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Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion
Abstract
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.
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We thank A. Satpute and the staff of the University of California, Los Angeles, Brain Mapping Center for their assistance. This research was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health (R21MH66709-01) to M.D.L.
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Published In
Science
Volume 302 | Issue 5643
10 October 2003
10 October 2003
Copyright
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 14 July 2003
Accepted: 15 August 2003
Published in print: 10 October 2003
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- Naomi I. Eisenberger et al.
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