Alcohol consumption occurring in a social or solitary setting often yields different behavioural responses in human subjects. For example, social drinking is associated with positive effects while solitary drinking is linked to negative effects. However, the neurobiological mechanism by which the social environment during alcohol intake impacts on behavioural responses remains poorly understood. We investigated whether distinct social environments affect behavioural responses to ethanol and the role of the dopamine system in this phenomenon in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The wild-type Canton-S (CS) flies showed higher locomotor response when exposed to ethanol in a group setting than a solitary setting, and there was no difference in females and males. Dopamine signalling is crucial for the locomotor stimulating effect of ethanol. When subjected to ethanol exposure alone, the dopamine transport mutant flies fumin (fmn) with hyper dopamine displayed the locomotor response similar to CS. When subjected to ethanol in a group setting, however, the fmn\'s response to the locomotor stimulating effect was substantially augmented compared with CS, indicating synergistic interaction of dopamine signalling and social setting. To identify the dopamine signalling pathway important for the social effect, we examined the flies defective in individual dopamine receptors and found that the D1 receptor dDA1/Dop1R1 is the major receptor mediating the social effect. Taken together, this study underscores the influence of social context on the neural and behavioural responses to ethanol.

UNASSIGNED: Little is known about how the brains of autistic children process language during real-world \"social contexts,\" despite the fact that challenges with language, communication, and social interaction are core features of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
UNASSIGNED: We investigated the neural bases of language processing during social and non-social contexts in a sample of N=20 autistic and N=20 neurotypical (NT) preschool-aged children, 3 to 6 years old. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to measure children\'s brain response to \"live language\" spoken by a live experimenter during an in-person social context (i.e., book reading), and \"recorded language\" played via an audio recording during a non-social context (i.e., screen time). We examined within-group and between-group differences in the strength and localization of brain response to live language and recorded language, as well as correlations between children\'s brain response and language skills measured by the Preschool Language Scales.
UNASSIGNED: In the NT group, brain response to live language was greater than brain response to recorded language in the right temporal parietal junction (TPJ). In the ASD group, the strength of brain response did not differ between conditions. The ASD group showed greater brain response to recorded language than the NT group in the right inferior and middle frontal gyrus (IMFG). Across groups, children\'s language skills were negatively associated with brain response to recorded language in the right IMFG, suggesting that processing recorded language required more cognitive effort for children with lower language skills. Children\'s language skills were also positively associated with the difference in brain response between conditions in the right TPJ, demonstrating that children who showed a greater difference in brain response to live language versus recorded language had higher language skills.
UNASSIGNED: Findings should be considered preliminary until they are replicated in a larger sample.
UNASSIGNED: Findings suggest that the brains of NT children, but not autistic children, process language differently during social and non-social contexts. Individual differences in how the brain processes language during social and non-social contexts may help to explain why language skills are so variable across children with and without autism.

Moral judgments are often viewed as the outcome of affective and deliberative processes that could be impacted by social factors and individual characteristics. The purpose of this study was to examine the interaction between gender and social context on moral judgment. Participants included 315 undergraduate students (67.3% female). The participants completed the Moral Decision-Making Task while seated at row tables facing the front of the room or round tables facing other participants. The results indicated that males responded in a more utilitarian manner (harm one to save five) than females for moral impersonal (MI) and moral personal (MP) dilemmas regardless of seating arrangements. When seated at round tables, all participants were more likely to respond deontologically (cause no harm) to the moral impersonal dilemmas. In addition, we calculated a moral reasoning difference score for each participant as the difference between the MI and MP scores to represent additional reactivity due to the idea of taking direct action. The moral reasoning difference score was consistent for females but indicated a more deontological response from males at round tables and a more utilitarian response from males at row tables. These results suggest that males are more utilitarian than females and are more likely to be influenced by social context when responding to moral dilemmas. More broadly, the current results indicate that moral judgments are affected by social context particularly in males in ways that have not been incorporated in many models of moral decision making.

