Orgasm is one of the most intense pleasures attainable to an organism, yet its underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. On the basis of existing literatures, this article introduces a novel mechanistic model of sexual stimulation and orgasm. In doing so, it characterizes the neurophenomenology of sexual trance and climax, describes parallels in dynamics between orgasms and seizures, spec...

Through an experiment, t his study investigates the effects that verification has on honest traders. This paper demonstrates that by reducing the scope for trust verification can have a negative effect on the behaviour of honest individuals. Specifically, the analysis shows that trustworthy agents are willing to punish or seek compensation from those that deprive them of trust opportunities thr...

Child abuse and neglect affect the development of social cognition in children and inhibit social adjustment. The purpose of this study was to compare the ability to identify the emotional states of others between abused and non-abused children. The participants, 129 children (44 abused and 85 non-abused children), completed a children's version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET). ...

Social disability represents a unifying feature in the diverse group of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Social neuroscience is the study of brain mechanisms supporting interpersonal interaction. In this paper, we review brain imaging studies of the social brain and highlight practical applications of these scientific insights. Understanding of social brain mechanisms holds prom...

Many online marketplaces enjoy great success. Buyers and sellers in successful markets carry out cooperative transactions even if they do not know each other in advance and a moral hazard exists. An indispensable component that enables cooperation in such social dilemma situations is the reputation system. Under the reputation system, a buyer can avoid transacting with a seller with a bad reput...

In 2006, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, seeking to address the epidemic of childhood obesity, issued new regulations on beverages, physical activity, and screen time in group child care centers. An evaluation was conducted to identify characteristics of New York City child care centers that have implemented these regulations and to examine how varying degrees of impl...

Despite having relatively poor spatial and temporal resolution, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has several methodological advantages compared with other non-invasive measurements of neural activation. For instance, the unique characteristics of NIRS give it potential as a tool for investigating the role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in emotion processing. However, there are several obstacle...

Past research provides conflicting findings regarding the influence of emotion on visual attention. Early studies suggested a broadening of attentional resources in relation to positive mood. However, more recent evidence indicates that positive emotions may not have a beneficial impact on attention, and that the relationship between emotion and attention may be mitigated by factors such as tas...

Emotion assessments traditionally take place in academic or medical settings. The impact of environmental factors such as e.g. the characteristics of the place, the weather, or the time of day on the emotional state of inhabitants are often dismissed, thus emotions as a dynamic feature cannot be used for city planning or development. To estimate emotions as spatio-temporal data, a growing resea...

The present study examined whether sex differences in emotion are related to the social context and addressed differences between global, retrospective, and on-line, momentary self-descriptions of emotional experience and expression. Participants provided global, retrospective descriptions of their emotional characteristics at an initial session, and then provided momentary emotion ratings as w...