Steinbeis Nikolaus, Bernhardt Boris C, Singer Tania
Department of Social Neuroscience, Max-Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
Department of Social Neuroscience, Max-Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 04109 Leipzig, Germany.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2015 Feb;10(2):302-10. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsu057. Epub 2014 Apr 24.
Humans often judge others egocentrically, assuming that they feel or think similarly to themselves. Emotional egocentricity bias (EEB) occurs in situations when others feel differently to oneself. Using a novel paradigm, we investigated the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the developmental capacity to overcome such EEB in children compared with adults. We showed that children display a stronger EEB than adults and that this correlates with reduced activation in right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG) as well as reduced coupling between rSMG and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) in children compared with adults. Crucially, functional recruitment of rSMG was associated with age-related differences in cortical thickness of this region. Although in adults the mere presence of emotional conflict occurs between self and other recruited rSMG, rSMG-lDLPFC coupling was only observed when implementing empathic judgements. Finally, resting state analyses comparing connectivity patterns of rSMG with that of right temporoparietal junction suggested a unique role of rSMG for self-other distinction in the emotional domain for adults as well as for children. Thus, children's difficulties in overcoming EEB may be due to late maturation of regions distinguishing between conflicting socio-affective information and relaying this information to regions necessary for implementing accurate judgments.
人类常常以自我为中心地评判他人,假定他人的感受或想法与自己相似。当他人的感受与自己不同时,就会出现情绪自我中心偏差(EEB)。我们采用一种新的范式,研究了与成年人相比,儿童克服这种EEB的发展能力背后的神经认知机制。我们发现,儿童表现出比成年人更强的EEB,并且与成年人相比,这与儿童右侧缘上回(rSMG)激活减少以及rSMG与左侧背外侧前额叶皮层(lDLPFC)之间的耦合减少有关。至关重要的是,rSMG的功能性募集与该区域皮质厚度的年龄相关差异有关。虽然在成年人中,自我与被招募的rSMG之间仅存在情感冲突,但只有在进行共情判断时才观察到rSMG-lDLPFC耦合。最后,比较rSMG与右侧颞顶联合区连接模式的静息状态分析表明,rSMG在成年人和儿童的情感领域自我-他人区分中具有独特作用。因此,儿童在克服EEB方面的困难可能是由于区分冲突的社会情感信息并将该信息传递给进行准确判断所需区域的区域成熟较晚。