Manipulating Social Percepts During fMRI

Manipulating Social Percepts With Real-Time fMRI

This study will investigate the use of real-time fMRI to change how participants perceive social information.

The investigators have previously established stable individual differences in how people accumulate evidence for the presence and nature of a social interaction in visual displays, termed "social tuning curves". Taking individuals with deeply characterized neural and behavioral social tuning curves, this protocol will covertly manipulate percepts in two ways using real-time fMRI: 1) brain-state-triggered trials to bias participants toward a given percept based on their pre-stimulus brain state, and 2) implicit neurofeedback prior to and during stimulus exposure to teach participants to control their brain activity in social-perceptual circuits. These experiments will directly test causal relationships between activity at different levels of the cortical hierarchy and an individual's ultimate percept of a given social stimulus.

Inclusion Criteria:

• willingness and availability to come for a total of 6 MRI scan sessions
• good fMRI data quality in previous, non-clinical trial study, including low head motion, high vigilance during the task as measured via simultaneous eye tracking, consistent behavioral responses

Exclusion Criteria:

• metallic objects in body contraindicated for the MRI scanner
• history of severe psychiatric or neurological disease
• currently on medication for a psychiatric condition
• illicit drug use
• claustrophobia
• heavy nicotine or alcohol use
• prior head injury
• pregnancy