Dataset Information

Altered third-party punishment in Huntington's disease: A study using neuroeconomic games.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Huntington's disease (HD) is a heritable degenerative brain disease caused by a mutation in the huntingtin gene with excessive repeats of the base triplet cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG), which codes for the aminoacid glutamine. HD is associated with a broad spectrum of neurocognitive dysfunction, including deficits in social cognition. The appreciation of fairness rules and reciprocity has not been studied in HD. Based on theoretical considerations suggesting that brain regions known to be affected from HD are involved in economic decision-making, the present study sought to examine HD patients' performance in two neuroeconomic games.

Methods

Twenty-nine manifest HD mutation carriers (20 males, nine females) performed an Ultimatum Game (UG) and a Dictator Game (DG) where third-party punishment of observed unfairness was required. In addition, patients were tested for neurocognition and the ability to understand other people's mental states ("theory of mind"). For comparison, a clinical control group of 30 patients with chronic schizophrenia, and 30 unaffected healthy controls matched for age and verbal intelligence took part in the study.

Results

Patients with HD had some appreciation of fairness rules, as they tended to reject unfair offers in the UG similar to controls. However, unlike the other two groups, individuals with HD did not punish observed unfairness from a third-party perspective. This lack of "altruistic punishment" was associated with deficits in executive functioning including working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility, and to a lesser degree with poor "theory of mind."

Conclusions

HD seems to be associated with impairments in understanding of more complex rules of social exchange. Aside from deficits in executive functioning, this behavior could, in part, be linked to an inability to experience third-party punishment as rewarding.

SUBMITTER: Brune M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7821630 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Altered third-party punishment in Huntington's disease: A study using neuroeconomic games.

Brüne Martin M von Hein Sarah Maria SM Claassen Christian C Hoffmann Rainer R Saft Carsten C

Brain and behavior 20201018 1

<h4>Background</h4>Huntington's disease (HD) is a heritable degenerative brain disease caused by a mutation in the huntingtin gene with excessive repeats of the base triplet cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG), which codes for the aminoacid glutamine. HD is associated with a broad spectrum of neurocognitive dysfunction, including deficits in social cognition. The appreciation of fairness rules and reciprocity has not been studied in HD. Based on theoretical considerations suggesting that brain region ...[more]

PMID: 33070471

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Project description:UNLABELLED:The evolved capacity for third-party punishment is considered crucial to the emergence and maintenance of elaborate human social organization and is central to the modern provision of fairness and justice within society. Although it is well established that the mental state of the offender and the severity of the harm he caused are the two primary predictors of punishment decisions, the precise cognitive and brain mechanisms by which these distinct components are evaluated and integrated into a punishment decision are poorly understood. Using fMRI, here we implement a novel experimental design to functionally dissociate the mechanisms underlying evaluation, integration, and decision that were conflated in previous studies of third-party punishment. Behaviorally, the punishment decision is primarily defined by a superadditive interaction between harm and mental state, with subjects weighing the interaction factor more than the single factors of harm and mental state. On a neural level, evaluation of harms engaged brain areas associated with affective and somatosensory processing, whereas mental state evaluation primarily recruited circuitry involved in mentalization. Harm and mental state evaluations are integrated in medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate structures, with the amygdala acting as a pivotal hub of the interaction between harm and mental state. This integrated information is used by the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex at the time of the decision to assign an appropriate punishment through a distributed coding system. Together, these findings provide a blueprint of the brain mechanisms by which neutral third parties render punishment decisions. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT:Punishment undergirds large-scale cooperation and helps dispense criminal justice. Yet it is currently unknown precisely how people assess the mental states of offenders, evaluate the harms they caused, and integrate those two components into a single punishment decision. Using a new design, we isolated these three processes, identifying the distinct brain systems and activities that enable each. Additional findings suggest that the amygdala plays a crucial role in mediating the interaction of mental state and harm information, whereas the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays a crucial, final-stage role, both in integrating mental state and harm information and in selecting a suitable punishment amount. These findings deepen our understanding of how punishment decisions are made, which may someday help to improve them.

Dataset Information

Altered third-party punishment in Huntington's disease: A study using neuroeconomic games.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Altered third-party punishment in Huntington's disease: A study using neuroeconomic games.

Similar Datasets

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