title: Modulating the Activity of Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex by Anodal tDCS Enhances the Trustee's Repayment through Altruism.
abstract: Trust and trustworthiness are essential to an efficient economy and play crucial roles in social life. Previous evidence from behavioral experiments has revealed that the trustworthiness of individuals is closely related with their altruistic preference. It has been demonstrated that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is associated with decisions involving trustworthiness. Moreover, vmPFC lesion patients showed less trustworthiness and altruism than control subjects, indicating the indispensable role of this specific brain area in human social interactions. However, the causal relationship between this neural area and trustworthiness, as well as altruism, has not been fully revealed. The potential neural basis behind the behavior of trustees' repayment has also seldom been discussed. In the present study, we aimed to provide evidence of a direct link between the neural and behavioral results through the application of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the vmPFC of our participants. We found that activating the vmPFC could promote both the trustworthiness and altruism of our participants. We also show that enhancing the excitability of the vmPFC using tDCS increased the trustworthiness of the participants, and this promoting effect might be attributable to the enhancement of individuals' altruistic preference. In addition, we revealed that the enhancing effect in trustworthiness and altruism might be specific to the activation of the vmPFC by applying tDCS over another brain region within the prefrontal cortex as a control site. Crucially, our findings provide direct evidence supporting the critical role of the vmPFC in cooperative behaviors in economic interactions, especially the trustees' repayment in the trust game and the dictators' altruistic transfer in the dictator game.
authors.affiliation: College of Economics and Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou China.
authors.forename: Haoli
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: College of Economics and Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou China.
authors.forename: Daqiang
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: College of Economics and Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou China.
authors.forename: Shu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Economics and Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou China.
authors.forename: Siqi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: College of Economics and Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou China.
authors.forename: Wenmin
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: School of Economics, Center for Economic Behavior and Decision-making, Neuro and Behavior EconLab, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: College of Economics and Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences, Zhejiang University, HangzhouChina; School of Economics, Center for Economic Behavior and Decision-making, Neuro and Behavior EconLab, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, HangzhouChina.
authors.forename: Hang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.affiliation: College of Economics and Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou China.
authors.forename: Yefeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
keywords: altruism; dictator game; transcranial direct current stimulation; trust game; trustworthiness; ventromedial prefrontal cortex