Exploring Sleep, Risk-Taking, and Social Cognitive Neuroscience

This essay delves into the realm of social cognitive neuroscience to investigate the intricate relationship between sleep patterns, risk-taking tendencies, and cognitive control in adolescents. It highlights the significance of adequate sleep during this developmental stage, emphasizing how sleep deprivation can lead to cognitive and emotional deficits, increased high-risk behaviors, and impaired emotional regulation. The essay discusses the role of brain regions like the insula and striatum in processing reward stimuli and how poor sleep can disrupt functional coupling in cognitive regulation and affective regions. Furthermore, it examines the default mode network (DMN) and its connection to sleep quality, suggesting that individuals with weaker intrinsic DMN activity tend to experience poorer sleep. The study employs questionnaires and decision-making methods to analyze the effects of sleep quality on adolescent decision-making processes, ultimately aiming to understand the neural mechanisms underlying the link between sleep and risk-taking during adolescence.

RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
Social Cognitive Neuroscience
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RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
Introduction
Basically, social cognitive neuroscience refers to the scientific study which discusses the
biological processes that underpin social recognition (Adolphs, 2010). This means that
cognitive neuroscience uses the tools and techniques of neuroscience to account and study the
mental environment that forms the frame, that regulates and Responses to all experiences that
are revealed by the social world. Most of the times social cognitive neuroscience use the
epistemological aspect which emphasizes the functional magnetic resonance commonly
known as (fMR) in neuroscience. There are brain stimulation techniques such the direct
current stimulation and the transactional magnetic stimulation techniques which are used in
social cognitive neuroscience (Adolphs, 2011).
The history and the method of social cognitive neuroscience
The first scholarly work to describe the social cognitive neuroscience was through the
Phineas Gage. He identified as the only man survived the traumatic brain injury back in 1849.
The study revealed from the concept indicated that there are changes which are found in
social functioning and the person one has towards something or someone (Baars & Gage,
2010). After a few years, some authors emerged and described the concept of social cognitive
neuroscience in psychology. However, some of the information and works about the social
cognitive neuroscience did not succeed but after much research different professors emerged
who keenly analysed the social cognitive neuroscience. In 2000 the word social cognitive
neuroscience was later advanced by the Mathew and kelvin Oschner. The two authors were
from the social and cognitive psychology backgrounds (Baron-Cohen, Tager-Flusberg,
Lombardo, 2013). The worked hard enough to integrate and try to brand different labs which
were isolated and were carrying the neural basis for the social cognitive neuroscience. Later
on in the same year that is 2000, Elizabeth Phelps and other colleagues invented the first
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RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
FMR study which advocated on social cognitive neuroscience. The study emphasized the
race evaluations. With the adoption of the fMR, there were less expensive aspects and non-
invasive neuroimaging modality in the field of social cognitive neuroscience (Becker,
Cropanzano, Sanfey, 2011).
After one year that is 2001, a first conference for the social cognitive neuroscience was held
in University of California and it advocated for effective neuroscience in the society.
Neuroscience enlarged and at the late 2000s, field of cognitive neuroscience started the
methodological repertoire which expanded the neuroimaging modalities. Thereafter,
computational advancement incorporated the use of pattern analysis and casual modelling
which were important in neuroscience (Beeman & Chiarello, 2013). Use of computers
enhanced the deep brain simulation thus assisting in achieving the mainstream acceptance in
the entire field of neuroscience and psychology. The following concepts comprise the social
cognitive neuroscience.
Functional anatomy
Some of the social cognitive neuroscience is always sub served by the two main parts. The
first aspect comprises the Macro scale brain networks which are commonly referred to as the
mirror neuron system (MNS) and the second aspect shows the default mode network (DMN)
( Cacioppo & Decety,2011).
The MNS has been researched to indicate the facial expressions, the use of body language
and grasping techniques in a human being. The basics of MNS in human beings is to encode
all aspects which involve the concept of action. Therefore, MNS is the entire representations
of how the action is observed for example the concept of sensory modality (Cacioppo,
Berntson, Bechara, Tranel, Hawkley, 2011). It also indicates the action being performed thus
showing those actions which can be represented by the use of language. MNS in social
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RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
cognitive neuroscience comprises the promoter cortex, the intraparietal sulcus and the lateral
occipitotemporal cortex known as the (LOTC). The intraparietal sulcus in social cognitive
neuroscience shows that in human the censoring mirroring responses are always directed to
the anterior intraparietal sulcus. The part is more sensitive and it assists in monitoring the
biological actions which are entirely relative to the semantic features. In addition, the
intraparietal sulcus is linked to the dorsal visual stream, which forms the posterior and the
temporal sulcus (Christoff, Cosmelli, Legrand, Thompson, 2011). On explaining the
premotor cortex different researchers have identified that it's a region which comprises
diverse arrays of functions. It encompasses the motor planning and sensory guidance that is
in visual movements. It also assists in language processing in the field of social cognitive
neuroscience. The LOTC shows the lateral regions which are associated with the visual
processing and the sensory monitoring. The part shows the regions which are sensitive to
objects, sensitive t body parts and body postures which are vital in the human being. The
LOTC is believed to encode on sensorimotor and also binding together the different aspects
by initiating different actions which are carried out in social cognitive neuroscience (Couture,
Penn, Losh, Adolphs, Hurley, Piven, 2010).
