Biology subjects

Yomogida, Y.

Publications and source records attributed to Yomogida, Y..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2021

Interpersonal Comparison of Utility by Measuring Neural Activity

Aggregating well-being across individuals to reach collective decisions is one of the most fundamental problems in our society. Interpersonal comparisons of utility are pivotal and inevitable for well-being aggregation, because if utility is not interpersonally comparable, there is no rational aggregation procedure that simultaneously satisfies even mild conditions for validity (Arrows impossibility theorem); however, there are as yet no scientific methods for interpersonal comparison of utility. In this study, we developed a method based on brain signals. We found that the anterior cingulate and its adjacent ventromedial prefrontal activity is correlated with changes in expected utility. The ratio of lower- and higher-income participants neural signals coincided with estimates of their psychological pleasure by "impartial spectators." We confirmed the validity of our interpersonal utility comparison method using an independent large-scale dataset and used the aggregated well-being from our experimental data to derive an optimal decision rule. These findings suggest that our interpersonal comparison method enables scientifically reasonable well-being aggregation by escaping Arrows impossibility and has implications for the fair distribution of economic goods. Our method can be used for evidence-based policy-making in nations that use cost-benefit analyses or optimal taxation theory for policy evaluation.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

The cerebellum as a moderator of negative bias of facial expression processing in depressive patients

BackgroundNegative bias--a mood-congruent bias in emotion processing--is an important aspect of major depressive disorder (MDD), and such a bias in facial expression recognition has a significant effect on patients social lives. Neuroscience research shows abnormal activity in emotion-processing systems regarding facial expressions in MDD. However, the neural basis of negative bias in facial expression processing has not been explored directly. MethodsSixteen patients with MDD and twenty-three healthy controls (HC) who underwent an fMRI scan during an explicit facial emotion task with happy to sad faces were selected. We identified brain areas in which the MDD and HC groups showed different correlations between the behavioral negative bias scores and functional activities. ResultsBehavioral data confirmed the existence of a higher negative bias in the MDD group. Regarding the relationship with neural activity, higher activity of happy faces in the posterior cerebellum was related to a higher negative bias in the MDD group, but lower negative bias in the HC group. LimitationsThe sample size was small, and the possible effects of medication were not controlled for in this study. ConclusionsWe confirmed a negative bias in the recognition of facial expressions in patients with MDD. fMRI data suggest the cerebellum as a moderator of facial emotion processing, which biases the recognition of facial expressions toward their own mood.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Motivated for near impossibility: How task type and reward modulates intrinsic motivation and the striatal activation for an extremely difficult task.

Economic and decision-making theories suppose that people would disengage from a task with near zero success probability, because this implicates little normative utility values. However, humans are often motivated for an extremely challenging task, even without any extrinsic incentives. The current study aimed to address the nature of this challenge-based motivation and its neural correlates. We found that, when participants played a skill-based task without extrinsic incentives, their task enjoyment increased as the chance of success decreased, even if the task was almost impossible to achieve. However, such challenge-based motivation was not observed when participants were rewarded for the task or the reward was determined in a probabilistic manner. The activation in the ventral striatum/pallidum tracked the pattern of task enjoyment. These results suggest that people are intrinsically motivated to challenge a nearly impossible task, but only when the task requires certain skills and extrinsic rewards are unavailable.

neuroscience↗