Research keywords

Mathematically Gifted Adolescents Have Deficiencies in Social Valuation and Mentalization

Yun K, Chung D, Jang B, Kim JH, Jeong J (2011) Mathematically Gifted Adolescents Have Deficiencies in Social Valuation and Mentalization. PLoS ONE 6(4): e18224. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018224 (LINK) (PDF)


Many mathematically gifted adolescents are characterized as being indolent, underachieving and unsuccessful despite their high cognitive ability. This is often due to difficulties with social and emotional development. However, research on social and emotional interactions in gifted adolescents has been limited. The purpose of this study was to observe differences in complex social strategic behaviors between gifted and average adolescents of the same age using the repeated Ultimatum Game. Twenty-two gifted adolescents and 24 average adolescents participated in the Ultimatum Game. Two adolescents participate in the game, one as a proposer and the other as a responder. Because of its simplicity, the Ultimatum Game is an apt tool for investigating complex human emotional and cognitive decision-making in an empirical setting. We observed strategic but socially impaired offers from gifted proposers and lower acceptance rates from gifted responders, resulting in lower total earnings in the Ultimatum Game. Thus, our results indicate that mathematically gifted adolescents have deficiencies in social valuation and mentalization.

Gifted adolescents are less sensitive to loss, yet more sensitive to gain in public goods game

Chung D, Yun K, Kim JH, Jang B, Jeong J (2011) Different Gain/Loss Sensitivity and Social Adaptation Ability in Gifted Adolescents during a Public Goods Game. PLoS ONE 6(2): e17044. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017044 (LINK) (PDF)

Gifted adolescents are considered to have high IQs with advanced mathematical and logical performances, but are often thought to suffer from social isolation or emotional mal-adaptation to the social group. The underlying mechanisms that cause stereotypic portrayals of gifted adolescents are not well known. We aimed to investigate behavioral performance of gifted adolescents during social decision-making tasks to assess their affective and social/non-social cognitive abilities. We examined cooperation behaviors of 22 gifted and 26 average adolescents during an iterative binary public goods (PG) game, a multi-player social interaction game, and analyzed strategic decision processes that include cooperation and free-riding. We found that the gifted adolescents were more cooperative than average adolescents. Particularly, comparing the strategies for the PG game between the two groups, gifted adolescents were less sensitive to loss, yet were more sensitive to gain. Additionally, the behavioral characteristics of average adolescents, such as low trust of the group and herding behavior, were not found in gifted adolescents. These results imply that gifted adolescents have a high cognitive ability but a low ability to process affective information or to adapt in social groups compared with average adolescents. We conclude that gain/loss sensitivity and the ability to adapt in social groups develop to different degrees in average and gifted adolescents.

Thesis Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank my advisor, Prof. Jaeseung Jeong, for his encouragement, guidance and support over the last five years. He showed me how to draw a big picture of neuroscience and guided me in the right direction. I believe I have learned from him three significant aspects of an excellent scientist: motivation, independence, and multi-tasking. Under his wholehearted guidance, I have been able to become a highly motivated, independent, and well-organized scientist.

I would like to thank Prof. Chun Kee Chung at the MEG center, Department of Neurosurgery, Seoul National University College of Medicine, for his academic guidance, insightful discussions, and inspirational comments during my MEG research project. I would also like to thank Prof. June Sic Kim for his support in figuring out the technical difficulties in the MEG analysis and for his invaluable advice and contribution as a member of my thesis committee. Without these mentors’ teaching and support, my MEG project would have not been possible. I am also grateful to Miriam and Youngmin for their assistance in conducting the MEG experiment.

I would like to express my deep appreciation to Dr. Yang-Tae Kim in the Department of Psychiatry, Bugok National Hospital and Hee-Kwon Park in the Department of Neurology, Seoul National University Hospital. Dr. Yang-Tae Kim provided invaluable opportunities to study psychiatric patients, including those with schizophrenia and methamphetamine addiction. Dr. Hee-Kwon Park was the co-first author of my first paper about methamphetamine addiction and his contribution was crucial. With such support, I was able to experience the whole process of research—experimental design, experimentation, data analysis and manuscript preparation—for the first time. As a result of this research collaboration, the question of why people, including addicts and schizophrenics, make irrational decisions has attracted my attention. This was the initial motivation for studying issues related to a broad range of human decision making. I also would like to thank Prof. Alexander D. Shin for teaching me the techniques of SCID and for giving me the invaluable experience of clinical interviews with psychiatric patients. I warmly thank Dongil, Anna, and Yoon Sol for their friendly help conducting the interviews. Many thanks go in particular to Dongil, to whom I am much indebted for his support in EEG experiments, for his valuable advice, and for his critical comments throughout the whole process of my research. His contribution in much of my EEG work was crucial, especially in the EEG hyperscanning system development.

