Social Influences on Inequity Aversion in Children

Adults and children are willing to sacrifice personal gain to avoid both disadvantageous and advantageous inequity. These two forms of inequity aversion follow different developmental trajectories, with disadvantageous inequity aversion emerging around 4 years and advantageous inequity aversion emerging around 8 years. Although inequity aversion is assumed to be specific to situations where resources are distributed among individuals, the role of social context has not been tested in children. Here, we investigated the influence of two aspects of social context on inequity aversion in 4- to 9-year-old children: (1) the role of the experimenter distributing rewards and (2) the presence of a peer with whom rewards could be shared. Experiment 1 showed that children rejected inequity at the same rate, regardless of whether the experimenter had control over reward allocations. This indicates that children’s decisions are based upon reward allocations between themselves and a peer and are not attempts to elicit more favorable distributions from the experimenter. Experiment 2 compared rejections of unequal reward allocations in children interacting with or without a peer partner. When faced with a disadvantageous distribution, children frequently rejected a smaller reward when a larger reward was visible, even if no partner would obtain the larger reward. This suggests that nonsocial factors partly explain disadvantageous inequity rejections. However, rejections of disadvantageous distributions were higher when the larger amount would go to a peer, indicating that social context enhances disadvantageous inequity aversion. By contrast, children rejected advantageous distributions almost exclusively in the social context. Therefore, advantageous inequity aversion appears to be genuinely social, highlighting its potential relevance for the development of fairness concerns. By comparing social and nonsocial factors, this study provides a detailed picture of the expression of inequity aversion in human ontogeny and raises questions about the function and evolution of inequity aversion in humans.     

Subtle Alterations in Brain Anatomy May Change an Individual’s Personality in Chronic Pain

It is well established that gross prefrontal cortex damage can affect an individual’s personality. It is also possible that subtle prefrontal cortex changes associated with conditions such as chronic pain, and not detectable until recent advances in human brain imaging, may also result in subtle changes in an individual’s personality. In an animal model of chronic neuropathic pain, subtle prefrontal cortex changes including altered basal dendritic length, resulted in altered decision making ability. Using multiple magnetic resonance imaging techniques, we found in humans, although gray matter volume and on-going activity were unaltered, chronic neuropathic pain was associated with reduced free and bound proton movement, indicators of subtle anatomical changes, in the medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and mediodorsal thalamus. Furthermore, proton spectroscopy revealed an increase in neural integrity in the medial prefrontal cortex in neuropathic pain patients, the degree of which was significantly correlated to the personality temperament of novelty seeking. These data reveal that even subtle changes in prefrontal cortex anatomy may result in a significant change in an individual’s personality.     

Transcranial Electrical Stimulation over Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Modulates Processing of Social Cognitive and Affective Information

Recent neurofunctional studies suggested that lateral prefrontal cortex is a domain-general cognitive control area modulating computation of social information. Neuropsychological evidence reported dissociations between cognitive and affective components of social cognition. Here, we tested whether performance on social cognitive and affective tasks can be modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). To this aim, we compared the effects of tDCS on explicit recognition of emotional facial expressions (affective task), and on one cognitive task assessing the ability to adopt another person’s visual perspective. In a randomized, cross-over design, male and female healthy participants performed the two experimental tasks after bi-hemispheric tDCS (sham, left anodal/right cathodal, and right anodal/left cathodal) applied over DLPFC. Results showed that only in male participants explicit recognition of fearful facial expressions was significantly faster after anodal right/cathodal left stimulation with respect to anodal left/cathodal right and sham stimulations. In the visual perspective taking task, instead, anodal right/cathodal left stimulation negatively affected both male and female participants’ tendency to adopt another’s point of view. These findings demonstrated that concurrent facilitation of right and inhibition of left lateral prefrontal cortex can speed-up males’ responses to threatening faces whereas it interferes with the ability to adopt another’s viewpoint independently from gender. Thus, stimulation of cognitive control areas can lead to different effects on social cognitive skills depending on the affective vs. cognitive nature of the task, and on the gender-related differences in neural organization of emotion processing.     

