teens are not localized to a single region. Therefore, approaches that utilize data from the entire brain, particularly in predictive analyses, may yield more reliable and applicable results. We discuss several decision points that researchers should consider when designing a study, and emphasize the importance of precise research questions that move beyond a general desire to address adolescent risk taking.

neuroscience↗