Duran Kelly A, O'Halloran Hannah, Soder Heather, Yasin Saeed, Kramer Rachel, Rosen Sydney, Brenya Janet, Chavarria Katherine, Savitska Liliia, Keenan Julian Paul
School of Public Policy and Administration, University of Delaware, Newark, New Jersey, USA.
Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, USA.
Int J Neurosci. 2021 Jul;131(7):701-707. doi: 10.1080/00207454.2020.1753729. Epub 2020 Jun 2.
The Medial Prefrontal Cortex (MPFC) is crucial for normal social functioning in humans. Because of its involvement in social monitoring, self-awareness, and self-enhancement, the MPFC may be critical to buffering negative affect and establishing a positive self-esteem. For example, we have previously found that disruption of the MPFC leads to more honest responses, which implies that the MPFC may be critically involved in self-deception. We therefore hypothesized that disrupting the MPFC would lead to a decrease in affect. Employing a virtual lesion TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) technique, we disrupted the MPFC while participants rated their mood based on two anchor affect terms. During TMS, the participants rated their current emotional mental state. Compared to sham TMS, it was found that mood was reduced immediately following single-pulse MPFC stimulation. The results supported the hypothesis the MPFC mood reduction occurs when the MPFC is disrupted. Because this study replicated the conditions employed in previous self-deception studies, we suggest that the results may indicate that lack of self-enhancement may lead to a decrease in mood. Further studies should examine this possibility.
内侧前额叶皮质（MPFC）对人类正常的社会功能至关重要。由于其参与社会监测、自我意识和自我提升，MPFC可能对缓冲负面影响和建立积极的自尊至关重要。例如，我们之前发现，MPFC的破坏会导致更诚实的反应，这意味着MPFC可能在自我欺骗中起关键作用。因此，我们假设破坏MPFC会导致情绪下降。采用虚拟损伤经颅磁刺激（TMS）技术，我们在参与者根据两个锚定情感术语对其情绪进行评分时破坏了MPFC。在TMS期间，参与者对他们当前的情绪心理状态进行评分。与假TMS相比，发现单脉冲MPFC刺激后情绪立即降低。结果支持了这样的假设，即当MPFC被破坏时会出现MPFC情绪降低。由于这项研究重复了先前自我欺骗研究中采用的条件，我们认为结果可能表明缺乏自我提升可能导致情绪下降。进一步的研究应该检验这种可能性。
