Papers by Doris Pischedda
Heliyon
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Helyion, 2023
Many studies have identified networks in parietal and prefrontal cortex that are involved in inte... more Many studies have identified networks in parietal and prefrontal cortex that are involved in intentional action. Yet, our understanding of the way these networks are involved in intentions is still very limited. In this study, we investigate two characteristics of these processes: context- and reason-dependence of the neural states associated with intentions. We ask whether these states depend on the context a person is in and the reasons they have for choosing an action. We used a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and multivariate decoding to directly assess the context- and reason-dependency of the neural states underlying intentions. We show that action intentions can be decoded from fMRI data based on a classifier trained in the same context and with the same reason, in line with previous decoding studies. Furthermore, we found that intentions can be decoded across different reasons for choosing an action. However, decoding across different contexts was not successful. We found anecdotal to moderate evidence against context-invariant information in all regions of interest and for all conditions but one. These results suggest that the neural states associated with intentions are modulated by the context of the action.
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2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)
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Scientific Reports
Deciding the best action in social settings requires decision-makers to consider their and others... more Deciding the best action in social settings requires decision-makers to consider their and others’ preferences, since the outcome depends on the actions of both. Numerous empirical investigations have demonstrated variability of behavior across individuals in strategic situations. While prosocial, moral, and emotional factors have been intensively investigated to explain this diversity, neuro-cognitive determinants of strategic decision-making and their relation with intelligence remain mostly unknown. This study presents a new model of the process of strategic decision-making in repeated interactions, first providing a precise measure of the environment’s complexity, and then analyzing how this complexity affects subjects’ performance and neural response. The results confirm the theoretical predictions of the model. The frequency of deviations from optimal behavior is explained by a combination of higher complexity of the strategic environment and cognitive skills of the individual...
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Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
Surgical face masks reduce the spread of airborne pathogens but also disturb the flow of informat... more Surgical face masks reduce the spread of airborne pathogens but also disturb the flow of information between individuals. The risk of getting seriously ill after infection with SARS-COV-2 during the present COVID-19 pandemic amplifies with age, suggesting that face masks should be worn especially during face-to-face contact with and between older people. However, the ability to accurately perceive and understand communication signals decreases with age, and it is currently unknown whether face masks impair facial communication more severely in older people. We compared the impact of surgical face masks on dynamic facial emotion recognition in younger (18–30 years) and older (65–85 years) adults (N = 96) in an online study. Participants watched short video clips of young women who facially expressed anger, fear, contempt or sadness. Faces of half of the women were covered by a digitally added surgical face mask. As expected, emotion recognition accuracy declined with age, and face ma...
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Introduction: To investigate the processes and mechanism(s) underlying decision making in a group... more Introduction: To investigate the processes and mechanism(s) underlying decision making in a group of Italian Air Force fighter pilots and navigators analyzing morphologic and functional MRI data to identify brain areas involved in performing a series of cognitive tasks. The rationale for the study is to compare two groups of pilots and navigators differing in experience and number of flight hours to assess whether and how these elements influence cognitive performance. A control group will be also tested.
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STUDY’S OBJECT Most of real life interactions are repeated, rather than isolated, meetings. Such ... more STUDY’S OBJECT Most of real life interactions are repeated, rather than isolated, meetings. Such repeated strategic interactions are modeled in game theory (GT) as repeated (or stochastic) games, where the players play a sequence of the same (or different) single-shot game. The theory of repeated games assumes that players choose actions in a game according to strategies. Game theorists have formalized possible strategies for distinct economic games (Finkelstein & Whitley, 1981) and previous experimental studies have identified strategies that humans adopt in different repeated interactions (Fudenberg, Rand, & Dreber, 2012). The aim of this study is to characterize the neurobiological basis of the encoding and processing of critical game variables during strategic playing where either the game or the opponent player (i.e., strategy) may change during the interaction. METHODS Forty-two participants played a stochastic game while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The game was defined by two parameters: the continuation probability (i.e., the probability of changing the current partner) and the probability of changing the stage game. Thus, during game playing subjects could stay with the same player and game as in the last round or they could change either the player or the game. Participants played with six virtual players (resembling the behavior of real people in analogous situations) two different stage games: the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) and the Battle of the Sexes (BoS). At the beginning of each trial, information about the opponent player (i.e., one of the six virtual players) and the game to be performed (either PD or BoS) was shown on the screen, followed by a delay in which the participant had to represent all pieces of information and make a choice. Finally, feedback about the choices made by both players was displayed on the screen. The fMRI data from the phase where the information about the player/game was displayed were analyzed. By contrasting trials in which the player (game) changed and trials in which the player (game) remained the same as in the previous round, we aimed to identify brain regions that implement the updating of player (game) information. RESULTS Preliminary results show that the same brain regions are involved in updating information either about the game or the player. This common network comprises the precuneus, the inferior frontal gyrus, the premotor cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex. CONCLUSION These findings suggest that a single brain network implements the updating of both game and strategy information during strategic playing.
