Skip Navigation


Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on September 20, 2008
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2009 4(1):10-22; doi:10.1093/scan/nsn028
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
4/1/10    most recent
nsn028v1
Right arrow E-letters: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when E-letters are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Newman-Norlund, R. D.
Right arrow Articles by Bekkering, H.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Newman-Norlund, R. D.
Right arrow Articles by Bekkering, H.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Self-identification and empathy modulate error-related brain activity during the observation of penalty shots between friend and foe

Roger D. Newman-Norlund1,2, Shanti Ganesh3, Hein T. van Schie1,3, Ellen R. A. De Bruijn1 and Harold Bekkering1,2

1Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, Radboud University Nijmegen, PO Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, 2FC Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen, PO Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen and 3Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, PO Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands

The ability to detect and process errors made by others plays an important role is many social contexts. The capacity to process errors is typically found to rely on sites in the medial frontal cortex. However, it remains to be determined whether responses at these sites are driven primarily by action errors themselves or by the affective consequences normally associated with their commission. Using an experimental paradigm that disentangles action errors and the valence of their affective consequences, we demonstrate that sites in the medial frontal cortex (MFC), including the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (vACC) and pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), respond to action errors independent of the valence of their consequences. The strength of this response was negatively correlated with the empathic concern subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. We also demonstrate a main effect of self-identification by showing that errors committed by friends and foes elicited significantly different BOLD responses in a separate region of the middle anterior cingulate cortex (mACC). These results suggest that the way we look at others plays a critical role in determining patterns of brain activation during error observation. These findings may have important implications for general theories of error processing.

Keywords: self-identification; error; reward; empathy; MFC

Correspondence should be addressed to Roger D. Newman-Norlund, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information (NICI), Montessorilaan 3, 6525 HR Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail: rogern{at}nici.ru.nl

Received January 15, 2008. Accepted August 1, 2008.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.