Neural Signatures of Third-party Punishment: Evidence from Penetrating Traumatic Brain Injury

Overview

Journal Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci

Specialties Neurology
Social Sciences

Date 2015 Aug 16

PMID 26276809

Citations 9

Authors

Leila Glass

Lara Moody

Jordan Grafman

Frank Krueger

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The ability to survive within a cooperative society depends on impartial third-party punishment (TPP) of social norm violations. Two cognitive mechanisms have been postulated as necessary for the successful completion of TPP: evaluation of legal responsibility and selection of a suitable punishment given the magnitude of the crime. Converging neuroimaging research suggests two supporting domain-general networks; a mentalizing network for evaluation of legal responsibility and a central-executive network for determination of punishment. A whole-brain voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping approach was used in conjunction with a rank-order TPP task to identify brain regions necessary for TPP in a large sample of patients with penetrating traumatic brain injury. Patients who demonstrated atypical TPP had specific lesions in core regions of the mentalizing (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex [PFC], ventromedial PFC) and central-executive (bilateral dorsolateral PFC, right intraparietal sulcus) networks. Altruism and executive functioning (concept formation skills) were significant predictors of TPP: altruism was uniquely associated with TPP in patients with lesions in right dorsolateral PFC and executive functioning was uniquely associated with TPP in individuals with lesions in left PFC. Our findings contribute to the extant literature to support underlying neural networks associated with TPP, with specific brain-behavior causal relationships confirming recent functional neuroimaging research.

Citing Articles

Neurocomputational evidence that conflicting prosocial motives guide distributive justice.

Li Y, Hu J, Ruff C, Zhou X Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022; 119(49):e2209078119.

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Intrinsic functional connectivity of the frontoparietal network predicts inter-individual differences in the propensity for costly third-party punishment.

Yang Q, Bellucci G, Hoffman M, Hsu K, Lu B, Deshpande G Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2021; 21(6):1222-1232.

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Effect of Modulating DLPFC Activity on Antisocial and Prosocial Behavior: Evidence From a tDCS Study.

Zheng W, Li Y, Ye H, Luo J Front Psychol. 2021; 11:579792.

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Neurocognitive mechanisms of reactions to second- and third-party justice violations.

Civai C, Huijsmans I, Sanfey A Sci Rep. 2019; 9(1):9271.

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Soft on crime: Patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage allocate reduced third-party punishment to violent criminals.

Asp E, Gullickson J, Warner K, Koscik T, Denburg N, Tranel D Cortex. 2019; 119:33-45.

PMID: 31071555 PMC: 7771036. DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.03.024.

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