Previous studies on romantic love have reported increased neural activity in the brain's reward circuitry such as the striatum. To date, the extent to which this activity is modulated by couple conflict in general and mediated couple conflict in particular, is unknown. The present study seeks to fill this gap by randomly assigning 36 romantic heterosexual couples to a mediated or non-mediated conflict discussion. Before and after the conflict discussion, self-reports and functional neuroimaging data in response to a picture of the romantic partner versus an unknown person were acquired. Self-reports indicate that mediation increases conflict resolution, satisfaction about the contents and process of the discussion and decreases levels of remaining disagreement. Pre-conflict neuroimaging results replicate previous studies on romantic love, showing activations in the striatum, insula, anterior and posterior cingulate gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, hippocampus, temporal and occipital poles and amygdala when viewing the romantic partner versus an unknown person. The general effect of conflict on neural activations in response to the romantic partner across both conditions consisted of deactivations in the striatum, insula, thalamus, precuneus and ventral tegmental area. Small volume correction analyses revealed that participants in the mediated condition trended towards having greater activation in the nucleus accumbens than participants in the non-mediated condition when looking at the romantic partner versus the unknown after the conflict discussion. Parametric modulation analyses also revealed greater activity in the nucleus accumbens when viewing the romantic partner versus the unknown for participants who felt more satisfied after the conflict resolution. Our results illustrate that mediation improves conflict resolution and is associated with increased activity in the nucleus accumbens, a key region in the brain's reward circuitry.

先前关于浪漫爱情的研究报告说，大脑的奖励电路（如纹状体）中神经活动的增加。迄今为止，尚不清楚这种活动在多大程度上受到夫妻冲突尤其是通过介导的夫妻冲突调节的程度。本研究试图通过随机分配36对浪漫异性恋夫妇参加调解或非调解冲突讨论来填补这一空白。在冲突讨论之前和之后，获得了针对浪漫伴侣与陌生人的照片的自我报告和功能性神经影像数据。自我报告表明，调解提高了解决冲突的能力，提高了讨论内容和过程的满意度，并减少了剩余分歧的程度。冲突前神经影像学结果重复了先前关于浪漫爱情的研究，当观察一个陌生人与一个陌生人的伴侣时，显示纹状体，岛状，前扣带回和后扣带回，眶额皮层，海马，颞枕骨和杏仁核的激活。在这两种情况下，冲突对浪漫伴侣的神经激活的一般影响包括纹状体，岛状，丘脑，前突和腹侧被盖区的失活。小量校正分析显示，在冲突讨论之后，对浪漫伴侣和未知伴侣进行观察时，处于介导状态的参与者比未处于中介状态的参与者倾向于在伏隔核中具有更大的激活。参数调制分析还显示，对于那些在解决冲突后感到更满意的参与者，在寻找浪漫伴侣时，伏隔核的活动性要强于未知伴侣。我们的研究结果表明，调解可以改善冲突的解决，并且与伏隔核（大脑奖励电路的关键区域）的活动增加有关。