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Jonathan successfully defended his PhD December, 2021

Jonathan successfully defended his doctoral thesis, The impact of social information on emotional learning, on Thursday 16 December (2021) with Professor Disa Sauter, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, as his opponent.

Principle supervisor: Prof. Andreas Olsson, CNS, KI.

Co-supervisors: Dr. Jan Haaker, Institute of Systems Neuroscience, University of Hamburg; Assoc. Prof. Karin Jensen, CNS, KI; Dr. Philip Pärnamets, CNS, KI.

Examination board: Dr. India Morrison, Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Linköping University; Dr. Francisco Esteves, Department of Psychology and Social Work, Mid Sweden University; Dr. Roland Van den Berg, Department of Psychology, Stockholm University.

Abstract

Our survival is contingent on our ability to observe and interact with conspecifics. For example, by observing the facial expressions of others, we can vicariously learn to avoid potentially dangerous events without first-hand personal exposure, thus reducing the risk of harm. Furthermore, through direct social interactions, such as when we exchange facial expressions with another individual, we learn how to optimize our behavior, and thereby avoid dangerous social outcomes. Despite the large corpus of research on face perception and spontaneous responses to static faces, little is known about responses to faces in dynamic, naturalistic situations, and there are no studies that have examined how goal directed responses to other’s faces are affected by learning during dyadic interactions. Additionally, the underlying neurobiological processes governing learning in social settings remain largely unstudied.

To shed light on these phenomena pertaining to observational learning and decision-making processes in real-life, interactive settings, involving facial expressions, this thesis first aims at investigating how our endogenous opioid system can influence how we learn to associate threats to different stimuli in response to others’ facial expressions exhibiting painful reactions (Study I); and to study the learning mechanisms of optimizing facial expression exchange when deciding to either form a smile or a frown during interactive dyads in order to avoid aversive outcomes (Study II). Furthermore, we tested whether the learning process of optimizing one’s facial expression selection in interactive dyads was influenced by the interactant’s facial dominance (Study III).