The Co-Evolution of Fairness Preferences and Costly Punishment

We study the co-evolutionary emergence of fairness preferences in the form of other-regarding behavior and its effect on the origination of costly punishment behavior in public good games. Our approach closely combines empirical results from three experiments with an evolutionary simulation model. In this way, we try to fill a gap between the evolutionary theoretical literature on cooperation and punishment on the one hand and the empirical findings from experimental economics on the other hand. As a principal result, we show that the evolution among interacting agents inevitably favors a sense for fairness in the form of “disadvantageous inequity aversion”. The evolutionary dominance and stability of disadvantageous inequity aversion is demonstrated by enabling agents to co-evolve with different self- and other-regarding preferences in a competitive environment with limited resources. Disadvantageous inequity aversion leads to the emergence of costly (“altruistic”) punishment behavior and quantitatively explains the level of punishment observed in contemporary lab experiments performed on subjects with a western culture. Our findings corroborate, complement, and interlink the experimental and theoretical literature that has shown the importance of other-regarding behavior in various decision settings.     

“An Eye for an Eye”? Neural Correlates of Retribution and Forgiveness

Humans have evolved strong preferences for equity and fairness. Neuroimaging studies suggest that punishing unfairness is associated with the activation of a neural network comprising the anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, the ventral striatum, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Here, we report the neuronal correlates of retribution and “forgiveness” in a scenario, in which individuals first acted as a recipient in an Ultimatum Game, and subsequently assumed the position of a proposer in a Dictator Game played against the same opponents as in the Ultimatum Game. Most subjects responded in a tit-for-tat fashion, which was accompanied by activation of the ventral striatum, corroborating previous findings that punishing unfair behaviour has a rewarding connotation. Subjects distinguished between the human opponent and computer condition by activation of the ventromedial PFC in the human condition, indicative of mentalising. A substantial number of subjects did not retaliate. Neurally, this “forgiveness” behaviour was associated with the activation of the right (and to a lesser degree left) DLPFC, a region that serves as a cognitive control region and thus may be involved in inhibiting emotional responses against unfairness.     

A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Pathophysiological Changes Responsible for Mirror Movements in Parkinson’s Disease

Mirror movements correspond to involuntary movements observed in the limb contralateral to the one performing voluntary movement. They can be observed in Parkinson’s disease (PD) but their pathophysiology remains unclear. The present study aims at identifying their neural correlates in PD using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Ten control subjects and 14-off drug patients with asymmetrical right-sided PD were included (8 with left-sided mirror movements during right-hand movements, and 6 without mirror movements). Between-group comparisons of BOLD signal were performed during right-hand movements and at rest (p<0.005 uncorrected). The comparison between PD patients with and without mirror movements showed that mirror movements were associated with an overactivation of the insula, precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex bilaterally and of the left inferior frontal cortex and with a deactivation of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and pre-supplementary motor area and occipital cortex. These data suggest that mirror movements in Parkinson’s disease are promoted by: 1- a deactivation of the non-mirroring inhibitory network (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, pre-supplementary motor area); 2- an overactivation of prokinetic areas (notably the insula). The concomitant overactivation of a proactive inhibitory network (including the posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus) could reflect a compensatory inhibition of mirror movements.     

Neural Correlates of Empathy with Pain Show Habituation Effects. An fMRI Study

Background

Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the actual experience of pain and the perception of another person in pain share common neural substrates, including the bilateral anterior insular cortex and the anterior midcingulate cortex. As many fMRI studies include the exposure of participants to repeated, similar stimuli, we examined whether empathic neural responses were affected by habituation and whether the participants'' prior pain experience influenced these habituation effects.

Method

In 128 trials (four runs), 62 participants (31 women, 23.0 ± 4.2 years) were shown pictures of hands exposed to painful pressure (pain pictures) and unexposed (neutral pictures). After each trial, the participants rated the pain of the model. Prior to the experiment, participants were either exposed to the same pain stimulus (pain exposure group) or not (touch exposure group). In order to assess possible habituation effects, linear changes in the strength of the BOLD response to the pain pictures (relative to the neutral pictures) and in the ratings of the model’s pain were evaluated across the four runs.

