Ueda Ryuhei, Yanagisawa Kuniaki, Ashida Hiroshi, Abe Nobuhito
Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan.
The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Kojimachi Business Center Building, Tokyo, 102-0083, Japan.
Exp Brain Res. 2018 Mar;236(3):821-828. doi: 10.1007/s00221-018-5181-y. Epub 2018 Jan 17.
Individuals in the early stages of a romantic relationship generally express intense passionate love toward their partners. This observation allows us to hypothesize that the regulation of interest in extra-pair relationships by executive control, which is supported by the function of the prefrontal cortex, is less required in individuals in the early stages of a relationship than it is in those who are in a long-term relationship. To test this hypothesis, we asked male participants in romantic relationships to perform a go/no-go task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which is a well-validated task that can measure right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) activity implicated in executive control. Subsequently, the participants engaged in a date-rating task in which they rated how much they wanted to date unfamiliar females. We found that individuals with higher right VLPFC activity better regulated their interest in dates with unfamiliar females. Importantly, this relationship was found only in individuals with long-term partners, but not in those with short-term partners, indicating that the active regulation of interest in extra-pair relationships is required only in individuals in a long-term relationship. Our findings extend previous findings on executive control in the maintenance of monogamous relationships by highlighting the role of the VLPFC, which varies according to the stage of the romantic relationship.
处于浪漫关系早期阶段的个体通常会对其伴侣表达强烈的激情之爱。这一观察结果使我们能够假设，与长期恋爱关系中的个体相比，处于恋爱关系早期阶段的个体对伴侣之外关系的兴趣受前额叶皮质功能支持的执行控制调节的需求较少。为了验证这一假设，我们要求处于恋爱关系中的男性参与者在功能磁共振成像（fMRI）期间执行一个停止信号任务，这是一个经过充分验证的任务，可以测量与执行控制相关的右侧腹外侧前额叶皮质（VLPFC）的活动。随后，参与者参与了一个约会评分任务，在该任务中他们对自己想要与不熟悉的女性约会的程度进行评分。我们发现，右侧VLPFC活动较高的个体能够更好地调节他们对与不熟悉女性约会的兴趣。重要的是，这种关系仅在有长期伴侣的个体中发现，而在有短期伴侣的个体中未发现，这表明对伴侣之外关系的兴趣的积极调节仅在长期恋爱关系中的个体中是必需的。我们的研究结果通过强调VLPFC的作用扩展了先前关于执行控制在维持一夫一妻制关系中的研究发现，VLPFC的作用会根据浪漫关系的阶段而有所不同。
