Presenter(s): Faith Collins—Pychology
Faculty Mentor(s): Robert Chavez, Taylor Guthrie
Session 5.5: McNair Scholars Presentations
Previous research has demonstrated that neural responses during self-referential thought are recapitulated in the brains of close friends thinking about the self . However, we also know that these processes are influenced by the affective valence of the stimuli and these processes recruit similar areas of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) . Does positive or negative valence drive the coherence between these representations? We sought to test this question by recruiting small groups of close- knit individuals in a round-robin fMRI design . Subjects reflected on positive and negative traits about both themselves and their group members to estimate neural responses to self and every other person in the group . Next, we used a multi-level linear mixed effects model to compare the correlation distance between self-congruent and self-incongruent patterns striated by positive and negative affect . We found that valence, especially negative valence, modulates the strength of self/other recapitulation effects in the MPFC . These results suggest that affective information influences the neural bases of interpersonal perception and contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms by which valence influences how our sense of self is represented in the minds of others .