Center for Research in Experimental Economics and Political Decision Making (CREED), Amsterdam School of Economics and Amsterdam Brain and Cognition (ABC), University of Amsterdam and the Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research, Department of Economics, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
Sci Adv. 2019 Mar 13;5(3):eaau3413. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aau3413. eCollection 2019 Mar.
Aversive affect is likely a key source of irrational human decision-making, but still, little is known about the neural circuitry underlying emotion-cognition interactions during social behavior. We induced incidental aversive affect via prolonged periods of threat of shock, while 41 healthy participants made investment decisions concerning another person or a lottery. Negative affect reduced trust, suppressed trust-specific activity in the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ), and reduced functional connectivity between the TPJ and emotion-related regions such as the amygdala. The posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) seems to play a key role in mediating the impact of affect on behavior: Functional connectivity of this brain area with left TPJ was associated with trust in the absence of negative affect, but aversive affect disrupted this association between TPJ-pSTS connectivity and behavioral trust. Our findings may be useful for a better understanding of the neural circuitry of affective distortions in healthy and pathological populations.
厌恶情绪可能是人类非理性决策的一个关键来源，但对于社会行为过程中情绪与认知相互作用的神经回路仍然知之甚少。我们通过长时间的电击威胁来诱发偶然的厌恶情绪，同时让 41 名健康参与者对他人或彩票进行投资决策。负面情绪降低了信任，抑制了左侧颞顶联合区（TPJ）的信任特异性活动，并降低了 TPJ 与杏仁核等情绪相关区域之间的功能连接。后上颞叶回（pSTS）似乎在介导情绪对行为的影响方面起着关键作用：该脑区与左侧 TPJ 的功能连接与在没有负面情绪时的信任有关，但厌恶情绪破坏了 TPJ-pSTS 连接与行为信任之间的这种关联。我们的研究结果可能有助于更好地理解健康和病理人群中情感扭曲的神经回路。
