van Noordt Stefon J R, White Lars O, Wu Jia, Mayes Linda C, Crowley Michael J
Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Brock University, Saint Catharines, ON, Canada.
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany; Yale Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States.
Neuroimage. 2015 Sep;118:248-55. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.05.085. Epub 2015 Jun 3.
Social exclusion is a potent elicitor of distress. Previous studies have shown that medial frontal theta oscillations are modulated by the experience of social exclusion. Using the Cyberball paradigm, we examined event-related dynamics of theta power in the EEG at medial frontal sites while children aged 8-12 years were exposed to conditions of fair play and social exclusion. Using an event-related design, we found that medial frontal theta oscillations (4-8Hz) increase during both early (i.e., 200-400ms) and late (i.e., 400-800ms) processing of rejection events during social exclusion relative to perceptually identical "not my turn" events during inclusion. Importantly, we show that only for the later time window (400-800ms) slow-wave theta power tracks self-reported ostracism distress. Specifically, greater theta power at medial frontal sites to "rejection" events predicted higher levels of ostracism distress. Alpha and beta oscillations for rejection events were unrelated to ostracism distress at either 200-400ms or 400-800ms time windows. Our findings extend previous studies by showing that medial frontal theta oscillations for rejection events are a neural signature of social exclusion, linked to experienced distress in middle childhood.
社会排斥是一种引发痛苦的强大因素。先前的研究表明，内侧前额叶θ波振荡会受到社会排斥经历的调节。我们采用Cyberball范式，在8至12岁儿童经历公平游戏和社会排斥情境时，检测了内侧前额叶部位脑电图中θ波功率的事件相关动态变化。采用事件相关设计，我们发现，相对于在被接纳期间感知上相同的“没轮到我”事件，在社会排斥期间，内侧前额叶θ波振荡（4 - 8赫兹）在拒绝事件的早期（即200 - 400毫秒）和晚期（即400 - 800毫秒）处理过程中都会增加。重要的是，我们发现只有在较晚的时间窗口（400 - 800毫秒），慢波θ波功率才与自我报告的被排斥痛苦相关。具体而言，内侧前额叶部位对“拒绝”事件的θ波功率越大，预示着被排斥痛苦的程度越高。在200 - 400毫秒或400 - 800毫秒时间窗口内，拒绝事件的α波和β波振荡与被排斥痛苦均无关。我们的研究结果扩展了先前的研究，表明拒绝事件的内侧前额叶θ波振荡是社会排斥的神经标志，与童年中期经历的痛苦相关。