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We investigated neural representations of task information while playing a collaborative game. Re... more We investigated neural representations of task information while playing a collaborative game. Results showed that the identity of a subtask assigned to either the subject or their partner and task ownership information are represented in distinct frontal and parietal regions, suggesting that task ownership determines where task information is represented.
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Scientific Reports, 2021
Despite recent developments in integrating autonomous and human-like robots into many aspects of ... more Despite recent developments in integrating autonomous and human-like robots into many aspects of everyday life, social interactions with robots are still a challenge. Here, we focus on a central tool for social interaction: verbal communication. We assess the extent to which humans co-represent (simulate and predict) a robot’s verbal actions. During a joint picture naming task, participants took turns in naming objects together with a social robot (Pepper, Softbank Robotics). Previous findings using this task with human partners revealed internal simulations on behalf of the partner down to the level of selecting words from the mental lexicon, reflected in partner-elicited inhibitory effects on subsequent naming. Here, with the robot, the partner-elicited inhibitory effects were not observed. Instead, naming was facilitated, as revealed by faster naming of word categories co-named with the robot. This facilitation suggests that robots, unlike humans, are not simulated down to the le...
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Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2021
The diversified methodology and expertise of interdisciplinary research teams provide the opportu... more The diversified methodology and expertise of interdisciplinary research teams provide the opportunity to overcome the limited perspectives of individual disciplines. This is particularly true at the interface of Robotics, Neuroscience, and Psychology as the three fields have quite different perspectives and approaches to offer. Nonetheless, aligning backgrounds and interdisciplinary expectations can present challenges due to varied research cultures and practices. Overcoming these challenges stands at the beginning of each productive collaboration and thus is a mandatory step in cognitive neurorobotics. In this article, we share eight lessons that we learned from our ongoing interdisciplinary project on human-robot and robot-robot interaction in social settings. These lessons provide practical advice for scientists initiating interdisciplinary research endeavors. Our advice can help to avoid early problems and deal with differences between research fields, prepare for and anticipate...
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ABSTRACTAdaptive coding of stimuli in visual cortex is well documented in perception, where it su... more ABSTRACTAdaptive coding of stimuli in visual cortex is well documented in perception, where it supports efficient encoding over a broad range of possible percepts. Recently, a similar neural mechanism has been reported also in value-based decision, where it allows optimal encoding of vast ranges of values in PFC: neuronal response to value depends on the choice context (relative coding), rather than being invariant across contexts (absolute coding). Additionally, value learning is sensitive to the amount of feedback information: providing complete feedback (both obtained and forgone outcomes) instead of partial feedback (only obtained outcome) improves learning. However, it is unclear whether relative coding occurs in all PFC regions and how it is affected by feedback information. We systematically investigated univariate and multivariate feedback encoding in various PFC regions and compared three modes of neural coding: absolute, partially-adaptive and fully-adaptive.Twenty-eight h...
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SummaryData analysis workflows in many scientific domains have become increasingly complex and fl... more SummaryData analysis workflows in many scientific domains have become increasingly complex and flexible. To assess the impact of this flexibility on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results, the same dataset was independently analyzed by 70 teams, testing nine ex-ante hypotheses. The flexibility of analytic approaches is exemplified by the fact that no two teams chose identical workflows to analyze the data. This flexibility resulted in sizeable variation in hypothesis test results, even for teams whose statistical maps were highly correlated at intermediate stages of their analysis pipeline. Variation in reported results was related to several aspects of analysis methodology. Importantly, meta-analytic approaches that aggregated information across teams yielded significant consensus in activated regions across teams. Furthermore, prediction markets of researchers in the field revealed an overestimation of the likelihood of significant findings, even by researchers with ...
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Many studies have identified networks in parietal and prefrontal cortex that are involved in inte... more Many studies have identified networks in parietal and prefrontal cortex that are involved in intentional action. Yet, knowledge about what these networks exactly encoded is still scarce. In this study we look into the content of those processes. We ask whether the neural representations of intentions are context- and reason-invariant, or whether these processes depend on the context we are in, and the reasons we have for choosing an action. We use a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate decoding to directly assess the context- and reason-dependency of the processes underlying intentional action. We were able to decode action decisions in the same context and for the same reasons from the fMRI data, in line with previous decoding studies. Furthermore, we could decode action decisions across different reasons for choosing an action. Importantly, though, decoding decisions across different contexts was at chance level. These results suggest that for volu...
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European Journal of Neuroscience, 2019
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Papers by Doris Pischedda
Most of real life interactions are repeated, rather than isolated, meetings. Such repeated strategic interactions are modeled in game theory (GT) as repeated (or stochastic) games, where the players play a sequence of the same (or different) single-shot game. The theory of repeated games assumes that players choose actions in a game according to strategies. Game theorists have formalized possible strategies for distinct economic games (Finkelstein & Whitley, 1981) and previous experimental studies have identified strategies that humans adopt in different repeated interactions (Fudenberg, Rand, & Dreber, 2012). The aim of this study is to characterize the neurobiological basis of the encoding and processing of critical game variables during strategic playing where either the game or the opponent player (i.e., strategy) may change during the interaction.
