Reciprocity of trust is important for social interaction and depends on individual differences in social value orientation (SVO). Here, we examined the neural correlates of reciprocity by manipulating two factors that influence reciprocal behavior: (1) the risk that the trustor took when trusting and (2) the benefit for the trustee when being trusted. FMRI results showed that anterior Medial Prefrontal Frontal Cortex (aMPFC) was more active when participants defected relative to when participants reciprocated, but was not sensitive to manipulations of risk and benefit or individual differences in SVO. However, activation in the temporal-parietal-junction (rTPJ), bilateral anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was modulated by individual differences in SVO. In addition, these regions were differentially sensitive to manipulations of risk for the trustor when reciprocating. In contrast, the ACC and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex were sensitive to the benefit for the trustee when reciprocating. Together, the results of this study provide more insight in how several brain regions work together when individuals reciprocate trust, by showing how these regions are differentially sensitive to reciprocity motives and perspective-taking.

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Adolescence is characterized by the emergence of advanced forms of social perspective taking and significant changes in social behavior. Yet little is known about how changes in social cognition are related to changes in brain function during adolescence. In this study, we investigated the neural correlates of social behavior during three phases of adolescence, carrying out functional magnetic resonance imaging of participants' brains while they were Player 2 in the Trust Game. We found that with age, adolescents were increasingly sensitive to the perspective of the other player, as indicated by their reciprocal behavior. These advanced forms of social perspective-taking behavior were associated with increased involvement of the left temporo-parietal junction and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In contrast, young adolescents showed more activity in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex, a region previously associated with self-oriented processing and mentalizing. These findings suggest that the asynchronous development of these neural systems may underlie the shift from thinking about self to thinking about the other.

Children with many somatic complaints seem to report problems with emotion identification and communication ('alexithymia'). The aim of this study was to verify whether children with somatic complaints do indeed show signs of alexithymia. We compared 35 children (M age ¼ 10.99, SD ¼ 13 months) with many somatic complaints with 34 children (M age ¼ 11.03, SD ¼ 12 months) reporting few complaints on the basis of a self-report alexithymia scale and tasks that require the skill to identify and communicate emotions: an emotional attention task, a structured interview about own emotions, and a mixed-emotion task. Children were also asked about the intensity of the reported emotions. Compared to children with few complaints, children with many complaints seemed to have higher self-reports of alexithymia. However, these results were explained by difficulty in communicating negative internal states and experiencing indefinable internal states, rather than difficulty in identifying emotions. In addition, children with many complaints reported higher intensities of fear and sadness. The children did not differ in their attention to emotions or causes of emotions. Children with many somatic complaints more often described previous emotional experiences and showed better abilities in identifying multiple emotions. Children with many somatic complaints thus show more negative emotional processing, but the alexithymia-hypothesis was unsupported.

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