Although prior research has implied that emotional contagion occurs automatically and unconsciously, convincing evidence suggests that it is significantly influenced by individuals\' perceptions of their relationships with others or with collectives within specific social contexts. This implies a role for self-representation in the process. The present study aimed to offer a novel explanation of the interplay between social contexts and emotional contagion, focusing on the contextualized nature of self-representation and exploring the social factors that shape emotional contagion. It further posits a causal loop among social contexts, self-representation, and emotional contagion. Drawing from the lens of self-representation, this study concludes with a discussion on potential research directions in this field, commencing with an exploration of the antecedents and consequences of emotional contagion and self-representation.

In this narrative review we wanted to describe the relationship of autonomic nervous system activity with social environment and suicidal spectrum behaviors.
Patients with suicidal ideation/suicide attempt have higher sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and lower parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity in resting conditions and during acute stress tasks compared with patients without suicidal ideation/suicide attempt. Death by suicide and violent suicide attempt also are related to SNS hyperactivation. Similarly, a SNS/PNS imbalance has been observed in people with childhood trauma, stressful life events or feelings of loneliness and isolation. Social support seems to increase PNS control and resilience. Due to the importance of the social context and stressful life events in suicidal behavior, SNS/PNS imbalance could act as a mediator in this relationship and be a source of relevant biomarkers. Childhood trauma and stressful life events may impair the autonomic nervous system response in suicidal patients. Loneliness, isolation and social support may act as moderators in acute stress situations.

Outside the immediate classroom setting, efforts within other school spaces also can shape school climate, address inequality, and affect student performance. Nevertheless, in this respect there has been little research on school-based extracurricular groups focused on issues of social inclusion and justice. An exception to this lack of focus has been Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs), which promote social inclusion and justice for sexual and gender minority youth (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning youth; LGBTQ) through support, socializing, education, and advocacy. As this literature has matured, we detail and provide examples of the following conceptual and methodological recommendations to address emerging research needs for GSAs: (1) Move from a monolithic to contextualized treatment of GSAs, (2) attend to heterogeneity among members, (3) utilize multiple data sources for triangulation, (4) apply a range of methodological approaches to capitalize on strengths of different designs, (5) collect longitudinal data over short-term and extended time periods, and (6) consider GSAs within a broader umbrella of youth settings. Further, we note ways in which these recommendations apply to other student groups organized around specific sociocultural identities. These advances could produce more comprehensive empirically supported models to guide GSAs and similar groups on how to promote resilience among their diverse members and address broader social issues within their schools.

In daily life, both acoustic factors and social context can affect listening effort investment. In laboratory settings, information about listening effort has been deduced from pupil and cardiovascular responses independently. The extent to which these measures can jointly predict listening-related factors is unknown. Here we combined pupil and cardiovascular features to predict acoustic and contextual aspects of speech perception. Data were collected from 29 adults (mean  =  64.6 years, SD  =  9.2) with hearing loss. Participants performed a speech perception task at two individualized signal-to-noise ratios (corresponding to 50% and 80% of sentences correct) and in two social contexts (the presence and absence of two observers). Seven features were extracted per trial: baseline pupil size, peak pupil dilation, mean pupil dilation, interbeat interval, blood volume pulse amplitude, pre-ejection period and pulse arrival time. These features were used to train k-nearest neighbor classifiers to predict task demand, social context and sentence accuracy. The k-fold cross validation on the group-level data revealed above-chance classification accuracies: task demand, 64.4%; social context, 78.3%; and sentence accuracy, 55.1%. However, classification accuracies diminished when the classifiers were trained and tested on data from different participants. Individually trained classifiers (one per participant) performed better than group-level classifiers: 71.7% (SD  =  10.2) for task demand, 88.0% (SD  =  7.5) for social context, and 60.0% (SD  =  13.1) for sentence accuracy. We demonstrated that classifiers trained on group-level physiological data to predict aspects of speech perception generalized poorly to novel participants. Individually calibrated classifiers hold more promise for future applications.

