The nucleus accumbens is involved in both the pursuit of social reward and the avoidance of social punishment

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• 作者：Gregor Kohls ; Michael T. Perino ; James M. Taylor ; Elizabeth N. Madva ; Sarah J. Cayless ; Vanessa Troiani ; Elinora Price ; Susan Faja ; John D. Herrington ; Robert T. Schultz
• 关键词：Ventral striatum ; Nucleus accumbens ; Social reward ; Social punishment ; Motivation ; Avoidance
• 刊名：Neuropsychologia
• 出版年：2013
• 出版时间：September, 2013
• 年：2013
• 卷：51
• 期：11
• 页码：2062-2069
• 全文大小：1195 K

文摘

Human social motivation is characterized by the pursuit of social reward and the avoidance of social punishment. The ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens (VS/Nacc), in particular, has been implicated in the reward component of social motivation, i.e., the ¡®wanting¡¯ of social incentives like approval. However, it is unclear to what extent the VS/Nacc is involved in avoiding social punishment like disapproval, an intrinsically pleasant outcome. Thus, we conducted an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study using a social incentive delay task with dynamic video stimuli instead of static pictures as social incentives in order to examine participants¡¯ motivation for social reward gain and social punishment avoidance. As predicted, the anticipation of avoidable social punishment (i.e., disapproval) recruited the VS/Nacc in a manner that was similar to VS/Nacc activation observed during the anticipation of social reward gain (i.e., approval). Stronger VS/Nacc activity was accompanied by faster reaction times of the participants to obtain those desired outcomes. This data support the assumption that dynamic social incentives elicit robust VS/Nacc activity, which likely reflects motivation to obtain social reward and to avoid social punishment. Clinical implications regarding the involvement of the VS/Nacc in social motivation dysfunction in autism and social phobia are discussed.