Peng Shenli, Kuang BeiBei, Hu Ping
College of Education, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, China.
The Institute for Mental Crisis Prevention and Intervention of College Students in Jiangsu Province, Nanjing Audit University, Nanjing, China.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2020 Aug 28;14:143. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00143. eCollection 2020.
The present study employs transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, to explore the possible role of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) in regulating in-group bias in facial emotional mimicry. Participants received either anodal or cathodal stimulation, or they were assigned to a sham condition. After that, they passively viewed a series of video clips depicting different emotions (happiness and anger) that were performed either by ethnic in-group or out-group models. The emotion-specific muscle activities, zygomatic major (ZM) and corrugator supercilii (CS) were recorded simultaneously as the index of facial emotional mimicry. The results first confirm the in-group bias in facial emotional mimicry in the sham condition, as shown in prior studies, though it only occurs in happy mimicry. Moreover, the in-group bias in facial emotional mimicry is modulated by the cortical excitability over the rTPJ, which may be attributed to the accompanied change of overlap of the mental representations of in-group and out-group. This study provides a close look at the neural underpinning of the modulation of facial emotional mimicry by group membership and highlights the role of rTPJ in on-line control of co-activated self and other representations in social cognition.
本研究采用经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）这一非侵入性脑刺激技术，以探究右侧颞顶联合区（rTPJ）在调节面部情绪模仿中的内群体偏见方面可能发挥的作用。参与者分别接受阳极刺激、阴极刺激，或者被分配到假刺激条件组。之后，他们被动观看一系列由内群体或外群体模型表现出不同情绪（快乐和愤怒）的视频片段。同时记录特定情绪的肌肉活动，即颧大肌（ZM）和皱眉肌（CS），作为面部情绪模仿的指标。结果首先证实了假刺激条件下面部情绪模仿中的内群体偏见，正如先前研究所示，不过它仅出现在快乐模仿中。此外，面部情绪模仿中的内群体偏见受rTPJ上方皮质兴奋性的调节，这可能归因于内群体和外群体心理表征重叠的伴随变化。本研究深入探讨了群体成员身份对面部情绪模仿调节的神经基础，并突出了rTPJ在社会认知中对自我和他人共同激活表征的在线控制作用。