The paper National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic is forthcoming in Nature Communications. Authored by Jay Van Bavel, Aleksandra Cichocka, Valerio Capraro, Hallgeir Sjåstad, John Nezlek, Pavlović Pavlović, Mark Alfano, Michele Gelfand, Flavio Azevedo, Michèle Birtel, Aleksandra Cislak, Patricia Lockwood, Robert Ross, Koen Abts, Elena Agadullina, John Jamir Benzon Aruta, Sahba Besharati, Alexander Bor, Becky Choma, Charles Crabtree, William Cunningham, Koustav De de, Waqas Ejaz, Christian Elbaek, Andrej Findor, Daniel Flichtentrei, Renata Franc, Biljana Gjoneska, June Gruber, Estrella Gualda, Yusaku Horiuchi, Toan Luu Duc Huynh, Agustin Ibanez, Mostak Imran, Jacob Israelashvili, Katarzyna Jasko, Jaroslaw Kantorowicz, Elena Kantorowicz-Reznichenko, Andre Krouwel, Michael Laakasuo, Claus Lamm, Caroline Leygue, Ming-Jen Lin, Mohammad Sabbir Mansoor, Antoine Marie, Lewend Mayiwar, Honorata Mazepus, Cillian McHugh, John Minda, Panagiotis Mitkidis, Andreas Olsson, Tobias Otterbring, Dominic Packer, Anat Perry, Michael Bang Petersen, Arathy Puthillam, Julian Riano-Moreno, Tobias Rothmund, Hernando Santamaría-García, Petra Schmid, Drozdstoy Stoyanov, Shruti Tewari, Bojan Todosijević, Manos Tsakiris, Hans Tung, Radu Umbreș, Edmunds Vanags, Madalina Vlasceanu, Andrew Vonasch, Meltem Yucel, Yucheng Zhang, Mohcine ABAD, Eli Adler, Narin Akrawi, Hamza ALAOUI MDARHRI, Hanane Amara, David Amodio, Benedict Antazo, Matthew Apps, F. Ceren Ay, Mouhamadou Hady Ba, Xuechunzi Bai, Marshaley Baquiano, Sergio Barbosa, Brock Bastian, Delia Belleza, Anton Berg, Maria Bernal Zárate, Michael Bernstein, Michał Białek, Ennio Bilancini, Natalia Bogatyreva, Leonardo Boncinelli, Jonathan Booth, Sylvie Borau, Ondrej Buchel, Daryl Cameron, Chrissie Carvalho, Tatiana Celadin, Chiara Cerami, Hom Chalise, Xiaojun Cheng, Luca Cian, Kate Cockcroft, Jane Conway, Mateo Cordoba-Delgado, Chiara Crespi, Marie Crouzevialle, Jo Cutler, Marzena Cypryańska, Justyna Dabrowska, Michael Daniels, Victoria Davis, Pamala Dayley, Sylvain Delouvee, Ognjan Denkovski, Guillaume Dezecache, Nathan Dhaliwal, Alelie Diato, Roberto Di Paolo, Marianna Drosinou, Uwe Dulleck, Jānis Ekmanis, Arhan Ertan, Tom Etienne, Fahima Farkhari, Harry Farmer, Ali Fenwick, Kristijan Fidanovski, Terry Flew, Shona Fraser, Raymond Frempong, Jonathan Fugelsang, Jessica Gale, E. Begoña Garcia-Navarro, Prasad Garladinne, Oussama Ghajjou, Theofilos Gkinopoulos, Kurt Gray, Siobhán Griffin, Bjarki Gronfeld, Mert Gümren, Ranju Gurung, Eran Halperin, Elizabeth Harris, Volo Herzon, Matej Hruška, Guanxiong Huang, Matthias Hudecek, Ozan Isler, Simon Jangard, Frederik Jørgensen, Frank Kachanoff, John Kahn, Apsara Katuwal Dangol, Oleksandra Keudel, Lina Koppel, Mika Koverola, Emily Kubin, Anton Kunnari, Yordan Kutiyski, Paul Labor, Oscar Laguna, Josh Leota, Eva Lermer, Jonathan Levy, Neil Levy, Chunyun Li, Elizabeth Long, Chiara Longoni, Marina Maglić, Darragh McCashin, Alexander Metcalf, Igor Mikloušić, Soulaimane El Mimouni, Asako Miura, Juliana Molina-Paredes, César Monroy-Fonseca, Elena Morales-Marente, David Moreau, Rafal Muda, Annalisa Myer, Kyle Nash, Tarik Nesh-Nash, Jonas Nitschke, Matthew Nurse, Yohsuke Ohtsubo, Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello, Cathal O’Madagain, Michal Onderco, M. Soledad Palacios-Galvez, Jussi Palomäki, Yafeng Pan, Zsófia Papp, Philip Pärnamets, Mariola Paruzel-Czachura, Zoran Pavlović, César Payán-Gómez, Silva Perander, Michael Pitman, Rajiib Prasad, Joanna Pyrkosz-Pacyna, Steve Rathje, Ali Raza, Gabriel Rego, Kasey Rhee, Claire Robertson, Iván Rodriguez-Pascual, Teemu Saikkonen, Octavio Salvador-Ginez, Waldir Sampaio, Gaia Santi, Natalia Santiago-Tovar, David Savage, Julian Scheffer, Philipp Schoenegger, David
Schultner, Enid Schutte, Andy Scott, Madhavi Sharma, Pujan Sharma, Ahmed Skali, David Stadelmann, Clara Stafford, Dragan Stanojevic, Anna Stefaniak, Anni Sternisko, Catalin Augustin Stoica, Kristina Stoyanova, Brent Strickland, Jukka Sundvall, Jeffrey Thomas, Gustav Tinghög, Benno Torgler, Iris Traast, Raffaele Tucciarelli, Michael Tyrala, Nick Ungson, Mete Uysal, Paul Van Lange, Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Dirk van Rooy, Daniel Västfjäll, Peter Verkoeijen, Joana Vieira, Christian von Sikorski, Alexander Walker, Jennifer Watermeyer, Erik Wetter, Ashley Whillans, Robin Willardt, Michael Wohl, Adrian Wojcik, Kaidi Wu, Yuki Yamada, Onurcan Yilmaz, Kumar Yogeeswaran, Carolin-Theresa Ziemer, Rolf Zwaan, and Paulo Boggio.

The paper Model-based representational similarity analysis of BOLD fMRI captures threat learning in social interactions is forthcoming in Royal Society Open Science. Authored by Irem Undeger, Renée Vusser, Nina Becker, Lieke de Boer, Armita Golkar and Andreas Olsson.

Welcome to our new post-doctoral fellow Markus Rütgen!

The paper Observation of others’ threat reactions recovers memories previously shaped by firsthand experiences is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). Authored by Jan Haaker, Lorenzo Diaz-Mataix, Gemma Guillazo-Blanch, Sara A. Stark, Lea Kern, Joseph E. LeDoux, and Andreas Olsson.

In this paper we show, in humans and rats, that the mere observation of a conspecific’s threat reactions reinstates previously learned and extinguished threat responses in the observer. Our findings provide cross-species evidence that observation of others’ threat reactions can recover associations previously shaped by direct, firsthand aversive experiences and offers a perspective on how retrieval of threat memories draws from associative mechanisms that might underlie both observations of others’ and firsthand experiences.

The paper The face value of feedback: facial behaviour is shaped by goals and punishments during interaction with dynamic faces is published in Royal Society Open Science. Authored by Jonathan Yi, Philip Pärnamets and Andreas Olsson.

We validated our novel method based on online integration of electromyography signals from the participants’ face, to investigate how goal directed responses to faces are influenced by learning during dyadic interactions. We show that participants learned to optimize their facial behaviour, and replicated earlier findings of faster and more accurate responses in congruent versus incongruent conditions.

Welcome to our new lab manager Jessica Määttä!

Join the team! We are looking for a new postdoc in social neuroscience of intergroup relations. You can find a full description and information about the application process here.

