Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (BNU), Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Magnetic Resonance Imaging Center, Center for Brain Disorders and Cognitive Sciences, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
Psychol Med. 2023 Sep;53(12):5415-5427. doi: 10.1017/S0033291722002483. Epub 2022 Aug 19.
As an integral ingredient of human sociality, prosocial behavior requires learning what acts can benefit or harm others. However, it remains unknown how individuals adjust prosocial learning to avoid punishment or to pursue reward. Given that arginine vasopressin (AVP) is a neuropeptide that has been involved in modulating various social behaviors in mammals, it could be a crucial neurochemical facilitator that supports prosocial learning.
In 50 placebo controls and 54 participants with AVP administration, we examined the modulation of AVP on the prosocial learning characterized by reward and punishment framework, as well as its underlying neurocomputational mechanisms combining computational modeling, event-related potentials and oscillations.
We found a self-bias that individuals learn to avoid punishment asymmetrically more severely than reward-seeking. Importantly, AVP increased behavioral performances and learning rates when making decisions to avoid losses for others and to obtain gains for self. These behavioral effects were underpinned by larger responses of stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) to anticipation, as well as higher punishment-related feedback-related negativity (FRN) for prosocial learning and reward-related P300 for proself benefits, while FRN and P300 neural processes were integrated into theta (4-7 Hz) oscillation at the outcome evaluation stage.
These results suggest that AVP context-dependently up-regulates altruism for concerning others' losses and reward-seeking for self-oriented benefits. Our findings provide insight into the selectively modulatory roles of AVP in prosocial behaviors depending on learning contexts between proself reward-seeking and prosocial punishment-avoidance.
作为人类社会性的一个组成部分，亲社会行为需要学习哪些行为可以有益于或伤害他人。然而，目前尚不清楚个体如何调整亲社会学习以避免惩罚或追求奖励。鉴于精氨酸加压素（AVP）是一种参与调节哺乳动物各种社会行为的神经肽，它可能是支持亲社会学习的关键神经化学促进剂。
在 50 名安慰剂对照者和 54 名接受 AVP 给药的参与者中，我们研究了 AVP 对以奖励和惩罚框架为特征的亲社会学习的调节作用，以及结合计算建模、事件相关电位和振荡的其潜在神经计算机制。
我们发现个人有一种自我偏见，即他们学会避免惩罚的不对称性比追求奖励更严重。重要的是，AVP 增加了个体为他人避免损失和为自己获得收益而做出决策时的行为表现和学习速度。这些行为效应的基础是刺激前负波（SPN）对预期的反应更大，以及对亲社会学习的惩罚相关反馈相关负波（FRN）和对亲自我利益的奖励相关 P300 更高，而 FRN 和 P300 神经过程在结果评估阶段整合到θ（4-7 Hz）振荡中。
这些结果表明，AVP 依赖于情境来增强对他人损失的利他主义和对自我导向利益的奖励寻求。我们的研究结果提供了对 AVP 在亲社会行为中具有选择性调节作用的深入了解，具体取决于亲自我奖励寻求和亲社会惩罚回避之间的学习情境。
