CP: neuroscience; affective mental state; aging; emotion inference; functional magnetic resonance imaging; medial prefrontal cortex; predictive value; representational similarity analysis; social cognition; theory of mind; uncertainty; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Female; Male; Aged; Adult; Young Adult; Aging; Prefrontal Cortex/physiology; Emotions/physiology; Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (all)
Abstract :
[en] The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) weighs options during decision-making, but its role in inferring competing emotional states and how this process changes with age, remain unclear. We recorded brain activity with functional MRI while 20 young and 40 older adults inferred the emotions of actors shown in ecological yet controlled social interactions. Socially shared representations about the timing, accuracy, and uncertainty of emotional inferences were defined using response distributions from an independent sample viewing the same scenes. mPFC activity is sensitive to emotional inference and scales with the social uncertainty of alternative emotional hypotheses. Social consensus regarding the emotional conflict elicited by the actors' interaction is associated with increased representational similarity in the mPFC, with this effect being modulated by age. Together, these results indicate that the mPFC integrates the variability of social representations to infer emotions in others and provide an account of age-related changes in social cognition.
Disciplines :
Neurosciences & behavior
Author, co-author :
Le Petit, Marine ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de Psychologie > Neuropsychologie de l'adulte
Gagnepain, Pierre; Normandie University, UNICAEN, PSL Université Paris, EPHE, INSERM, U1077, CHU de Caen, Centre Cyceron, Neuropsychologie et Imagerie de La Mémoire Humaine, 14000 Caen, France
Bejanin, Alexandre; Normandie University, UNICAEN, PSL Université Paris, EPHE, INSERM, U1077, CHU de Caen, Centre Cyceron, Neuropsychologie et Imagerie de La Mémoire Humaine, 14000 Caen, France, Sant Pau Memory Unit, Department of Neurology, Hospital de La Santa Creu I Sant Pau, Biomedical Research Institute Sant Pau, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08025 Barcelona, Spain, Center of Biomedical Investigation Network for Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED), 28029 Madrid, Spain
de La Sayette, Vincent; Normandie University, UNICAEN, PSL Université Paris, EPHE, INSERM, U1077, CHU de Caen, Centre Cyceron, Neuropsychologie et Imagerie de La Mémoire Humaine, 14000 Caen, France
Eustache, Francis; Normandie University, UNICAEN, PSL Université Paris, EPHE, INSERM, U1077, CHU de Caen, Centre Cyceron, Neuropsychologie et Imagerie de La Mémoire Humaine, 14000 Caen, France
Laisney, Mickaël; Normandie University, UNICAEN, PSL Université Paris, EPHE, INSERM, U1077, CHU de Caen, Centre Cyceron, Neuropsychologie et Imagerie de La Mémoire Humaine, 14000 Caen, France. Electronic address: mickael.laisney@ephe.psl.eu
Language :
English
Title :
Socially shared emotions shape the activity of the medial prefrontal cortex during inference of others' emotional states.
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