Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
Faculty of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden 01062, Germany; Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden 01062, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
Neuroimage. 2024 Aug 15;297:120756. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120756. Epub 2024 Jul 27.
In social interaction, age-related differences in emotional processing may lead to varied social decision making between young and older adults. However, previous studies of social decision making have paid less attention to the interactants' emotions, leaving age differences and underlying neural mechanisms unexplored. To address this gap, the present study combined functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging, employing a modified dictator game task with recipients displaying either neutral or sad facial expressions. Behavioral results indicated that although older adults' overall allocations did not differ significantly from those of young adults, older adults' allocations showing a decrease in emotion-related generosity compared to young adults. Using representational similarity analysis, we found that older adults showed reduced neural representations of recipients' emotions and gray matter volume in the right anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC), right insula, and left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) compared to young adults. More importantly, mediation analyses indicated that age influenced allocations not only through serial mediation of neural representations of the right insula and left DMPFC, but also through serial mediation of the mean gray matter volume of the right ACC and left DMPFC. This study identifies the potential neural pathways through which age affects emotion-related social decision making, advancing our understanding of older adults' social interaction behavior that they may not be less generous unless confronted with individuals with specific emotions.
在社交互动中，情绪处理方面的年龄差异可能导致年轻人和老年人之间的社会决策存在差异。然而，之前关于社会决策的研究较少关注互动者的情绪，因此没有探讨年龄差异和潜在的神经机制。为了解决这一差距，本研究结合了功能和结构磁共振成像，采用了改良的独裁者游戏任务，让接受者展示中性或悲伤的面部表情。行为结果表明，尽管老年人的总体分配与年轻人没有显著差异，但与年轻人相比，老年人的分配表现出与情绪相关的慷慨程度下降。使用表示相似性分析，我们发现与年轻人相比，老年人的右前扣带皮层（ACC）、右岛叶和左背内侧前额叶皮质（DMPFC）的接受者情绪的神经表示和灰质体积减少。更重要的是，中介分析表明，年龄不仅通过右岛叶和左 DMPFC 的神经表示的序列中介，而且通过右 ACC 和左 DMPFC 的平均灰质体积的序列中介影响分配。这项研究确定了年龄影响情绪相关社会决策的潜在神经途径，增进了我们对老年人社交互动行为的理解，即除非面对具有特定情绪的个体，否则他们可能不会不那么慷慨。
