University of Texas at Austin, USA.
University of Texas at Austin, USA.
Neuroimage. 2020 Jul 1;214:116752. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116752. Epub 2020 Mar 16.
The psychological nature of the association between MPFC modulation and social evaluation remains poorly understood. Despite confounds, small samples, and mixed results in existing research, MPFC activation is often interpreted as a reflection of socioemotional association and/or perceived similarity between the self and an evaluation target. The present research addressed issues from the existing literature by examining whether MPFC is modulated by (a) socioemotional associations unconfounded by previous knowledge (memory effects (Study 1, N = 48), repetition suppression (Study 2, N = 43), multi-voxel pattern analysis (Study 1 & 2)) and (b) perceived similarity to self (Study 2). MPFC was modulated by self-reference and trait-relevance, but there was not significant empirical support for the interpretation that MPFC modulation reflects socioemotional association or perceived similarity. These findings highlight the weak basis for prevailing assumptions about the psychological significance of MPFC in social evaluation and the need for studies which test multiple mechanisms.
MPFC 调节与社会评价之间的关联的心理本质仍未被充分理解。尽管存在混杂因素、样本量小和现有研究结果不一致的问题，但 MPFC 的激活通常被解释为自我和评价目标之间的社会情感关联和/或感知相似性的反映。本研究通过检查 MPFC 是否受到以下因素的调节来解决现有文献中的问题：(a) 不受先前知识影响的社会情感关联（记忆效应（研究 1，N=48），重复抑制（研究 2，N=43），多体素模式分析（研究 1 和 2））和 (b) 与自我的感知相似性（研究 2）。MPFC 受到自我参照和特质相关性的调节，但没有实证支持 MPFC 调节反映社会情感关联或感知相似性的解释。这些发现突显了流行的关于 MPFC 在社会评价中的心理意义的假设的基础薄弱，需要进行测试多种机制的研究。
