What is in a word? No versus Yes differentially engage the lateral orbitofrontal cortex.
The words "No" and "Yes" are involved in conditioning to prohibit or encourage behavior, respectively. The authors, therefore, hypothesized that these words would be attributed to endogenous valence, activating neuronal circuits involved with valence and emotional control. Functional MRI (fMRI) at 4 Tesla was used to record regional brain activity while participants were exposed to emphatic vocalizations of the words. Results showed that No and Yes were associated with opposite brain-behavior responses; while No was negatively valenced, produced slower response times, and evoked a negative signal in the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), Yes was positively valenced, produced faster response times, and evoked a positive signal in a contiguous region of the OFC. Attribution of negative valence to No and trait anger control were associated with increased responsivity of the OFC to No. Inasmuch as sensitivity to the prohibitive command No develops during childhood through interaction with primary caregivers as the first social objects, our findings may implicate the lateral OFC in the neurobiology of emotion regulation and subsequent social development.
Alia-Klein
Nelly
N
Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Goldstein
Rita Z
RZ
Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Tomasi
Dardo
D
Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Zhang
Lei
L
Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Fagin-Jones
Stephanie
S
Columbia University, Teachers College.
Telang
Frank
F
Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Wang
Gene-Jack
GJ
Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Fowler
Joanna S
JS
Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Volkow
Nora D
ND
National Institute on Drug Abuse.
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D019260:Expressed Emotion; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D012927:Social Control, Informal; D014825:Vocabulary