Results

Although the ratings of the model’s pain remained constant over time, we found neural habituation in the bilateral anterior/midinsular cortex, the posterior midcingulate extending to dorsal posterior cingulate cortex, the supplementary motor area, the cerebellum, the right inferior parietal lobule, and the left superior frontal gyrus, stretching to the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex. The participant’s prior pain experience did neither affect their ratings of the model’s pain nor their maintenance of BOLD activity in areas associated with empathy. Interestingly, participants with high trait personal distress and fantasy tended to show less habituation in the anterior insula.

Conclusion

Neural structures showed a decrease of the BOLD signal, indicating habituation over the course of 45 minutes. This can be interpreted as a neuronal mechanism responding to the repeated exposure to pain depictions, which may be regarded as functional in a range of contexts.     

Competing demands of prosociality and equity in monkeys

Prosocial decisions may lead to unequal payoffs among group members. Although an aversion to inequity has been found in empirical studies of both human and nonhuman primates, the contexts previously studied typically do not involve a trade-off between prosociality and inequity. Here we investigate the apparent coexistence of these two factors, specifically the competing demands of prosociality and equity. We directly compare the responses of brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) among situations where prosocial preferences conflict with equality, using a paradigm comparable to other studies of cooperation and inequity in this species. By choosing to pull a tray towards themselves, subjects rewarded themselves and/or another in conditions in which the partner either received the same or different rewards, or the subject received no reward. In unequal payoff conditions, subjects could obtain equality by choosing not to pull in the tray, so that neither individual was rewarded. The monkeys showed prosocial preferences even in situations of moderate disadvantageous inequity, preferring to pull in the tray more often when a partner was present than absent. However, when the discrepancy between rewards increased, prosocial behavior ceased.     

Distinct neurocomputational mechanisms support informational and socially normative conformity

A change of mind in response to social influence could be driven by informational conformity to increase accuracy, or by normative conformity to comply with social norms such as reciprocity. Disentangling the behavioural, cognitive, and neurobiological underpinnings of informational and normative conformity have proven elusive. Here, participants underwent fMRI while performing a perceptual task that involved both advice-taking and advice-giving to human and computer partners. The concurrent inclusion of 2 different social roles and 2 different social partners revealed distinct behavioural and neural markers for informational and normative conformity. Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) BOLD response tracked informational conformity towards both human and computer but tracked normative conformity only when interacting with humans. A network of brain areas (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and temporoparietal junction (TPJ)) that tracked normative conformity increased their functional coupling with the dACC when interacting with humans. These findings enable differentiating the neural mechanisms by which different types of conformity shape social changes of mind.

When we change our mind in response to other people’s opinion, we may be motivated to be correct or to have a good relationship with others. This fMRI study disentangles the neurobiological underpinnings of these two different motives in the human brain, and shows that the second motive is absent when we interact with computers.     

Metacognition and mentalizing are associated with distinct neural representations of decision uncertainty

Metacognition and mentalizing are both associated with meta-level mental state representations. Conventionally, metacognition refers to monitoring one’s own cognitive processes, while mentalizing refers to monitoring others’ cognitive processes. However, this self-other dichotomy is insufficient to delineate the 2 high-level mental processes. We here used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to systematically investigate the neural representations of different levels of decision uncertainty in monitoring different targets (the current self, the past self [PS], and others) performing a perceptual decision-making task. Our results reveal diverse formats of internal mental state representations of decision uncertainty in mentalizing, separate from the associations with external cue information. External cue information was commonly represented in the right inferior parietal lobe (IPL) across the mentalizing tasks. However, the internal mental states of decision uncertainty attributed to others were uniquely represented in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), rather than the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) that also represented the object-level mental states of decision inaccuracy attributed to others. Further, the object-level and meta-level mental states of decision uncertainty, when attributed to the PS, were represented in the precuneus and the lateral frontopolar cortex (lFPC), respectively. In contrast, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) represented currently experienced decision uncertainty in metacognition, and also uncertainty about the estimated decision uncertainty (estimate uncertainty), but not the estimated decision uncertainty per se in mentalizing. Hence, our findings identify neural signatures to clearly delineate metacognition and mentalizing and further imply distinct neural computations on internal mental states of decision uncertainty during metacognition and mentalizing.

