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Researchers identify a part of the brain that helps perform cooperative tasks.
What parts of your brain are involved in evaluating a friend's actions and adjusting yours? for example, when you both have a couch on a staircase?
Japanese researchers have discovered that a portion of the right side of the brain, called the temporoparietal junction, is activated significantly when two people cooperate to achieve a common goal.
Previous studies suggest that two parts of the brain are involved in social cognition: the mirror neuron system, a circuit of nerve cells that activates during social interactions and may be defective under conditions such as autism; and the system of mentalization, several regions of the brain involved in understanding the intentions of others.
Masaki O. Abe from Hokkaido University and his colleagues in Japan wanted to know which parts of the brain were specifically involved in facilitating cooperation tasks. They designed an experiment to discover, which was recently described in the newspaper NeuroImage.
As part of the cooperative task of the experiment, two people were placed in separate functional MRIs (MRIs) to scan their brains as they tightened their grip around a sensor. The device was connected to a monitor inside the fMRI machine that showed two sliders, one for each person, moving along a line. Both people were asked to align the cursor on the screen by adjusting their grip on the sensor and matching their average grip strength, or force, to a target. The way in which the experiment was conceived implied that each person had to anticipate the grip force exerted by the other person and adjust his grip accordingly.
In addition to the cooperative experience, participants were asked to individually perform a similar task in which they had to exert the force needed to move their cursor to the target location, as well as simply observe a pre-recorded execution of the task without exerting constraint. all strength. This revealed brain regions activated during individual tasks as opposed to cooperatives, as well as by tasks involving engagement as opposed to surveillance.
The team found that the cooperative task activated brain regions related to the mentalization system. In addition, they found that the specific activation of the anterior portion of the right temporoparietal junction, located at the location where the temporal and parietal lobes of the brain met, was significantly correlated and positively correlated with the degree of of cooperation during the joint task. It was also found that the anterior part sent information to its posterior part.
The results suggest, as well as those of previous studies, that the good temporal-varietal junction is involved in controlling the flow of information on cooperative tasks to the mental system, the researchers conclude.
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