Among the studies addressing mirroring in the emotional system, of particular interest is the fMRI study by Singer et al. [7], where volunteers either experienced a painful stimulus or observed a cue indicating that their loved one, present in the same room, was receiving a similar stimulation.
Crucially, we observed a significant cue × %CV interaction effect (F1.9,26.6 = 9.5, P = 0.001) reflecting a differential impact of %CV on valid and invalid trials (Fig. 5).
As before, the main effect of %CV was not significant but we observed a significant cue × %CV interaction effect (F1.99,29.88 = 4.7, P = 0.017).
Increased activation in the right prefrontal cortex is observed when a cue successfully retrieves a studied item [ 12, 14- 16].
Contrary to our expectations, we observed a drop in post-cue performance at the longest cue latency [F 3,17) = 8.524, p <.01].
We observed all cue tests using two infrared-illuminated Sony Nightshot camcorders, one filming straight on and the other at 90 degrees (Figure 1), to resolve any ambiguous observations.
The obtained results showed that in an auditory identification task that included both acting and observing settings, cue dissimilarity between trials was a demodulating factor leading to poorer performance.
Since the activation is observed even when a cue fails to retrieve the primed stimulus, it is generally associated with retrieval attempt, rather than the retrieval itself [ 12, 14, 15].
By manipulating the intensity of the alerting cue, we further observed a positive relationship between alerting intensity and processing speed, which was not seen for the threshold of conscious perception (Experiment 2).
The key statistics of these analyses are summarized below: In all three time windows (100 400, 400 700, and 700 1000 ms after cue onset), we observed a significant, positive relationship between reward and spatial-reward selectivity indices (linear regression, p<10−32).