The relationship between metacognition and mentalizing is still a matter of debate, as both are associated with meta-representations. This study adapts a task paradigm used in metacognition to apply in mentalizing and compares the neural representations of decision uncertainty in metacognition and mentalizing.     

Dynamic Neural Network of Insight: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study on Solving Chinese ‘Chengyu’ Riddles

The key components of insight include breaking mental sets and forming the novel, task-related associations. The majority of researchers have agreed that the anterior cingulate cortex may mediate processes of breaking one’s mental set, while the exact neural correlates of forming novel associations are still debatable. In the present study, we used a paradigm of answer selection to explore brain activations of insight by using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging during solving Chinese ‘chengyu’ (in Chinese pinyin) riddles. Based on the participant’s choice, the trials were classified into the insight and non-insight conditions. Both stimulus-locked and response-locked analyses are conducted to detect the neural activity corresponding to the early and late periods of insight solution, respectively. Our data indicate that the early period of insight solution shows more activation in the middle temporal gyrus, the middle frontal gyrus and the anterior cingulate cortex. These activities might be associated to the extensive semantic processing, as well as detecting and resolving cognitive conflicts. In contrast, the late period of insight solution produced increased activities in the hippocampus and the amygdala, possibly reflecting the forming of novel association and the concomitant “Aha” feeling. Our study supports the key role of hippocampus in forming novel associations, and indicates a dynamic neural network during insight solution.     

How People Use Social Information to Find out What to Want in the Paradigmatic Case of Inter-temporal Preferences

The weight with which a specific outcome feature contributes to preference quantifies a person’s ‘taste’ for that feature. However, far from being fixed personality characteristics, tastes are plastic. They tend to align, for example, with those of others even if such conformity is not rewarded. We hypothesised that people can be uncertain about their tastes. Personal tastes are therefore uncertain beliefs. People can thus learn about them by considering evidence, such as the preferences of relevant others, and then performing Bayesian updating. If a person’s choice variability reflects uncertainty, as in random-preference models, then a signature of Bayesian updating is that the degree of taste change should correlate with that person’s choice variability. Temporal discounting coefficients are an important example of taste–for patience. These coefficients quantify impulsivity, have good psychometric properties and can change upon observing others’ choices. We examined discounting preferences in a novel, large community study of 14–24 year olds. We assessed discounting behaviour, including decision variability, before and after participants observed another person’s choices. We found good evidence for taste uncertainty and for Bayesian taste updating. First, participants displayed decision variability which was better accounted for by a random-taste than by a response-noise model. Second, apparent taste shifts were well described by a Bayesian model taking into account taste uncertainty and the relevance of social information. Our findings have important neuroscientific, clinical and developmental significance.     

Attending to the outcome of others: disadvantageous inequity aversion in male capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

Brosnan and de Waal [Nature 425:297-299, 2003] reported that capuchin monkeys responded negatively to unequal reward distributions between themselves and another individual when comparing their own rewards with that of their partner. It was suggested that social emotions provided the underlying motivation for such behavior and that this inequity aversion is specific to the social domain. However, alternative hypotheses such as the "frustration effect" or the "food expectation hypothesis" may provide more parsimonious explanations for Brosnan and de Waal's [Nature 425:297-299] results, while others have argued that these findings are not congruent with the Fehr-Schmidt inequity aversion model cited by the authors. The claim that inequity aversion behavior is specific to the social domain has also been questioned, as primates also develop expectations about rewards in the absence of partners, and react negatively when those expectations are violated. In this study, a modified Dictator game was used to investigate whether capuchins would exhibit either disadvantageous inequity aversion behavior or reference-dependent expectancy violation in social and nonsocial conditions, respectively. When given the choice between an equitable and an inequitable outcome, the subjects showed disadvantageous inequity aversion behavior, choosing the equitable outcome significantly more in the social condition. In the nonsocial condition, however, subjects did not show negative expectancy violation resulting from the formation of reference-dependent expectations, choosing the equitable outcome at chance levels. These results suggest that capuchins attend to differential payoffs and that they are averse to inequity, which is disadvantageous to themselves.     

