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.
Highlights
Cooperation is one of the mechanisms supporting the social order in society
A recent review by Krueger and Hoffman[6] provides us with a neural framework for punishment that could offer some insights regarding the involvement of large-scale networks supporting third-party punishment: the salience network anchored in the anterior cingulate cortex, the mentalizing network – in the temporoparietal junction and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and central-executive network – in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
No extensive review or meta-analytic study has been done on social punishment to address shared brain mechanisms for both secondand third-party punishment: a recent activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis was conducted on social norm representation and norm violations[11], revealing the distinct brain regions responsible for these two processes – the anterior cingulate cortex, medial frontal gyrus and insular cortex
Summary
Cooperation is one of the mechanisms supporting the social order in society. The emergence and enforcement of cooperation in groups is one of the most fundamental questions, and many studies shed light on factors which are important to sustain and enforce cooperation in society, such as reciprocity and social punishment as a form of negative reciprocity[1,2]. At the neural level the willingness to punish in both second- and third-party situations was associated with the right anterior insula’s activation[8], while the activation of left anterior insula, rDLPFC and left amygdala and was specific for second-party’s willingness to punish Based on these findings, we expect that tasks related to social punishment will show concordant brain locations in ventral striatum and right anterior insula. No extensive review or meta-analytic study has been done on social punishment to address shared brain mechanisms for both secondand third-party punishment: a recent ALE meta-analysis was conducted on social norm representation and norm violations[11], revealing the distinct brain regions responsible for these two processes – the anterior cingulate cortex, medial frontal gyrus and insular cortex.
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