Abstract

The Medial Prefrontal Cortex (MPFC) is crucial for normal social functioning in humans. Because of its involvement in social monitoring, self-awareness, and self-enhancement, the MPFC may be critical to buffering negative affect and establishing a positive self-esteem. For example, we have previously found that disruption of the MPFC leads to more honest responses, which implies that the MPFC may be critically involved in self-deception. We therefore hypothesized that disrupting the MPFC would lead to a decrease in affect. Employing a virtual lesion TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) technique, we disrupted the MPFC while participants rated their mood based on two anchor affect terms. During TMS, the participants rated their current emotional mental state. Compared to sham TMS, it was found that mood was reduced immediately following single-pulse MPFC stimulation. The results supported the hypothesis the MPFC mood reduction occurs when the MPFC is disrupted. Because this study replicated the conditions employed in previous self-deception studies, we suggest that the results may indicate that lack of self-enhancement may lead to a decrease in mood. Further studies should examine this possibility.

摘要

内侧前额叶皮层 (MPFC) 对于人类正常的社会功能至关重要。由于它参与社会监控、自我意识和自我提升，MPFC 可能对缓冲负面影响和建立积极的自尊至关重要。例如，我们之前发现 MPFC 的中断会导致更诚实的反应，这意味着 MPFC 可能严重参与自我欺骗。因此，我们假设破坏 MPFC 会导致影响力下降。采用虚拟病变 TMS（经颅磁刺激）技术，我们扰乱了 MPFC，而参与者根据两个锚定影响术语评估他们的情绪。在 TMS 期间，参与者评估他们当前的情绪心理状态。与假 TMS 相比，发现单脉冲 MPFC 刺激后情绪立即降低。结果支持了当 MPFC 被打乱时 MPFC 情绪降低的假设。因为这项研究复制了之前的自我欺骗研究中使用的条件，我们认为结果可能表明缺乏自我提升可能导致情绪下降。进一步的研究应该检验这种可能性。