Zahn Roland, Moll Jorge, Paiva Mirella, Garrido Griselda, Krueger Frank, Huey Edward D, Grafman Jordan
National Institutes of Health, National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Cognitive Neuroscience Section, Bethesda, MD 20892-1440, USA.
Cereb Cortex. 2009 Feb;19(2):276-83. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhn080. Epub 2008 May 22.
Social values are composed of social concepts (e.g., "generosity") and context-dependent moral sentiments (e.g., "pride"). The neural basis of this intricate cognitive architecture has not been investigated thus far. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging while subjects imagined their own actions toward another person (self-agency) which either conformed or were counter to a social value and were associated with pride or guilt, respectively. Imagined actions of another person toward the subjects (other-agency) in accordance with or counter to a value were associated with gratitude or indignation/anger. As hypothesized, superior anterior temporal lobe (aTL) activity increased with conceptual detail in all conditions. During self-agency, activity in the anterior ventromedial prefrontal cortex correlated with pride and guilt, whereas activity in the subgenual cingulate solely correlated with guilt. In contrast, indignation/anger activated lateral orbitofrontal-insular cortices. Pride and gratitude additionally evoked mesolimbic and basal forebrain activations. Our results demonstrate that social values emerge from coactivation of stable abstract social conceptual representations in the superior aTL and context-dependent moral sentiments encoded in fronto-mesolimbic regions. This neural architecture may provide the basis of our ability to communicate about the meaning of social values across cultural contexts without limiting our flexibility to adapt their emotional interpretation.
社会价值观由社会概念（如“慷慨”）和依赖情境的道德情感（如“自豪”）组成。迄今为止，尚未对这种复杂认知结构的神经基础进行研究。在此，我们使用功能磁共振成像，让受试者想象自己对他人的行为（自我能动性），这些行为要么符合要么违背一种社会价值观，并分别与自豪或内疚相关联。想象他人对受试者的行为（他人能动性）符合或违背一种价值观，分别与感激或愤慨/愤怒相关联。正如所假设的，在所有情况下，颞上叶前部（aTL）的活动随着概念细节的增加而增强。在自我能动性过程中，腹内侧前额叶皮层前部的活动与自豪和内疚相关，而膝下扣带回的活动仅与内疚相关。相比之下，愤慨/愤怒激活了外侧眶额 - 脑岛皮层。自豪和感激还额外引发了中脑边缘和基底前脑的激活。我们的结果表明，社会价值观源于颞上叶前部稳定的抽象社会概念表征与额 - 中脑边缘区域编码的依赖情境的道德情感的共同激活。这种神经结构可能为我们在跨文化背景下交流社会价值观的意义提供基础，同时又不限制我们灵活调整其情感解读的能力。