The DMN aids in processing social information, for example, the mental states and the
intentions or traits. Social cognitive basically focuses on emotion, memorializing, empathy
and moral cognition. All the regions consistently emphasize neuroimaging studies in the field
of social cognitive neuroscience. The DMN has been identified to involve in memory-related
processing aspects which controls the traits and action from a human being. Most of the
DMN activities are experienced during rest as the activation and the connectivity are
enhanced through cognition (Decety & Lamm, 2011). DMN comprises the Medial Prefrontal
cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex, the temporoparietal junction, and the superior temporal
sulcus. All the parts of DMN work to initiate sensory aspects which enhances neuron system.
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RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
The superior temporal sulcus enhances the social vision and the biological motion processing
which very vital for social cognitive neuroscience. Temporoparietal junction forms the
distinguishing aspects between the multiple agents, for example, the self and other. It is also
associated with the contextual updating, the language processing and the episode memory
which enhances the social and non-social function. However, Temporoparietal junction
function in neural encoding techniques and that's why it is constituted in the social, temporal
and spatial distance on social cognitive neuroscience (D’esposito & Postle, 2015).
How social cognitive neuroscience is related to the topic used.
Adolescence stage impacts the sleep and risk-taking in human beings. Good sleep is very
important in our bodies. The aspect of good sleep plays a consequential role in the field of
social cognitive neuroscience. During adolescence, good sleep is very important since it helps
in developing other consequential stages. When one experiences poor sleep he or she
experiences a deficit in cognitive and emotional deficits. It includes the bias which is entirely
towards the high-risk behaviour and diminished behavioural controls which facilitates poor
emotion regulation in a human being (D'esposito & Postle, 2015). Different researches have
indicated that sleep deprivation results to brain malfunctioning thus causing brain function
which relates to the risk-taking and cognition. There are also a few studies which have tried
to reveal the study of sleep and brain functioning. This means that much effort is induced in
the study of neural mechanisms whereby the sleep changes with an increase in adolescence.
The issue of sleep deprivation at the adolescence stage, tend to occur with a normative
developmental increase in risk-taking and poor decision which affects the social cognitive
neuroscience. Those adolescents who are deprived of sleep are believed to possess decreased
cognitive modulations, decreased impulses, and emotions which are unable to respond to the
control of attention (Dimoka,Pavlou,Davis, 2011). Most of the sleepless moments and nights
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RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
are associated with the alcohol, use of drugs and aggressive behaviours possessed by
adolescents. Although inadequate sleep is yet to be linked with social cognitive neuroscience,
there are those indicators which fully explains the sleep increases the adolescent taking.
There are dual system theories in social cognitive neuroscience which show that risk-taking
during adolescent is affected by the two factors. The first aspect is due to the competition
between the neural system and the effective system used in the neural stimulation. The
competition involves the aspect of reward sensitivity which facilitates the curvilinear patterns
that indicate the linear improvement in the adulthood stage (Ellison & Boyd, 2013). The other
aspect of social cognitive neuroscience is the cognitive control system that aids in cognitive
regulation in sensory memory. All the two aspects emphasize the functional connectivity that
helps in analysing poor sleep not only in the brain function but also to the cognitive control
systems in a human being. In social cognitive neuroscience, the adult work linked to the sleep
problems tend to indicate an effective and regulatory brain function which points out the
importance of neural networks which scrolls all the way to the maturing stages during
adolescence.
In the study the paper analyses the normative levels of sleep and the brain function which is
anticipated during the risk-taking in the adolescent stage (Franz & Gillett,2011). Generally,
those individuals who suffer due to poor quality sleep tend to have low cognitive emotional
and social behaviours. In order to account for these changes, one needs to understand how
this normative changes which tend to relate with brain development which enlarges at
adolescence stage. There is (DMN) which is commonly known as the default mode network.
