Social pain and social gain in the adolescent brain: A common neural circuitry underlying both positive and negative social evaluation.
Social interaction inherently involves the subjective evaluation of cues salient to social inclusion and exclusion. Testifying to the importance of such social cues, parts of the neural system dedicated to the detection of physical pain, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI), have been shown to be equally sensitive to the detection of social pain experienced after social exclusion. However, recent work suggests that this dACC-AI matrix may index any socially pertinent information. We directly tested the hypothesis that the dACC-AI would respond to cues of both inclusion and exclusion, using a novel social feedback fMRI paradigm in a population-derived sample of adolescents. We show that the dACC and left AI are commonly activated by feedback cues of inclusion and exclusion. Our findings suggest that theoretical accounts of the dACC-AI network as a neural alarm system restricted within the social domain to the processing of signals of exclusion require significant revision.
Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, CB2 7EF, UK.
Tim
T
Dalgleish
School of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK.
Nicholas D
ND
Walsh
Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Blvd., MC 228-77, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
Dean
D
Mobbs
Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, CB2 7EF, UK.
Susanne
S
Schweizer
Developmental Psychiatry Section, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 8AH, UK.
Anne-Laura
AL
van Harmelen
Washington Singer Laboratories, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QG, UK.
Barnaby
B
Dunn
Developmental Psychiatry Section, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 8AH, UK.
Valerie
V
Dunn
Developmental Psychiatry Section, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 8AH, UK.
Ian
I
Goodyer
Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, CB2 7EF, UK.
Jason
J
Stretton
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009434:Neural Pathways; D010146:Pain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012929:Psychological Distance; D012931:Social Environment; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult