Citation

King JA, Blair RJ, Mitchell DGV, Dolan RJ, Burgess N. Neuroimage 2006; 30(3): 1069-1076.

Affiliation

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Anatomy, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK. John.King@ucl.ac.uk

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.10.011

PMID

16307895

Abstract

Humans have a considerable facility to adapt their behavior in a manner that is appropriate to social or societal context. A failure of this ability can lead to social exclusion and is a feature of disorders such as psychopathy and disruptive behavior disorder. We investigated the neural basis of this ability using a customized video game played by 12 healthy participants in an fMRI scanner. Two conditions involved extreme examples of context-appropriate action: shooting an aggressive humanoid assailant or healing a passive wounded person. Two control conditions involved carefully matched stimuli paired with inappropriate actions: shooting the person or healing the assailant. Surprisingly, the same circuit, including the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, was activated when participants acted in a context-appropriate manner, whether being compassionate towards an injured conspecific or aggressive towards a violent assailant. The findings indicate a common system that guides behavioral expression appropriate to social or societal context irrespective of its aggressive or compassionate nature.

Language: en