No abstract

The self-other distinction is crucial in human social cognition and social interaction. Studies have found that oxytocin (OT) sharpens the self-other perceptual boundary but with mixed results. Further, little is known if the effect of OT on self-resemblance face perception exists, especially on its neural basis. Moreover, it is unclear if OT would influence the judgment in self-other discrimination when the other is a child or an adult. In the current double-blinded, placebo-controlled study, we investigated the effect of OT on self-face perception at both behavioral and neural levels. We morphed their faces with either an adult, a child, or a stranger face of either an adult or child. After being treated by either OT or placebo (PL), participants reported whether a morphed face resembles themselves while being scanned with fMRI. Behavioral results showed that people judged adult-morphed faces better than child-morphed faces. fMRI results showed that the OT group exhibited generally increased activities in the visual area and IFG for self-morphed faces. Such difference was more pronounced in the adult face compared to child face conditions. Multivariate fMRI analysis revealed that the OT group showed better classification between self-morphed versus other-morphed faces, indicating that OT increased self-other distinction, especially for adult faces and in the left hemisphere. Our study shows the significant effect of OT on self-referential brain processes, providing evidence for the potential OT's effect on a left hemisphere self network

The self-other distinction is crucial in human social cognition and social interaction. Studies have found that oxytocin (OT) sharpens the self-other perceptual boundary but with mixed results. Further, little is known if the effect of OT on selfresemblance facial perception exists, especially on its neural basis. Moreover, it is unclear if OT would influence the judgment in self-other discrimination when the other is a child or an adult. In the current double-blinded, placebo-controlled study, we investigated the effect of OT on self-face perception at both behavioral and neural levels. We morphed participants' faces and strangers' faces to create four stimuli conditions. After being treated by either OT or placebo (PL), participants reported whether a morphed face resembles themselves, or was morphed with their own faces, while being scanned with fMRI. Behavioral results showed that people judged adult-morphed faces better than child-morphed faces. fMRI results showed that the OT group exhibited generally increased activities in the visual area and IFG for self-morphed faces. Such difference was more pronounced in the adult face compared to child face conditions. Multivariate fMRI analysis revealed that the OT group showed better classification between self-morphed versus othermorphed faces, indicating that OT increased self-other distinction, especially for adult faces and in the left hemisphere. Our study shows the significant effect of OT on self-referential brain processes, providing evidence for the potential OT's effect on a left hemisphere self network.

Moral decisions are multifaceted with two essential aspects, flexibility and consistency. However, the interaction between these two and the underlying mechanisms is rarely studied. Here, we combined mouse-tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) together in a value-based moral decision task, which allows us to quantify accumulative history responses as self-consistency. Using a multi-attribute time-dependent drift-diffusion model (tDDM), we disentangled the role of consistency and self-interest, highlighting the dominant role of cognitive-control-related regions. The drift rate of self-consistency was directly associated with the brain activity responsible for cognitive control, while the relationship between the reward and the activity of the related brain regions was mediated by the mouse-tracking index area under the curve(AUC). Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was revealed as a hub connecting prACC and ventral striatum, whose functional connectivity was correlated with consistency drift rate and reward drift rate respectively. Furthermore, decision flexibility was quantified by choice entropy, which links to mouse tracking indices and the activity of cognitive - control related regions. Together, our study uncovers the interplay between self-consistency and reward in behavior, and highlights the key role of cognitive control in modulating these two attributes, thereby deepening our understanding of consistency and flexibility in moral decisions.

We present a dataset combining high-density Electroencephalography (HD-EEG, 128-channels) and mouse-tracking intended as a resource for examining the dynamic decision process of semantics and preference choices in the human brain. The dataset includes resting-state and task-related (food preference choices and semantic judgments) EEG acquired from 31 individuals (ages: 18–33). Along with the dataset, we also provided the preliminary microstate analysis of resting-state EEG and the ERPs, topomap, and time-frequency maps of the task-related EEG. We believe that the simultaneous mouse-tracking and EEG recording would crack the core components of binary choices and further index the temporal dynamics of decision making and response hesitation. This publicly available dataset could support the development of neural signal processing methods in motor EEG, thus advancing research in both the decision neuroscience and brain-computer interface (BCI) applications.