Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University College London, London, UK.
Neuroimage. 2010 Apr 15;50(3):1340-9. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.12.091. Epub 2010 Jan 4.
While neuroimaging studies implicate medial rostral prefrontal cortex (mrPFC) in self-referential processing, simulation accounts of social cognition suggest that this region also supports thinking about other people. This study tested the prediction that mrPFC might be involved in appraising the personality traits of another person to the degree that this person is perceived as similar to oneself. We also examined whether recruiting common processes for thinking about oneself and others might impact on subsequent memory for those judgments. Functional MRI was used while two factors were crossed: (i) the requirement to engage in personality trait or episodic source memory judgments and (ii) the reference for these judgments (i.e., oneself or a friend). The results link haemodynamic changes in mrPFC to both personality judgments about oneself and subsequent episodic memory retrieval of these judgments. The degree to which BOLD signal in this region was also associated with thinking about others correlated with perceived similarity in both tasks, thus corroborating simulation accounts. Moreover, participants who perceived themselves as having similar traits to their friends tended to be poorer at remembering whether they had made trait judgments in reference to themselves or their friend. This behavioral effect was reflected in the BOLD signal in mrPFC: there was a positive correlation between signal change for self versus friend judgments and subsequent memory for the reference of such judgments. The results suggest that investigations of mrPFC activity in the context of self/other judgments should take into account this psychological similarity effect.
虽然神经影像学研究表明，内侧额极（mrPFC）参与了自我参照加工，但社会认知的模拟理论表明，该区域也支持对他人的思考。本研究检验了这样一个预测，即 mrPFC 可能参与评估另一个人的人格特质，程度是这个人被认为与自己相似。我们还研究了是否招募自我和他人思考的共同过程可能会影响对这些判断的后续记忆。当两个因素（人格特质或情景记忆来源判断的要求和这些判断的参考（即自己或朋友））交叉时，使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）。结果将 mrPFC 中的血液动力学变化与对自己的人格判断以及对这些判断的后续情景记忆检索联系起来。该区域的 BOLD 信号与对他人的思考的关联程度与这两个任务中的感知相似性相关，从而证实了模拟理论。此外，那些认为自己与朋友有相似特征的参与者往往更难以记住他们是否以自己或朋友为参照做出了特征判断。这种行为效应反映在 mrPFC 中的 BOLD 信号中：自我与朋友判断之间的信号变化与对这些判断参照的后续记忆呈正相关。结果表明，在自我/他人判断的背景下对 mrPFC 活动的研究应考虑到这种心理相似性效应。
