Social support modulates the neural correlates underlying social exclusion.

Rosalba Morese,Claus Lamm,Francesca Marina Bosco,Giorgia Silani,Maria Consuelo Valentini

doi:10.1093/scan/nsz033

Abstract

Ostracism threatens the human need for social interactions, with negative consequences on cognition, affect and behavior. Understanding the mechanisms that can alleviate these consequences has therefore become an important research agenda. In this study, we used behavioral and fMRI measures to advance our understanding how social support can buffer the negative effects of social exclusion. We focused on two different types of support from a friend: emotional support, conveyed by gentle touch and appraisal support, implemented as informative text messages. Seventy-one female participants underwent fMRI scanning while playing a virtual ball-tossing game in the course of which they were excluded. Two consecutive runs of the game were separated according to the participant’s experimental condition (appraisal support, emotional support and no support). Results showed that the experience of social exclusion is modulated by the type of support received. Specifically, emotional support decreased negative emotions and anterior insula activity, while appraisal support increased negative emotions, with concomitant increase of subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and decrease of temporal-parietal junction activity. These divergent effects of social support point to the necessity to characterize whether and under which conditions it represents an effective and positive resource to alleviate the negative consequences of social exclusion.

Highlights

The aim of the present study was to investigate how different types of social support reduce negative feelings associated with social exclusion and its activation at the neural level
Investigated via computer-controlled ball-tossing games, the experience of exclusion from the game usually results in feelings of unpleasantness and discomfort, with concomitant recruitment of a network of brain areas associated with the processing of negative affect, such as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (Novembre et al, 2015; Masten et al, 2011a; Masten et al, 2011b; Rotge et al, 2015) and the anterior insula (AI) (Cacioppo et al, 2013)
We investigated the effects of different types of social support on the behavioral and neural correlates of the experience of social exclusion

Summary

Introduction

The aim of the present study was to investigate how different types of social support reduce negative feelings associated with social exclusion and its activation at the neural level. The experiences of social exclusion and physical pain reflect many common psychological and biological characteristics: from the use of similar words (‘I feel hurt’) (Woo et al, 2014), the involvement of overlapping neurochemical (Panksepp et al, 2007; Hsu et al, 2013) and neural systems (Eisenberger, 2012), to comparable inflammatory responses and genetic regulation (Hsu et al, 2013; Hsu et al, 2015; Watkins and Maier, 2000). Onoda et al (2009) observed that supportive emotional text leads to reduced AI and enhanced theory of mind (ToM) network activity (Saxe and Kanwisher, 2003; Saxe and Wexler, 2005; Schurz et al, 2014; Molenberghs et al, 2016) during social exclusion

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