Laboratory of Integrated Theoretical Neuroscience, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2011 Jun;6(3):338-47. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsq042. Epub 2010 May 25.
Cooperation among genetically unrelated individuals is a fundamental aspect of society, but it has been a longstanding puzzle in biological and social sciences. Recently, theoretical studies in biology and economics showed that conditional cooperation-cooperating only with those who have exhibited cooperative behavior-can spread over a society. Furthermore, experimental studies in psychology demonstrated that people are actually conditional cooperators. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural system underlying conditional cooperation by scanning participants during interaction with cooperative, neutral and non-cooperative opponents in prisoner's dilemma games. The results showed that: (i) participants cooperated more frequently with both cooperative and neutral opponents than with non-cooperative opponents; and (ii) a brain area related to cognitive inhibition of pre-potent responses (right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) showed greater activation, especially when participants confronted non-cooperative opponents. Consequently, we suggest that cognitive inhibition of the motivation to cooperate with non-cooperators drives the conditional behavior.
非亲属个体之间的合作是社会的一个基本方面，但它一直是生物学和社会科学中长期存在的难题。最近，生物学和经济学的理论研究表明，条件合作——只与表现出合作行为的人合作——可以在社会中传播。此外，心理学的实验研究表明，人们实际上是有条件的合作者。在这项研究中，我们使用功能磁共振成像来研究囚徒困境游戏中与合作、中立和非合作对手互动时的条件合作的神经基础，对参与者进行了扫描。结果表明：（i）参与者与合作和中立对手的合作频率都高于与非合作对手的合作频率；（ii）与潜在反应的认知抑制相关的大脑区域（右侧背外侧前额叶皮层）表现出更大的激活，尤其是当参与者面对非合作对手时。因此，我们认为，对与非合作者合作的动机的认知抑制驱动了条件行为。
