WeChat represents one of the most popular smartphone-based applications for communication. Although the application provides several useful features that simplify daily life, a growing number of users spend excessive amounts of time on the application. This may lead to interferences with everyday life and even to addictive patterns of use. In the context of the ongoing discussion on Internet Communication Disorder (ICD), the present study aimed to better characterize the addictive potential of communication applications, using WeChat as an example, by examining associations between individual variations in tendencies towards WeChat addiction and brain structural variations in fronto-striatal-limbic brain regions. To this end levels of addictive tendencies, frequency of use and structural MRI data were assessed in n = 61 healthy participants. Higher tendencies towards WeChat addiction were associated with smaller gray matter volumes of the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, a key region for monitoring and regulatory control in neural networks underlying addictive behaviors. Moreover, a higher frequency of the paying function was associated with smaller nucleus accumbens volumes. Findings were robust after controlling for levels of anxiety and depression. The present results are in line with previous findings in substance and behavioral addictions, and suggest a similar neurobiological basis in ICD.

We find infant faces highly attractive as a result of specific features which Konrad Lorenz termed “Kindchenschema” or “baby schema”, and this is considered to be an important adaptive trait for promoting protective and caregiving behaviors in adults, thereby increasing the chances of infant survival. This review first examines the behavioral support for this effect and physical and behavioral factors which can influence it. It next reviews the increasing number of neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies investigating the neural circuitry underlying this baby schema effect in both parents and non-parents of both sexes. Next it considers potential hormonal contributions to the baby schema effect in both sexes and then neural effects associated with reduced responses to infant cues in post-partum depression, anxiety and drug taking. Overall the findings reviewed reveal a very extensive neural circuitry involved in our perception of cutenessin infant faces with enhanced activation compared to adult faces being found in brain regions involved in face perception, attention, emotion, empathy, memory, reward and attachment, theory of mind and also control of motor responses.Both mothers and fathers also show evidence for enhanced responses in these same neural systems when viewing their own as opposed to another child. Furthermore, responses to infant cues in many of these neural systems are reduced in mothers with post-partum depression or anxiety or have taken addictive drugs throughout pregnancy. In general reproductively active women tend to rate infant faces as cuter than men, which may reflect both heightened attention to relevant cues and a stronger activation in their brain reward circuitry. Perception of infant cuteness may also be influenced by reproductive hormones with the hypothalamic neuropeptide oxytocin being most strongly associated to date with increased attention andattractionto infant cues in both sexes.

Previous studies have indicated that gait rhythm fluctuations are useful for characterizing certain pathologies of neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's disease (HD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Parkinson's disease (PD). However, no previous study has investigated the properties of frequency range distributions of gait rhythms. Therefore, in our study, empirical mode decomposition was implemented for decomposing the time series of gait rhythms into intrinsic mode functions from the high-frequency component to the low-frequency component sequentially. Then, Kendall's coefficient of concordance and the ratio for energy change for different IMFs were calculated, which were denoted as Wand RE, respectively. Results revealed that the frequency distributions of gait rhythms in patients with neurodegenerative diseases are less homogeneous than healthy subjects, and the gait rhythms of the patients contain much more high-frequency components. In addition, parameters of W and RE can significantly differentiate among the four groups of subjects (HD, ALS, PD, and healthy subjects) (with the minimum p-value of 0.0000493). Finally, five representative classifiers were utilized in order to evaluate the possible capabilities of W and RE to distinguish the patients with neurodegenerative diseases from the healthy subjects. This achieved maximum area under the curve values of 0.949, 0.900, and 0.934 for PD, HD, and ALS detection, respectively. In sum, our study suggests that gait rhythm features extracted in the frequency domain should be given consideration seriously in the future neurodegenerative disease characterization and intervention.

We normally react to individuals who exclude us socially by either avoiding them or increasing our attempts to interact with them. The neuropeptide oxytocin can promote social bonds and reduce social conflict and we therefore investigated whether it facilitates more positive social responses towards individuals who exclude or include us. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subject design 77 healthy Chinese male and female participants received intranasal oxytocin (40 IU) or placebo before playing a modified virtual ball-tossing game with three fictitious partners who either showed exclusion, inclusion or neutral behavioral interactions with them. Results showed that both male and female subjects threw the ball more often to individuals who excluded rather than included them, although oxytocin did not alter this or awareness/feelings of exclusion or inclusion. However, when subjects returned a week later males, but not females, in the oxytocin group exhibited an increased liking for, and preference for playing again with, players who had previously excluded them. This oxytocin effect was positively associated with independent traits. Our findings suggest that in a collectivist culture oxytocin may promote the desire of males, but not females, with a stronger independent orientation to rebuild social connections with individuals who have previously excluded them.