Brain responses to social punishment: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Many studies suggest that social punishment is beneficial for cooperation and consequently maintaining the social norms in society. Neuroimaging and brain stimulation studies show that the brain regions which respond to violations of social norms, the understanding of the mind of others and the executive functions, are involved during social punishment. Despite the rising number of studies on social punishment, the concordant map of activations - the set of key regions responsible for the general brain response to social punishment - is still unknown. By using coordinate-based fMRI meta-analysis, the present study examined the concordant map of neural activations associated with various social punishment tasks. A total of 17 articles with 18 contrasts including 383 participants, equalling 191 foci were included in activation likelihood estimation (ALE) analysis. The majority of the studies (61%) employed the widely used neuroeconomic paradigms, such as fairness-related norm tasks (Ultimatum Game, third-party punishment game), while the remaining tasks reported criminal scenarios evaluation and social rejection tasks. The analysis revealed concordant activation in the bilateral claustrum, right interior frontal and left superior frontal gyri. This study provides an integrative view on brain responses to social punishment.

Altruistic Punishment and Impulsivity in Parkinson’s Disease: A Social Neuroscience Perspective

“…In the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in these issues, while great developments have taken place, thanks to functional neuroimaging techniques (de Quervain et al, 2004 ; Buckholtz and Marois, 2012 ; Yang et al, 2019 ; Zinchenko, 2019 ).…”

“…The reward system is a group of neural structures responsible for motivation, associative learning, and positive emotions, especially those involving pleasure as a fundamental component. The thalamus, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), nucleus accumbens, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), insula, and caudate nucleus are considered to be part of this neural system (Sanfey et al, 2003;de Quervain et al, 2004;King-Casas et al, 2005;Strobel et al, 2011;Buckholtz and Marois, 2012;Morese et al, 2016;Zinchenko, 2019). Haber et al (2006) highlighted the mediation of DLPFC and caudate in punishment responses, being these hubs involved in directing attention toward relevant stimuli, or in understanding communication intentions between individuals.…”

A meta‐analysis on shared and distinct neural correlates of the decision‐making underlying altruistic and retaliatory punishment

“…Altruistic SPP can be observed if economic self-interest is overridden and unfair offers are rejected, via activation of System 1, for evaluation of the norm violation, of the dACC/aMCC, to encode and signal the conflict with self-interest and of the right dlPFC, to suppress self-interest in order to punish. This network model is partially supported by the meta-analytical findings of Zinchenko (2019). The authors reported convergent bilateral activation in the anterior insula and left superior frontal gyrus (SFG, corresponding broadly to the dlPFC), areas related to salience and central-executive networks.…”

“…Crucially, dACC/aMCC involvement was reported in previous meta-analyses (Feng et al, 2015;Gabay et al, 2014), but not by Zinchenko (2019). This might be due to the heterogeneity of the studies that were included in the meta-analysis and did not always involve resolving a cognitive conflict (UG, third-party punishment game, criminal scenarios evaluation, and social rejection tasks).…”

Neural support for contributions of utility and narrative processing of evidence in juror decision making

“…Within the social-affective topics, social cognition, rather than affect (28) or traditional moral judgment (29), explains more of the variation. This contrasts with previous studies of the neural correlates of social punishment (30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35) and judgment bias (36). We have operationalized crime-type bias as the component of case strength ratings for each scenario that correlates with punishment (Fig.…”