Cacioppo Stephanie, Bolmont Mylene, Monteleone George
a Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neuroscience , University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine , Chicago , IL , USA.
b High-Performance Electrical Neuroimaging Laboratory, Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience , University of Chicago , Chicago , IL , USA.
Soc Neurosci. 2018 Dec;13(6):718-738. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2017.1394911. Epub 2017 Oct 27.
Previous research has shown that specific goals and intentions influence a person's allocation of social attention. From a neural viewpoint, a growing body of evidence suggests that the inferior fronto-parietal network, including the mirror neuron system, plays a role in the planning and the understanding of motor intentions. However, it is unclear whether and when the mirror neuron system plays a role in social intentions. Combining a behavioral task with electrical neuroimaging in 22 healthy male participants, the current study investigates whether the temporal brain dynamic of the mirror neuron system differs during two types of social intentions i.e., lust vs. romantic intentions. Our results showed that 62% of the stimuli evoking lustful intentions also evoked romantic intentions, and both intentions were sustained by similar activations of the inferior frontal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule/angular gyrus for the first 432 ms after stimulus onset. Intentions to not love or not lust, on the other hand, were characterized by earlier differential activations of the inferior fronto-parietal network i.e., as early as 244 ms after stimulus onset. These results suggest that the mirror neuron system may not only code for the motor correlates of intentions, but also for the social meaning of intentions and its valence at both early/automatic and later/more elaborative stages of information processing.
先前的研究表明，特定的目标和意图会影响一个人的社会注意力分配。从神经学角度来看，越来越多的证据表明，包括镜像神经元系统在内的额顶叶下部网络在运动意图的规划和理解中发挥着作用。然而，尚不清楚镜像神经元系统是否以及何时在社会意图中发挥作用。本研究结合行为任务和对22名健康男性参与者的电神经成像，调查了镜像神经元系统在两种社会意图（即欲望意图与浪漫意图）期间的颞叶脑动态是否存在差异。我们的结果表明，62%引发欲望意图的刺激也会引发浪漫意图，并且在刺激开始后的前432毫秒内，两种意图都由额下回和顶下小叶/角回的类似激活来维持。另一方面，无爱或无欲望的意图在前额叶顶叶下部网络的早期差异激活中表现出来，即在刺激开始后244毫秒就出现了差异激活。这些结果表明，镜像神经元系统不仅可能编码意图的运动相关性，还可能编码意图的社会意义及其在信息处理的早期/自动阶段和后期/更精细阶段的效价。