I would also like to acknowledge Prof. Hyojeong Lee in the Department of Physical Therapy, Chung Ju National University and ChoJeong Hospital, for providing opportunities to study Alzheimer’s patients. I am very grateful to WooHyun and Dongil for their support in EEG experiments on Alzheimer’s patients. My special thanks go to senior participants for their generous contributions.

To Dr. Po-Song Yang and Min Jeong Kwon in the Department of Radiology, St. Mary’s Hospital of the Catholic University, thank you for giving me the opportunity to perform fMRI experiments. I also gratefully acknowledge a former lab member, Seungyeon, currently at Google, for his contribution to my fMRI studies. It gave me great pleasure to work with him.

I would like to thank patent attorney Kangwook Kim at the H&H International Patent and Law Office for his support in preparing my EEG hyperscanning system patent application. To Seongmin in the Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST, it was a joy to collaborate with you. With your support, I was able to extend my knowledge and interests to the fascinating field of neuroesthetics. I feel a deep sense of gratitude to a former lab member, Su-Min, currently in the Drug Development Center at SK Corporation, for her teaching and support in EEG experimental techniques. I wish to thank undergraduate research students Bosun and Jin Ho for their assistance in behavioral experiments. I am also grateful to a former lab member, Hansem, currently in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Seoul National University, for his very positive academic stimulus. I would like to thank Founder and Head Coach Hoh Kim at THE LAB h for his kind support and insightful discussions.

Thanks as well to all other current and former BDL members, including Jaewon, Minho, Jeongwon, Hyeran, Hyoungkyu, Seongkyun, Yong Wook, Charles, Kwangyeol, Hankyul, Hoon Hee, Yunkyu, Mehwish, Kanghoon, Heekyoung, Ryukjun, Amber, and MooKyoung for providing a creative and exciting environment in which to learn and grow.

Besides my advisor and collaborators, I would like to thank my thesis committee: Prof. Kwang-Hyun Cho, Yong-An Chung, Yong Jeong, and June Sic Kim.

During the course of this work, I was supported in part by a Cognitive Brain Research Grant (2006 – 2010), a Graduate Student Research Grant (2008) from the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF), and a KAIST Research Grant (2006 – 2007). I would like to acknowledge the support given by the Marie Curie Fellowship, which allowed me to take part in programs at the Marie Curie School in Neuroscience in l’Aquila, Italy (2008), and also support given by the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, which allowed me to take part in an Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course (2008) in Okinawa, Japan. I was able to gain the invaluable experience of interacting with passionate scientists from around the world.

I am also greatly indebted to many teachers in the past. I would like to thank Prof. Soo-Young Lee. His Neural Information Processing Algorithm course was the best class I have ever taken. This class definitely inspired me to study neuroscience and computational modeling. To Prof. Doheon Lee, thank you for giving me the bright vision of the Department of Bio and Brain engineering, which was a new department in KAIST when I was a freshman. Prof. Lee gave me confidence and fostered my motivation to make the challenging and ambitious choice to join his department. I would like to thank Prof. Je-Kyun Park for his support and advice as my undergraduate academic advisor. I have especially to mention Prof. In Gyu Koh in the Department of Physics, KAIST. I was deeply inspired by his passion for research.

I conclude with the words of Moon Soul Chung, who foresaw the fusion of the disciplines of bio and information technology gaining prominence in the future and who made a donation to form the department where I have studied for the last eight years.

“Foster talent and develop technology that will feed and support the future.”

[PhD Thesis] Neural mechanisms of decision making in the Ultimatum Game in the context of interactions between emotion and reason

Yun PhD thesis.pdf

This thesis aims to understand neural mechanisms of high-level cognitive decision making in the context of complex interactions between emotion and reason. To achieve this goal, I made three major approaches.

