Liao Chong, Wu Song, Luo Yue-Jia, Guan Qing, Cui Fang
College of Psychology and Sociology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China; Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Affective and Social Cognitive Science, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
College of Psychology and Sociology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
Neurosci Lett. 2018 May 1;674:54-59. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2018.03.027. Epub 2018 Mar 14.
Social decision-making engages traditional decision-making processes (e.g. valuation), as well as social cognition processes (e.g. inferring the affective and mental states of another person). Neuroimaging and neuro-stimulation studies have suggested the involvement of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in a variety of social decision-making tasks. Yet no study has investigated the effect of the cortical excitability of mPFC in the decision-making of costly helping behavior. Here, we used tDCS to demonstrate the causal relationship between the cortical excitability of mPFC and costly helping decision-making. Subjects assigned to the anodal, cathodal and sham groups were required to decide whether they would like to cost their own money to relieve another subject (a confederate actually) from painful electrical shocks with a certain probability of success. Results showed that the subjects receiving anodal stimulation acted more prosaically than the subjects receiving cathodal stimulation. And this effect was only significant when the probability of success was high. We proposed that tDCS induced modulation of the cortical excitability, targeting the mPFC, can affect the prosocial propensity in costly helping behavior, and the possible underlying mechanisms were discussed.
社会决策涉及传统决策过程（如评估）以及社会认知过程（如推断他人的情感和心理状态）。神经影像学和神经刺激研究表明，内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）参与了各种社会决策任务。然而，尚无研究调查mPFC的皮质兴奋性在代价高昂的帮助行为决策中的作用。在此，我们使用经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）来证明mPFC的皮质兴奋性与代价高昂的帮助决策之间的因果关系。分配到阳极、阴极和假刺激组的受试者被要求决定是否愿意花费自己的钱，以一定的成功概率减轻另一名受试者（实际上是一名同伙）遭受的痛苦电击。结果表明，接受阳极刺激的受试者比接受阴极刺激的受试者表现得更利他。而且这种效应仅在成功概率较高时显著。我们提出，针对mPFC的tDCS诱导的皮质兴奋性调节可以影响代价高昂的帮助行为中的亲社会倾向，并讨论了可能的潜在机制。