It forms the largest brain network that is crucial for complex cognition and other social-
emotional activities which assist the survival for human beings. Also, DMN undergoes the
intra-network segregation and the intra-network integration during the adolescence stage. The
discussion analyses the functional connectivity and autography for a period of 1 week. The
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RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
participants used were of age 14 -18 years old. The key idea was to identify the individual
difference in DMN and changes in sleep duration with the effective quality for more than 30
participants. Those individuals who were found with the weak intrinsic DMN had poor sleep.
The findings which indicated the sleep index were believed to have brain function that aided
in behaviour maturation .They were also believed to undergo the brain development during
the adolescence stage (Franz & Gillett, 2011).
Hypothesis developed
The study determined whether the poor sleep was associated with the risk-taking and
cognitive control at the adolescence stage.
The study examined on how sleep deprivation was associated with the insula and the striatum
reactivity which response to positive reward stimuli (Heatherton & Wagner, 2011).
The third aspect was to determine how poor quality sleep initiated the functional coupling in
the cognitive regulation and the effective regions.
If poor sleep initiates imbalance at adolescence stage, then the issue of poor sleep may cause
the prefrontal failure and the top down regulations which tend to be effective at arousal
stages.
How the experiment was conducted
The study comprised more than 30 participants. In order to get the results for the subject
matter the following methods of data collection were used;
Use of questionnaires
The participants answered questions which were describing the difference to get when he or
she has experienced sleep quality and when sleep disturbances are experienced. There were
more than 20 questions which described on topics such as sleep medications, sleep latency in
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RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
human beings, sleep efficiency and the sleep duration which assisted in describing the
connection between adolescence and sleep cognitive (Insel,2010). That individual who gave a
mean grade of more than 45 % were believed to have described on the effects of poor sleep
while the rest were believed to indicate the good sleep quality.
By use of the decision-making method
The method was used to analyse the adolescent's decision, especially when making
suggestions on poor quality sleep. The decisions made were grouped into five sections, the
first group identified the decision making self- esteem on cognitive approach. The second
section indicated the implementation of decisions in human beings when using brain function
frameworks. In addition, the third aspect was on impulsive choices recorded in decision
making. The last section involved the decision making rationalization and the conflicting
approach in decision making when analysing the cognitive approach (Jankowski &
Takahashi, 2014).
Use of fMR paradigms
The participants were to complete tasks that targeted the cognitive control. All the tasks
handled entailed the aspect of brain function. In order to represent the participants in the
study, different trials containing a single letter were used (Jost & Amodio, 2012). The
participants were shown a letter which was moved rapidly and they were to fix those letters in
blocks during the trial. All letters which were pushed quickly indicated cognitive response
recorded in one's brain while those randomly selected letters indicated the positive reward
response. The fMR results were analysed to indicate the social cognitive theories and the
visualization basis which revealed the brain functioning with response to poor quality sleep at
adolescence.
Results.
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RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
The sleep decision results obtained were analysed to determine whether the adolescents sleep
related to the decision making approaches and skills. Those participants who gave results
ranging from 20% -30 % indicated the how decisions controls self-esteem while the other
portion indicated how sleep affected the behavioural performance (Kitayama & Park, 2010).
Those decisions which accounted for poor sleep quality determined slower reaction trials in
the study. All the questionnaires indicated the mean response on poor sleep quality.
On viewing the fMR results, the neural activation aspects gave successful response which
was analysed by using the trials .The results were similar to questionnaire results although the
participants in fMR were involved in cognitive control facilitated by use of trials.
Therefore form the results, poor quality sleep were identified to be pervasive during the
adolescence period. All the questionnaires gave responses which cognitive regulations on
health. The results summarises that imbalance can be entirely exaggerated by the cognitive
control .When making decisions the results indicated that self-esteem can be more apathy
when determining effects of poor sleep quality (Kitayama & Park,2010).
Research questions
This risk taking incorporates perilous driving (e.g. messaging), medicate use, hitting the
bottle hard, and dangerous sexual conduct. In spite of instructive endeavours to give
teenagers data about hazardous conduct, numerous young people keep on participating in
dangerous conduct.
How would we clarify the tirelessness of youngsters' unsafe conduct, regardless of the
extensive measure of cash being spent on aversion programs? What would we be able to do
to diminish the peril?
Research on peer connections and mental health during the brain development of teens may
offer an explanation.
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RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
As of late, there has been an expansion in the accessibility of magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) (Lee, Senior, & Butler, 2012). Utilizing these apparatuses, specialists have discovered
a few changes in the mind amid puberty that are imperative in clarifying risk conduct.