1.       Neuroscience: Understanding spatiotemporal dynamics of high-level cognitive decision making.

2.       Neuromedicine: Understanding functional connectivity in schizophrenia during complex social and emotional decision making

3.       Neuroengineering: Development of EEG hyperscanning system

The purpose of the first approach was to provide answers to the where and when questions of cortical activation with high spatiotemporal resolution using magnetoencephalographies (MEGs) and to investigate effective connectivity between regions of the brain, with the goal of extending our understanding of the information transmission mechanisms that underlie high-level cognitive decision making. This is the first study to investigate spatiotemporal dynamics of high-level cognitive decision making using MEGs. The results presented here suggest that MEG is an optimal tool for investigating the neural mechanisms underlying the decision-making process. The purpose of the second approach was to investigate local and long-range cortical disconnections or dysfunctions in schizophrenic patients and then to assess the underlying dynamics and functional connectivity between certain brain regions. The reported findings support the notion that impaired local and long range synchronization can both establish underlying mechanisms of dysfunctional complex decision-making in schizophrenic patients. The purpose of the third approach was to develop an EEG hyperscanning system to evaluate social and emotional interactions between the two players, and then to assess the underlying dynamics and the effective connectivity between and within the brain regions of the two players. This is the first study to analyze temporal dynamics and social interactions in human decision-making using simultaneous EEG recordings. We believe that the use of EEG hyperscanning methodology in the present study opens up new prospects for investigating the brain activities of two people during real-life face-to-face social interactions.

 

 

Keywords: decision making, theory of mind, social interaction, EEG, MEG, Ultimatum Game

본 박사학위논문은 감정과 이성의 복잡한 상호작용 관점에서 고등의사결정과정의 신경메커니즘을 이해하는 것을 목표로 한다. 이 목표를 이루기 위해 세 가지 중요한 접근을 시도하였다.

 

1.      뇌과학: 고등의사결정과정의 시공간적 동역학 이해

2.      뇌의학: 복잡한 사회적/감정적 의사결정과정 동안 정신분열증의기능적 연결성 이해

3.      뇌공학: 뇌파(EEG) 동시측정시스템 개발

 

첫 번째 접근의 목적은, 높은 시공간적 해상도를 가지는 뇌자도(MEG)를 이용하여 대뇌활성화가 언제 어디에서 일어나는지에 대한 해답을 제시하고,뇌의 각 영역 사이의 효과적 연결성(effective connectivity)을 조사하여, 고등의사결정의 기저를 이루는 정보교환 메커니즘을 이해하는 것이다. 본 연구는 뇌자도를 이용한 고등의사결정과정의 시공간적 동역학을 탐구하는 최초 시도이다. 본 연구의 결과는 뇌자도가 의사결정과정의 기저를 이루는 신경 메커니즘을 탐구하기 위한 최적의 도구임을 제안하였다. 두 번째 접근의목적은, 정신분열증 환자의 근거리와 장거리 대뇌 단절 및 기능 장애를 탐구하고, 특정 뇌 영역 간의 기저동역학과 기능적 연결성을 평가하는 것이다. 본 연구의 결과는, 약화한 근거리와 장거리 동기화가 모두 정신분열증환자의 복잡한 의사결정 장애에 대한 기저 메커니즘을 확립할 수 있다는 개념을 지지한다. 세 번째 접근의 목적은, 두 사람 사이의 사회적/감정적 상호작용을 평가하기 위한 뇌파 동시측정시스템을 개발하고, 이를 이용하여 두사람 사이의 뇌 영역 및 두 사람 각각의 뇌 영역의 기저동역학과 효과적 연결성을 분석하는 것이다. 본 연구는 뇌파 동시측정시스템을 이용하여 의사결정과정의 시계열 동역학과 사회적 상호작용을 분석한 최초 시도이다. 본연구의 뇌파 동시측정 방법론은 얼굴을 마주 보는 실제 상황에서 사회적 상호작용에서의 뇌 활성화 분석 연구를 위한 새로운 가능성을 열었다.

 

 

핵심어: 의사결정, 마음이론(theory of mind) 사회적 상호작용, 뇌파, 뇌자도, 최후통첩게임