METHODS
Forty-two participants played a stochastic game while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The game was defined by two parameters: the continuation probability (i.e., the probability of changing the current partner) and the probability of changing the stage game. Thus, during game playing subjects could stay with the same player and game as in the last round or they could change either the player or the game. Participants played with six virtual players (resembling the behavior of real people in analogous situations) two different stage games: the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) and the Battle of the Sexes (BoS). At the beginning of each trial, information about the opponent player (i.e., one of the six virtual players) and the game to be performed (either PD or BoS) was shown on the screen, followed by a delay in which the participant had to represent all pieces of information and make a choice. Finally, feedback about the choices made by both players was displayed on the screen.
The fMRI data from the phase where the information about the player/game was displayed were analyzed. By contrasting trials in which the player (game) changed and trials in which the player (game) remained the same as in the previous round, we aimed to identify brain regions that implement the updating of player (game) information.
RESULTS
Preliminary results show that the same brain regions are involved in updating information either about the game or the player. This common network comprises the precuneus, the inferior frontal gyrus, the premotor cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex.
CONCLUSION
These findings suggest that a single brain network implements the updating of both game and strategy information during strategic playing.
Abbiamo condotto quattro esperimenti, manipolando lo stesso paradigma di base. I soggetti sono preliminarmente istruiti a rappresentare e applicare più insiemi di regole. Le regole utilizzate nei diversi esperimenti si collocano a diversi livelli di complessità. In ciascuna prova sperimentale i soggetti devono rievocare, rappresentare e quindi applicare uno degli insiemi di regole appresi. I soggetti sono sottoposti a scansione fMRI. I dati sono analizzati con tecniche multivariate per identificare quali aree cerebrali siano coinvolte nella rappresentazione di specifiche regole.
Dalle analisi è emerso, come atteso, che la PFC laterale è coinvolta nella rappresentazione di regole. E’ inoltre emerso come informazioni relative a un'unica regola complessa non siano rappresentate tutte nella stessa regione cerebrale. Al contrario, le diverse caratteristiche che concorrono a costruire una regola complessa sono ripartite in aree cerebrali diverse, in funzione del tipo di informazione da rappresentare.
I risultati della nostra serie sperimentale suggeriscono che la rappresentazione di regole complesse è “composizionale”. Gli elementi base delle regole complesse sono identificati e rappresentati separatamente dal nostro cervello. La segregazione dell’informazione avviene in aree cerebrali appropriate alla tipologia di contenuto da rappresentare.
Previous studies have demonstrated that Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) is one of the key areas underlying rule processing and control of action. However, it is still unclear whether distinct brain regions within PFC systematically encode qualitatively different task features.
In the present study we investigated whether different features defining a complex rule set are represented in different brain areas depending on the level of control they enforce. To this purpose, we devised an experiment in which participants (N = 20) learnt complex rule sets composed by rules at two different levels of control: low (e.g., “if you see a banana, then press left”) and high (e.g., “If you see a star, then only consider red targets”). The task required participants to retrieve, maintain, and apply two rule sets (one low and one high level) to target stimuli. At the beginning of each trial two cues associated with low (or high) level rules were displayed, followed by a delay (delay 1). Then a second pair of cues standing for high (or low) level rules were presented followed by a second delay (delay 2), after which the target was shown. Participants had to apply all the rules to the target stimuli and respond accordingly. The paradigm allowed us to: (i) independently assess the encoding of high and low level rules, (ii) evaluate the difference between the encoding of the two types of rules (comparing high vs. low level rule representations during delay 1, when only one type of rule was maintained), and (iii) decode rule integration (by comparing rule representations during delay 1 vs. delay 2, in which the two levels of rules had to be integrated in order to respond).
We applied multivariate decoding analysis (e.g., Haynes et al., 2007) to functional magnetic resonance imaging data to perform the above-described comparisons. Behavioral as well as preliminary decoding results suggest that rules at different levels of abstraction are indeed processed differently in distinct brain regions within a large-scale brain network comprising parietal and prefrontal areas.
Twenty-eight human participants (both sexes) performed a learning task while undergoing fMRI scanning. On each trial, they chose between two symbols associated with a certain outcome. Then, the decision outcome was revealed. Notably, in half of the trials participants received partial feedback, while in the other half they got complete feedback. We used univariate and multivariate analysis to explore value encoding in different feedback conditions.
We found that both obtained and forgone outcomes were encoded in mPFC, but with opposite sign in ventral and dorsal subdivisions. Moreover, we showed that increasing feedback information induced a switch from absolute to relative coding. Our results suggest that complete feedback information promotes context-dependent outcome encoding.
there is considerable context-dependency in intention representations. This suggests that established invariance in neural processes may not reflect an essential feature of a certain process, but that this stable character could be dependent on invariance in the experimental setup, in line with predictions from situated cognition theory.