The neural circuitry of affect-induced distortions of trust.

ABSTRACT

Aversive affect is likely a key source of irrational human decision-making, but still, little is known about the neural circuitry underlying emotion-cognition interactions during social behavior. We induced incidental aversive affect via prolonged periods of threat of shock, while 41 healthy participants made investment decisions concerning another person or a lottery. Negative affect reduced trust, suppressed trust-specific activity in the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ), and reduced functional connectivity between the TPJ and emotion-related regions such as the amygdala. The posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) seems to play a key role in mediating the impact of affect on behavior Functional connectivity of this brain area with left TPJ was associated with trust in the absence of negative affect, but aversive affect disrupted this association between TPJ-pSTS connectivity and behavioral trust. Our findings may be useful for a better understanding of the neural circuitry of affective distortions in healthy and pathological populations.