Self-Other Mergence in the Frontal Cortex during Cooperation and Competition

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Social Psychology
• Neuroeconomics

Background:

• Accurate self- and other-ability estimation is crucial for human survival and social functioning.
• Understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms of self-other ability estimation is an ongoing research area.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how individuals estimate their own and others' abilities.
• To explore the phenomenon of self-other ability estimation merging.
• To examine the neural underpinnings and contextual modulation of self-other merging.

Main Methods:

• Participants performed tasks and estimated their own and others' abilities.
• Behavioral data analyzed for self-other merging patterns.
• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) used to identify brain regions involved.

Main Results:

• Self-ability estimates were influenced by own performance but merged with others' performance.
• Other-ability estimates reflected both self and other performance.
• Self-other merging varied based on context (cooperative vs. competitive) and performer ability.
• Perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC) tracked self-performance; Dorsomedial frontal area 9 (dmPFC) tracked other-performance and integrated contextual information.
• dmPFC activity correlated with the strength of self and other representations, suggesting interdependent processing.

Conclusions:

• Self-other ability estimation is not solely based on individual performance but involves integration with others' performance.
• Contextual factors significantly modulate self-other merging, impacting subjective evaluations and objective performance adjustments.
• Neural mechanisms in pACC and dmPFC support distinct and integrated processing of self and other information, with dmPFC potentially encoding interdependent self-other representations.