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A neuroimaging study examined the neural correlates of social exclusion and tested the hypothesis that the brain bases of social pain are similar to those of physical pain. Participants were scanned while playing a virtual ball-tossing game in which they were ultimately excluded. Paralleling results from physical pain studies, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was more active during exclusion than during inclusion and correlated positively with self-reported distress. Right ventral prefrontal cortex (RVPFC) was active during exclusion and correlated negatively with self-reported distress. ACC changes mediated the RVPFC-distress correlation, suggesting that RVPFC regulates the distress of social exclusion by disrupting ACC activity.
It is a basic feature of human experience to feel soothed in the presence of close others and to feel distressed when left behind. Many languages reflect this experience in the assignment of physical pain words ("hurt feelings") to describe experiences of social separation (1). However, the notion that the pain associated with losing someone is similar to the pain experienced upon physical injury seems more metaphorical than real. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that some of the same neural machinery recruited in the experience of physical pain may also be involved in the experience of pain associated with social separation or rejection (2). Because of the adaptive value of mammalian social bonds, the social attachment system, which keeps young near caregivers, may have piggybacked onto the physical pain system to promote survival (3). We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of social exclusion to determine whether the regions activated by social pain are similar to those found in studies of physical pain.
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is believed to act as a neural "alarm system" or conflict monitor, detecting when an automatic response is inappropriate or in conflict with current goals (4-6). Not surprisingly, pain, the most primitive signal that "something is wrong," activates the ACC (7, 8). More specifically, dorsal ACC activity is primarily associated with the affectively distressing rather than the sensory component of pain (7-9).
Because of the importance of social bonds for the survival of most mammalian species, the social attachment system may have adopted the neural computations of the ACC, involved in pain and conflict detection processes, to promote the goal of social connectedness. Ablating...