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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access published online on September 20, 2008
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi:10.1093/scan/nsn028
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© 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 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.


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