Neural Mechanism Of Cooperation And Competition

Social interaction refers to the process of interaction between different individuals,groups or individuals and groups due to information transmission in certain social situations.Human beings and their brains and minds are shaped by the continuous interaction with others,and thus have normal functions.Investigating the dynamic characteristics of brain activity in social interaction is very important for understanding our social essence and improving the life quality of social defective patients,such as autistic children.However,due to the complexity of social interaction and the limitation of technology,early researchers mainly studied the neural mechanism of social interaction at the single brain level,that is,the laboratory study of individual subjects.Although these findings constitute some key brain regions of the "social brain" hypothesis,and they provide valuable information for us in the early stage of social interaction neural mechanism research,but single brain level studies neglect that the state of brain is constantly adjusted in interaction.Human is social in nature and living in continuous interaction with others and external environment,so we should take these social environment into consideration when studying brain function.In recent ten years,the rapid development and application of functional near-infrared spectroscopy imaging(fNIRS)has met this demand.fNIRS can break through the limitations of fMRI on the participants,and can be used to study the brain mechanism of real social interaction between the two brains in a flexible,light and low level.With this technology,researchers began to explore the brain mechanism of social interaction in various forms such as face-to-face communication,cooperation,competition,imitation and so on in real situations.Most previous studies on the neural mechanism of cooperation and competition is limited to a single isolated brain research.Although there have been a small number of recent researches on the neural difference and the gender effect of cooperation and competition,the results of these studies are not consistent,and there are stillconsiderable controversy.On this basis,the present study focuses on the two basic forms of social interaction,namely,cooperation and competition,to examine the neural characteristics of the brain interaction in the cooperation and competition tasks.The so-called cooperation is the act or attitude that is willing to achieve the goal together.When some individuals adjust their behavior to achieve common goals so as to get what they need,they show cooperation.Competition means that we want to be admitted by surpassing others.Competition and cooperation are the two major forms of social interaction,and are also the two basic modes of social cognition,which need to monitor both one’s own and other’s actions,as well as adopting a specific mental set.From the perspective of interbrain interaction,it is helpful to grasp the difference between the interbrain mechanism of cooperation and competition and the role of gender among them.The overall hypothesis of the current study is that there are differences in the neural characteristics between the cooperative and competitive brain interactions,and sex plays a role among them.Study 1 and study 2 focus on the neural basis of the interaction and competitive brain interaction respectively.Both of the two experiments recruited 90 undergraduates from Southwestern University,a total of 45 pairs of subjects.In experiment 1,all subjects need to complete the task of building blocks independently and the task of cooperating with building blocks.In experiment 2,all subjects need to complete the task of cooperating with building blocks and the task of competiting with building blocks.The study 3 mainly focuses on the difference of neural characteristics between cooperation and competition.In experiment 3,90 undergraduates from Southwestern University,a total of 45 pairs of subjects,were recruited.All subjects need to complete the task of cooperating with building blocks and the task of competiting with building blocks.Study 4 increases task difficulty and aims to further verify the results of study 3.In experiment 34,90 undergraduates from Southwestern University,a total of 45 pairs of subjects,were recruited.All subjects need to complete the task of cooperative pumping and building blocks and the task of competitive pumping and building blocks.On the basis of the above study,the study 5further explores the gender effect in cooperation brain mechanism and among the differences of cooperation and competition brain mechanism.In this study,five experiments were used to explore the neural mechanism of inter-brain interaction of the cooperation and competition in the naturalized situationand the gender effect among them.After analysis,results of the study are as follows:(1)Compared with "building blocks independently",the prefrontal inter-brain synchronization of the prefrontal lobes in the "cooperative building blocks" was significantly enhanced,indicating that the inter-brain communication between the two parties was more efficient in the process of cooperation;the prefrontal inter-brain synchronization between the process of "building blocks independently" and the resting state was not different,indicating that the increased inter-brain synchronization of the prefrontal lobe in the cooperation process is not due to similar movements executed by the two parties.(2)Compared with "building blocks independently",the dyads had no significant enhancement of the inter-brain synchronization of the prefrontal lobes in the "competitive building blocks",indicating that the information between the two parties in the competition process was not transparent,and the construction strategies they adopted were different,although they were required to construct higher than the other,but the exchange of information between them was still very weak.(3)Compared to the "competitive building blocks",the dyads’ brain synchronization in the prefrontal lobe was significantly enhanced in the "cooperative building blocks",indicating that there were significant differences in the neural mechanism and the inter-brain communication of cooperation and competition,and the interaction in the cooperation was much better than the competition.(4)Compared to the "competitive pumping and building blocks",the dyads’ inter-brain synchronization in the prefrontal lobe was significantly enhanced in the "cooperative pumping and building blocks",which further verified that there were significant differences in the neural mechanism or brain information exchange between the cooperative and competitive processes,and the interaction in the cooperation was far better than the competition.(5)Sex has a significant influence on the neural mechanism of cooperation and competition.The inter-brain synchronization of male-male group was significantly higher than the groups that participated by female(i.e.,female-female group and male-female group)in the cooperation,and inter-brain synchronization of male-female group are slightly higher than female-female group,but it didn’t reach a significant level.