Neurocomputation of hostile expectations

• Applicant: Professor Macià Buades-Rotger
• Subject Area: Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience ; Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology
• Term: from 2020 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 431342690

Hostile expectations can be defined as the assumption that aggression will occur in ambiguous or neutral situations. My aim in the present project is to formally define and test cognitive models of how hostile expectations are acquired and implemented at the neural and behavioral levels. Importantly, I will test whether hostile expectations also predict other domains of aggressive cognition and behavior, such as hostile attributions, i.e. the tendency to assign blame or harmful intent to ambiguous or neutral acts. To that end, I will develop a simple task to induce high- or low-threat expectations (i.e. a rival who draws a gun more or less often) which will be followed by aggressive or non-aggressive outcomes (i.e. the rival draws a gun or a phone). The probabilistic structure of the task will be manipulated, such that aggressive outcomes occur at varying frequencies across trials. Using a formal approach, I will inspect how well participants perform in tracking these changes and relate this to concurrent neural activity as well as to behavioral and self-report measures of aggression and hostility. I will use both electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging in pursuit of an in-depth characterization of how hostile expectations are implemented in the brain. This novel, multidisciplinary approach will allow to bridge predictive and retrospective processes of aggressive cognition, relate them to aggressive behavior, and map their neural representations in the temporal and spatial domains. The present project will provide a more precise understanding of the cognitive and neurobiological processes underlying aggression. This will contribute to refine existing theories and to improve the predictive validity of assessment instruments for aggressive behavior.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: Netherlands
• Host: Professor Dr. Inti Brazil