Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Science and Medicine and Department of Psychology, School of Humanities & Social Science, University of Science & Technology of China, Hefei, 230027, China; Department of Philosophy, School of Humanities, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China.
Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Science and Medicine and Department of Psychology, School of Humanities & Social Science, University of Science & Technology of China, Hefei, 230027, China.
Neuroimage. 2024 Nov 1;301:120879. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120879. Epub 2024 Oct 5.
The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) plays a crucial role in social cognitive functions, including perspective-taking. Although perspective-taking has been linked to self-control, the mechanism by which the dmPFC might facilitate self-control remains unclear. Using the multimodal neuroimaging dataset from the Human Connectome Project (Study 1, N =978 adults), we established a reliable association between the dmPFC and self-control, as measured by discounting rate-the tendency to prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed ones. Experiments (Study 2, N = 36 adults) involving high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation showed that anodal stimulation of the dmPFC reduces the discounting of delayed rewards and decreases the congruency effect in egocentric but not allocentric perspective in the visual perspective-taking tasks. These findings suggest that the dmPFC promotes self-control by inhibiting the egocentric perspective, offering new insights into the neural underpinnings of self-control and perspective-taking, and opening new avenues for interventions targeting disorders characterized by impaired self-regulation.
背内侧前额叶皮层（dmPFC）在社会认知功能中起着至关重要的作用，包括换位思考。尽管换位思考与自我控制有关，但 dmPFC 促进自我控制的机制尚不清楚。我们使用人类连接组计划（Study 1，N = 978 名成年人）的多模态神经影像学数据集，建立了 dmPFC 与自我控制之间的可靠关联，自我控制通过折扣率来衡量，即更倾向于选择较小的、即时的奖励而不是较大的、延迟的奖励。涉及高清晰度经颅直流电刺激的实验（Study 2，N = 36 名成年人）表明，dmPFC 的阳极刺激可减少延迟奖励的折扣，减少在自我中心但不是在以自我为中心的视觉视角任务中的分配中心视角的一致性效应。这些发现表明，dmPFC 通过抑制自我中心的视角来促进自我控制，为自我控制和换位思考的神经基础提供了新的见解，并为针对以自我调节受损为特征的障碍的干预措施开辟了新途径。