Neural Basis of Anticipatory Anxiety Reappraisals

Reappraisal is a well-known emotion regulation strategy. Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that reappraisal recruits both medial and lateral prefrontal brain regions. However, few studies have investigated neural representation of reappraisals associated with anticipatory anxiety, and the specific nature of the brain activity underlying this process remains unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate neural activity associated with reappraisals of transient anticipatory anxiety. Although transient anxiety activated mainly subcortical regions, reappraisals targeting the anxiety were associated with increased activity in the medial and lateral prefrontal regions (including the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices). Reappraisal decreased fear circuit activity (including the amygdala and thalamus). Correlational analysis demonstrated that reductions in subjective anxiety associated with reappraisal were correlated with orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortex activation. Reappraisal recruits medial and lateral prefrontal regions; particularly the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices are associated with successful use of this emotion regulation strategy.     

What Do I Want and When Do I Want It: Brain Correlates of Decisions Made for Self and Other

A number of recent functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies on intertemporal choice behavior have demonstrated that so-called emotion- and reward-related brain areas are preferentially activated by decisions involving immediately available (but smaller) rewards as compared to (larger) delayed rewards. This pattern of activation was not seen, however, when intertemporal choices were made for another (unknown) individual, which speaks to that activation having been triggered by self-relatedness. In the present fMRI study, we investigated the brain correlates of individuals who passively observed intertemporal choices being made either for themselves or for an unknown person. We found higher activation within the ventral striatum, medial prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex when an immediate reward was possible for the observer herself, which is in line with findings from studies in which individuals actively chose immediately available rewards. Additionally, activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus was higher for choices that included immediate options than for choices that offered only delayed options, irrespective of who was to be the beneficiary. These results indicate that (1) the activations found in active intertemporal decision making are also present when the same decisions are merely observed, thus supporting the assumption that a robust brain network is engaged in immediate gratification; and (2) with immediate rewards, certain brain areas are activated irrespective of whether the observer or another person is the beneficiary of a decision, suggesting that immediacy plays a more general role for neural activation. An explorative analysis of participants’ brain activation corresponding to chosen rewards, further indicates that activation in the aforementioned brain areas depends on the mere presence, availability, or actual reception of immediate rewards.     

Punishment is strongly motivated by revenge and weakly motivated by inequity aversion

There are two broad functional explanations for second-party punishment: fitness-leveling and deterrence. The former suggests that people punish to reduce fitness differences, while the latter suggests that people punish in order to reciprocate losses and deter others from inflicting losses on them in the future. We explore the relative roles of these motivations using a pre-registered, two-player experiment with 2426 US participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants played as the “responder” and were assigned to either a Take or Augment condition. In the Take condition, the “partner” could steal money from the responder's bonus or do nothing. In the Augment condition, the partner could augment the responder's bonus by giving them money at no cost to themselves or do nothing. We also manipulated the responders' starting endowments, such that after the partner's decision, responders experienced different payoff outcomes: advantageous inequity, equality, or varying degrees of disadvantageous inequity. Responders then decided whether to pay a cost to punish the partner. Punishment was clearly influenced by theft and was most frequent when theft resulted in disadvantageous inequity. However, people also punished in the absence of theft, particularly when confronted with disadvantageous inequity. While the effect of inequity on punishment was small, our results suggest that punishment is motivated by more than just the desire to reciprocate losses. These findings highlight the multiple motivations undergirding punishment and bear directly on functional explanations for the existence of punishment in human societies.     

The neural signature of social norm compliance

All known human societies establish social order by punishing violators of social norms. However, little is known about how the brain processes the punishment threat associated with norm violations. We use fMRI to study the neural circuitry behind social norm compliance by comparing a treatment in which norm violations can be punished with a control treatment in which punishment is impossible. Individuals' increase in norm compliance when punishment is possible exhibits a strong positive correlation with activations in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Moreover, lateral orbitofrontal cortex activity is strongly correlated with Machiavellian personality characteristics. These findings indicate a neural network involved in social norm compliance that might constitute an important basis for human sociality. Different activations of this network reveal individual differences in the behavioral response to the punishment threat and might thus provide a deeper understanding of the neurobiological sources of pathologies such as antisocial personality disorder.     

