کد مقاله کد نشریه سال انتشار مقاله انگلیسی نسخه تمام متن
944959 925745 2011 9 صفحه PDF دانلود رایگان
عنوان انگلیسی مقاله ISI
Functional roles and cultural modulations of the medial prefrontal and parietal activity associated with causal attribution
موضوعات مرتبط
علوم زیستی و بیوفناوری علم عصب شناسی علوم اعصاب رفتاری
پیش نمایش صفحه اول مقاله
Functional roles and cultural modulations of the medial prefrontal and parietal activity associated with causal attribution
چکیده انگلیسی

Causal understanding of physical events is culturally universal. However, behavioral studies suggest that how we perceive causality is culturally sensitive, with East Asian culture emphasizing contextual factors and Western culture emphasizing dispositional factors guiding causal relationships. The present study investigated potential neural substrates of the cultural difference in causal attribution of physical events. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, Experiment 1 scanned Chinese subjects during causality or motion direction judgments when viewing animations of object collisions and identified a causal-attribution related neural circuit consisting of the medial/lateral prefrontal cortex, left parietal/temporal cortex, and cerebellum. Moreover, by manipulating the task demand of causal inference and the complexity of contextual information in physical events, we showed that the medial prefrontal activity was modulated by the demand to infer causes of physical events whereas the left parietal activity was modulated by contextual complexity of physical events. Experiment 2 investigated cultural differences in the medial prefrontal and left parietal activity associated with causal attribution of physical events by scanning two independent groups of American and Chinese subjects. We found that, while the medial prefrontal activity involved in causality judgments was comparable in the two cultural groups, the left parietal activity associated with causality judgments was stronger in Chinese than in Americans regardless of whether the contextual information was attended. Our findings suggest that causal inference in the medial prefrontal cortex is universally implicated in causal reasoning whereas contextual processing in the left parietal cortex is sensitive to cultural differences in causality perception.

Research highlights▶ Causal attribution engages the medial prefrontal cortex and left parietal cortex. ▶ The medial prefrontal activity underlies causal inference. ▶ The left parietal activity engages in contextual processing. ▶ Chinese show greater left parietal activity than Americans during causal attribution.

ناشر
Database: Elsevier - ScienceDirect (ساینس دایرکت)
Journal: Neuropsychologia - Volume 49, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 83–91
نویسندگان
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