Update: This position has been filled

Join the team! We are looking for a new lab manager. Click here for full description and information about the application process (in Swedish).

Philip has been awarded 3.2 MSEK to study how decisions and social learning shape intergroup trust.

Trust is fundamental to social behavior and to the functioning of society. Recent work has shown that increasing diversity in society might lead to lower levels of trust. However, how such changes in trust are acquired by individuals and shaped by their experiences is not known. Here we propose to investigate trust as a learning phenomenon, using methods and theories from experimental social psychology and computational reinforcement learning theory. By doing so we address a critical gap in the literature and contribute a behavior-based approach to studying a trust complementing existing survey-based methods. Over the course of three studies we will investigate how participants learn to trust and distrust social partners based on their own and their partners’ ethnic group membership. In the first, we will investigate how decisions about whom to interact with can bias what experiences are available to learn from. In the second, we will investigate the role of observational social learning shaping trust expectations. In the third, we will leverage insights from the first two studies to pilot interventions aimed at increasing trust. The studies will be the first of their kind taking a comprehensive learning approach to trust between members of different ethnic groups and provide critical information how individual experiences shape intergroup trust. These findings can, in turn, not only inform existing theoretical debates but further translational efforts targeting societal trust.

Social safety learning: Shared safety abolishes the recovery of learned threat by Yafeng Pan, Andreas Olsson, and Armita Golkar has been accepted in Behaviour Research and Therapy.

This study shows that social safety learning is optimized by a combination of direct conditioned stimulus exposure and vicariously transmitted safety signals. Our work might help identify psychological and social strategies that can be used to counteract maladaptive fears in humans.

The paper Enhanced social learning of threat in adults with autism is out in Molecular Biology. Authored by Lisa Espinosa, Johan Lundin Kleberg, Björn Hofvander, Steve Berggren, Sven Bölte, and Andreas Olsson.

We show that individuals with autism spectrum disorder, ASD, (versus healthy controls) display stronger vicarious threat learning in spite of less attention to the demonstrators’ face. ASD might impair the ability to downregulate threat responses in social situations. Our findings also show that vicarious threat learning does not require a typically developed social cognition.

The paper Integration of social cues and individual experiences during instrumental avoidance learning is out in PLOS Computational Biology. Authored by Philip Pärnamets and Andreas Olsson.

This research investigates the algorithms by which people learn how reliable social partners’ advice is about potentially dangerous choice options and how they can repeatedly leverage that information in novel environments.

The paper Help or flight? Increased threat imminence promotes defensive helping in humans has been accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Authored by Joana Vieira, Sabine Schellhaas, Erik Enström, and Andreas Olsson.

We demonstrate that high threat imminence (immediate risk of another person receiving a shock) facilitated helping behavior. Our findings suggest that, just like higher threat imminence fosters active avoidance from self-directed threats (fight-or-flight), it may promote helping when others are under threat.

Perceived threat and acute anxiety predict increased everyday altruism during the COVID-19 pandemic, by Joana Vieira, Stephen Pierzchajlo, Simon Jangard, Abigail A. Marsh, and Andreas Olsson.

The paper Neural pattern similarity unveils the integration of social information and aversive learning has been accepted for publication in Cerebral Cortex. Authored by Irem Undeger, Renee M Visser and Andreas Olsson.

The paper Physiological synchrony predicts observational threat learning in humans been accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Authored by Philip Pärnamets, Lisa Espinosa and Andreas Olsson.

The paper The neural and computational systems of social learning has been accepted for publication in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Authored by Andreas Olsson, Ewelina Knapska & Björn Lindström.

The article Learning biases to angry and happy faces during Pavlovian aversive conditioning has been accepted for publication in Emotion. Authored by Yoann Stussi, Gilles Pourtois, Andreas Olsson & David Sander.

Andreas Olsson has been appointed Professor of Psychology at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet, from 1 September 2019.

Welcome to our new postdocs Amy Walsh and Yafeng Pan.

The original research article Anxious behaviour in a demonstrator affects observational learning has been published in Scientific Reports. Authored by Ida Selbing and Andreas Olsson.

Join the team! We are looking for two new postdocs. For full descriptions and information about the application process, see the links below.

Postdoc in social and cognitive neuroscience, Emotion Lab/Andreas Olsson’s research group,

Postdoc in decision-making and social/affective neuroscience, Emotion Lab/Andreas Olsson’s research group, jointly with Marc Guitart-Masip’s research group, Aging Research Center, Karolinska Institutet.

Irem has won a Graduate Student Award (GSA) at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society 26th Annual Meeting. You can see her poster, Associative learning via intentional and unintentional actions, here.

The original research article Social threat learning transfers to decision-making in humans has been accepted for publication in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Authored by Björn Lindström, Armita Golkar, Simon Jangard, Philippe Tobler and Andreas Olsson.

Press release from Karolinska Institutet.

We’ve received delivery of our new virtual reality system. Irem and Jonathan will soon begin initial testing in this exciting environment.

Welcome to our new postdoc Nina Becker.