Benevolent Ideology and Women’s Economic Decision-Making: When Sexism Is Hurting Men’s Wallet

Can ideology, as a widespread “expectation creator,” impact economic decisions? In two studies we investigated the influence of the Benevolent Sexism (BS) ideology (which dictates that men should provide for passive and nurtured women) on women’s economic decision-making. In Study 1, using a Dictator Game in which women decided how to share amounts of money with men, results of a Generalized Linear Mixed Model analysis show that higher endorsement of BS and contextual expectations of benevolence were associated with more very unequal offers. Similarly, in an Ultimatum Game in which women received monetary offers from men, Study 2’s Generalized Linear Mixed Model’s results revealed that BS led women to reject more very unequal offers. If women’s endorsement of BS ideology and expectations of benevolence prove contrary to reality, they may strike back at men. These findings show that BS ideology creates expectations that shape male-female relationships in a way that could be prejudicial to men.     

Altered Fronto-Temporal Functional Connectivity in Individuals at Ultra-High-Risk of Developing Psychosis

Background

The superior temporal gyrus (STG) is one of the key regions implicated in psychosis, given that abnormalities in this region are associated with an increased risk of conversion from an at-risk mental state to psychosis. However, inconsistent results regarding the functional connectivity strength of the STG have been reported, and the regional heterogeneous characteristics of the STG should be considered.

Methods

To investigate the distinctive functional connection of each subregion in the STG, we parcellated the STG of each hemisphere into three regions: the planum temporale, Heschl’s gyrus, and planum polare. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was obtained from 22 first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients, 41 individuals at ultra-high-risk for psychosis (UHR), and 47 demographically matched healthy controls.

Results

Significant group differences (in seed-based connectivity) were demonstrated in the left planum temporale and from both the right and left Heschl’s gyrus seeds. From the left planum temporale seed, the FEP and UHR groups exhibited increased connectivity to the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In contrast, the FEP and UHR groups demonstrated decreased connectivity from the bilateral Heschl’s gyrus seeds to the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. The enhanced connectivity between the left planum temporale and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was positively correlated with positive symptom severity in individuals at UHR (r = .34, p = .03).

Conclusions

These findings corroborate the fronto-temporal connectivity disruption hypothesis in schizophrenia by providing evidence supporting the altered fronto-temporal intrinsic functional connection at earlier stages of psychosis. Our data indicate that subregion-specific aberrant fronto-temporal interactions exist in the STG at the early stage of psychosis, thus suggesting that these aberrancies are the neural underpinning of proneness to psychosis.     

The Neural Correlates of Emotion Regulation by Implementation Intentions

Several studies have investigated the neural basis of effortful emotion regulation (ER) but the neural basis of automatic ER has been less comprehensively explored. The present study investigated the neural basis of automatic ER supported by ‘implementation intentions’. 40 healthy participants underwent fMRI while viewing emotion-eliciting images and used either a previously-taught effortful ER strategy, in the form of a goal intention (e.g., try to take a detached perspective), or a more automatic ER strategy, in the form of an implementation intention (e.g., “If I see something disgusting, then I will think these are just pixels on the screen!”), to regulate their emotional response. Whereas goal intention ER strategies were associated with activation of brain areas previously reported to be involved in effortful ER (including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), ER strategies based on an implementation intention strategy were associated with activation of right inferior frontal gyrus and ventro-parietal cortex, which may reflect the attentional control processes automatically captured by the cue for action contained within the implementation intention. Goal intentions were also associated with less effective modulation of left amygdala, supporting the increased efficacy of ER under implementation intention instructions, which showed coupling of orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala. The findings support previous behavioural studies in suggesting that forming an implementation intention enables people to enact goal-directed responses with less effort and more efficiency.