Trust constitutes a fundamental basis of human society and plays a pivotal role in almost every aspect of human relationships. Although enormous interest exists in determining the neuropsychological underpinnings of a person's propensity to trust utilizing task‐based fMRI; however, little progress has been made in predicting its variations by task‐free fMRI based on whole‐brain resting‐state functional connectivity (RSFC). Here, we combined a one‐shot trust game with a connectome‐based predictive modeling approach to predict propensity to trust from whole‐brain RSFC. We demonstrated that individual variations in the propensity to trust were primarily predicted by RSFC rooted in the functional integration of distributed key nodes—caudate, amygdala, lateral prefrontal cortex, temporal–parietal junction, and the temporal pole—which are part of domain‐general large‐scale networks essential for the motivational, affective, and cognitive aspects of trust. We showed, further, that the identified brain‐behavior associations were only evident for trust but not altruistic preferences and that propensity to trust (and its underlying neural underpinnings) were modulated according to the extent to which a person emphasizes general social preferences (i.e., horizontal collectivism) rather than general risk preferences (i.e., trait impulsiveness). In conclusion, the employed data‐driven approach enables to predict propensity to trust from RSFC and highlights its potential use as an objective neuromarker of trust impairment in mental disorders.

Oxytocin(OT) has effects in both human behavior and in the brain, which is not limited in the specific brain area but also with the potential effect on connectivity with other brain regions. Evidence indicate that the effects of OT on human behavior are multifaceted, such as trust behavior, decrease anxiety, empathy and bonding behavior. Since the vital role of mentalizing in understanding others, here we proposed and tested that whether OT has a general effect on theory of mind brain network which is associated to the effect of related social behavioral and personality traits. Used a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled group design, we investigated the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging after intranasal OT or placebo. The functional connectivity (FC) maps with seed in left temporoparietal junction (lTPJ) and right TPJ showed that OT significantly increased connectivity between rTPJ and default attention network (DAN), while decreased the FC between lTPJ and medial prefrontal network (MPN). With implementing machine learning approach, we further reported satisfactory classification accuracy that Identified altered FCs of TPJ can classify OT and PL group. Moreover, individual's empathy trait can modulate the FC between left TPJ and right RECT, which was positively correlated with empathic concern in PL group whereas lTPJ-rRECT negatively correlated in OT group. These results demonstrate that OT has significant effect on FC with lTPJ and rTPJ, brain regions critical for mentalizing, and the empathy concern can modulate the FC. These findings add to our understanding of the neural mechanisms by which OT modulates social behaviors, especially in social interaction involving mentalizing.

The ability to integrate the moral intention information with the outcome of an action plays a crucial role in mature moral judgment. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies implicated that both prefrontal and temporo-parietal cortices are involved in moral intention and outcome processing. Here, we used the event-related potentials (ERPs) technique to investigate the temporal dynamics of the processing of the integration between intention and outcome information in harmful and helpful moral judgment. In two experiments, participants were asked to make moral judgments for agents who produced either negative/neutral outcomes with harmful/neutral intentions (harmful judgment) or positive/neutral outcomes with helpful/neutral intentions (helpful judgment). Significant ERP differences between attempted and successful actions over prefrontal and bilateral temporo-parietal regions were found in both harmful and helpful moral judgment, which suggest a possible time course of the integration processing in the brain, starting from the right temporo-parietal area (N180) to the left temporo-parietal area (N250), then the prefrontal area (FSW) and the right temporo-parietal area (TP450 and TPSW) again. These results highlighted the fast moral intuition reaction and the late integration processing over the right temporo-parietal area.

The association between moral purity and physical cleanliness has been widely discussed recently. Studies found that moral threat initiates the need of physical cleanliness, but actual physical cleaning and priming of cleaning have inconsistent effects on subsequent attitudes and behaviors. Here, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the underlying neural mechanism of actual physical cleaning and priming of cleaning. After recalling moral transgression with strong feelings of guilt and shame, participants either actually cleaned their faces with a wipe or were primed with cleanliness through viewing its pictures. Results showed that actual physical cleaning reduced the spontaneous brain activities in the right insula and MPFC, regions that involved in embodied moral emotion processing, while priming of cleaning decreased activities in the right superior frontal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus, regions that participated in executive control processing. Additionally, actual physical cleaning also changed functional connectivity between insula/MPFC and emotion related regions, whereas priming of cleaning modified connectivity within both moral and sensorimotor areas. These findings revealed that actual physical cleaning and priming of cleaning led to changes in different brain regions and networks, providing neural evidence for the inconsistent effects of cleanliness on subsequent attitudes and behaviors.