Using electroencephalogram (EEG), we tested the hypothesis that the association of a neutral stimulus with the self would elicit ultra-fast neural responses from early top-down feedback modulation to late feedforward periods for cognitive processing, resulting in self-prioritization in information processing. In two experiments, participants first learned three associations between personal labels (self, friend, stranger) and geometric shapes (Experiment 1) and three colors (Experiment 2), and then they judged whether the shape/color-label pairings matched. Stimuli in Experiment 2 were shown in a social communicative setting with two avatars facing each other, one aligned with the participant\'s view (first-person perspective) and the other with a third-person perspective. The color was present on the t-shirt of one avatar. This setup allowed for an examination of how social contexts (i.e., perspective taking) affect neural connectivity mediating self-related processing. Functional connectivity analyses in the alpha band (8-12 Hz) revealed that self-other discrimination was mediated by two distinct phases of neural couplings between frontal and occipital regions, involving an early phase of top-down feedback modulation from frontal to occipital areas followed by a later phase of feedforward signaling from occipital to frontal regions. Moreover, while social communicative settings influenced the later feedforward connectivity phase, they did not alter the early feedback coupling. The results indicate that regardless of stimulus type and social context, the early phase of neural connectivity represents an enhanced state of awareness towards self-related stimuli, whereas the later phase of neural connectivity may be associated with cognitive processing of socially meaningful stimuli.

Social media impacts people\'s wellbeing in different ways, but relatively little is known about why this is the case. Here we introduce the construct of \"social media sensitivity\" to understand how social media and wellbeing associations differ across people and the contexts in which these platforms are used. In a month-long large-scale intensive longitudinal study (total n = 1632; total number of observations = 120,599), we examined for whom and under which circumstances social media was associated with positive and negative changes in social and affective wellbeing. Applying a combination of frequentist and Bayesian multilevel models, we found a small negative average association between social media use AND subsequent wellbeing, but the associations were heterogenous across people. People with psychologically vulnerable dispositions (e.g., those who were depressed, lonely, not satisfied with life) tended to experience heightened negative social media sensitivity in comparison to people who were not psychologically vulnerable. People also experienced heightened negative social media sensitivity when in certain types of places (e.g., in social places, in nature) and while around certain types of people (e.g., around family members, close ties), as compared to using social media in other contexts. Our results suggest that an understanding of the effects of social media on wellbeing should account for the psychological dispositions of social media users, and the physical and social contexts surrounding their use. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of social media sensitivity for scholars, policymakers, and those in the technology industry.

Prior expectations influence pain experience. These expectations, in turn, rely on prior pain experience, but they may also be socially influenced. Yet, most research has focused on self rather than social expectations about pain, and hardly any studies examined their combined effects on pain. Here, we adopted a Bayesian learning perspective to investigate how explicitly communicated social expectations (\'advice about pain tolerance\') affect own pain expectations, and ultimately pain tolerance, under varying conditions of social epistemic uncertainty (trustworthiness of the advice). N = 72 female participants took part in a coldpressor (cold water) task before (self-learning baseline) and after (socially-influenced learning) receiving advice about their likely pain tolerance from a confederate, the trustworthiness of whom was experimentally manipulated. We used path analysis to test the hypothesis that social advice from a highly trustworthy confederate would influence participants\' expectations about pain more than advice from a less trustworthy source, and that the degree of this social influence would in turn predict pain tolerance. We further used a simplified, Bayesian learning, computational approach for explicit belief updating to examine the role of latent parameters of precision optimisation in how participants subsequently changed their future pain expectations (prospective posterior beliefs) based on the combined effect of the confederate\'s advice on their own pain expectations, and their own task experience. Results confirmed that participants adjusted their pain expectations towards the confederate\'s advice more in the high- vs. low-trustworthiness condition, and this advice taking predicted their pain tolerance. Furthermore, the confederate\'s trustworthiness influenced how participants weighted the confederate\'s advice in relation to their own expectations and task experience in forming prospective posterior beliefs. When participants received advice from a less trustworthy confederate, their own sensory experience was weighted more highly than their socially-influenced prior expectations. Thus, explicit social advice appears to impact pain by influencing one\'s own pain expectations, but low social trustworthiness leads to these expectations becoming more malleable to novel, sensory learning.