Being asked to tell an unpleasant truth about another person activates anterior insula and medial prefrontal cortex

Littlefield, Melissa M., Dietz, Martin J., Fitzgerald, Des ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1899-8481, Knudsen, Kasper J. and Tonks, James 2015. Being asked to tell an unpleasant truth about another person activates anterior insula and medial prefrontal cortex. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9 , 553. 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00553

Preview

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

“Truth” has been used as a baseline condition in several functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of deception. However, like deception, telling the truth is an inherently social construct, which requires consideration of another person's mental state, a phenomenon known as Theory of Mind. Using a novel ecological paradigm, we examined blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) responses during social and simple truth telling. Participants (n = 27) were randomly divided into two competing teams. Post-competition, each participant was scanned while evaluating performances from in-group and out-group members. Participants were asked to be honest and were told that their evaluations would be made public. We found increased BOLD responses in the medial prefrontal cortex, bilateral anterior insula and precuneus when participants were asked to tell social truths compared to simple truths about another person. At the behavioral level, participants were slower at responding to social compared to simple questions about another person. These findings suggest that telling the truth is a nuanced cognitive operation that is dependent on the degree of mentalizing. Importantly, we show that the cortical regions engaged by truth telling show a distinct pattern when the task requires social reasoning.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	Q Science > QH Natural history > QH301 Biology R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Additional Information:	© 2015 Littlefield, Dietz, Fitzgerald, Knudsen and Tonks. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Publisher:	Frontiers Research Foundation
ISSN:	1662-5161
Funders:	European Neuroscience and Society Network (European Science Foundation), The Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation's University Investment Grant to MINDlab, Aarhus University, The University of Illinois Research Board, and the Center for Advanced Study and the Kinesiology and Community Health Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, The Wellcome Trust
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Date of Acceptance:	21 September 2015
Last Modified:	02 May 2023 12:59
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/79035

Citation Data

Cited 6 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item