Discussion
Insufficient and poor quality sleep are inescapable amid pre-adulthood and identify with
impedances in cognitive control and expanded risk taking. In any case, the neurobiology
fundamental on the relationship among sleep and youthful conduct stays tricky. In the present
examination, we inspect how poor rest quality identifies with subjective control and reward
related mind work amid hazard taking (Van Gog, & Rummel, 2010). These outcomes
propose that poor rest may overstate the regulating irregularity among full of feeling and
psychological control frameworks, prompting more serious hazard taking in youths
The findings indicated based on long sleep timeframe and also existing cognitive
performance decrease in youthful members brings up issues about the contention resulting
from (Walter, 2012). While a few late research investigations of more established grown-up
tests have shown relationship between exacerbating intellectual execution and increased lack
of sleep.
Inadequate rest and low quality rest identify with impedances in cognitive control.
Therefore it is important to understand the various negative impacts of sleep on the existing
risk behaviours and the active brain working ability. It is congruent since it help clinicians
acknowledge the underlying mechanism that make teens make uninformed decisions hence
positive psychological work in future (Zaki, & Ochsner, 2012). These significant findings
recommend that the regularizing unevenness among emotional and cognitive control
frameworks might be misrepresented by poor sleep, with the end goal that youths indicate
less DLPFC enactment amid psychological control, more noteworthy insula initiation amid
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RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
remuneration handling, and decreased useful coupling between the DLPFC and full of feeling
locales. Every one of these neural initiations was paralleled by poorer self-revealed basic
leadership abilities and more serious hazard taking and reward affectability (Zelazo, &
Lyons, 2012). Along these lines, young people with poorer poor quality may have both a
more noteworthy introduction towards risk and traded off basic leadership capacities.
Typically, these condition were as a result of increased apathy and low self-esteem issues
during decision making process.
Furthermore, it was found that poor rest quality was related with more prominent self-
announced probability of taking part in risk taking, more noteworthy positive ramifications
for risk practices and behaviour. These existing behavioural discoveries recommend that
young people who acquire poorer quality rest are progressively arranged towards
remunerations, which may represent their more dangerous conduct.
Consequently, youths with poorer rest quality may show diminished motivation to take part
in cognitive regulation control and along these lines enrol the DLPFC to a lesser degree amid
intellectual control. For sure, youths with poorer rest were possibly slower to respond on go
preliminaries amid the psychological control errand regardless of directions to press the catch
as quick as possible.
Amid risk taking, teenagers who highly reported poorer rest quality indicated more
noteworthy actuation in the insula as the reward expanded,
Adolescents with poorer rest may take part in more hazard taking on account of a
disappointment of prefrontal, and arousal regulation
Future research should utilize trial plans and longitudinal information to decide if rest itself
uplifts neural affectability to hazard taking or whether the individuals who are progressively
delicate to chance taking get poorer rest. Also, future research ought to analyse how rest
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RUNNING HEADER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
impacts hazard related conduct and neural working crosswise over improvement (Zaki,
Hennigan, Weber, &Ochsner, 2010). We can't be sure that our discoveries are explicit to
youth, or whether comparative impacts would be found at other formative periods. There is
some underlying proof that rest and reward-related cerebrum work vary in early versus late
pubertal immature
Literature review
Neuroimaging literature studies contrasting useful cerebrum reactions among young people
and raised social uneasiness as well as sorrow and normally creating adolescents have
affirmed elevated affectability to candidly loaded data in the previous gathering (Redcay et al
2010). Quite, differential enactment examples and availability in mind districts associated
with social-enthusiastic reacting and feeling direction have been found in light of foreseen
social input and socially undermining signs in restless and discouraged adolescents contrasted
with their sound partners.
According to the article Kruglanski, & Higgins (2013) the beginning of adolescence,
hormonal discharge gets under way a course of physical improvements that outcome in
conceptive capability. Pubertal hormonal changes likewise influence neural hardware,
including systems connected to social-subjective and feeling processing. These physical
changes are joined by psychosocial changes, for example, expanded enthusiasm for friend
related signals (e.g., economic wellbeing and assessments of companions), uplifted
affectability towards (social) reward and commitment in progressively unpredictable,
nuanced relational trades, including sentimental connections (Rilling,& Sanfey,2011).
Paralleling these physical and mental advancements are critical changes in the social
condition, as well. As youngsters move into puberty, they confront expanding scholastic
requests and societal assumptions about self-rule and autonomy As stated by Senior, Lee, &
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