The voice of conscience: neural bases of interpersonal guilt and compensation.

ABSTRACT: People feel bad for inflicting harms upon others; this emotional state is termed interpersonal guilt. In this study, the participant played multiple rounds of a dot-estimation task with anonymous partners while undergoing fMRI. The partner would receive pain stimulation if the partner or the participant or both responded incorrectly; the participant was then given the option to intervene and bear a proportion of pain for the partner. The level of pain voluntarily taken and the activations in anterior middle cingulate cortex (aMCC) and bilateral anterior insula (AI) were higher when the participant was solely responsible for the stimulation (Self_Incorrect) than when both committed an error (Both_Incorrect). Moreover, the gray matter volume in the aMCC predicted the individual's compensatio

SUBMITTER: Yu H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4127015 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature