Competition between frontoparietal control and default networks supports social working memory and empathy

Abstract

An extensive body of literature has indicated that there is increased activity in the frontoparietal control network (FPC) and decreased activity in the default mode network (DMN) during working memory (WM) tasks. The FPC and DMN operate in a competitive relationship during tasks requiring externally directed attention. However, the association between this FPC-DMN competition and performance in social WM tasks has rarely been reported in previous studies. To investigate this question, we measured FPC-DMN connectivity during resting state and two emotional face recognition WM tasks using the 2-back paradigm. Thirty-four individuals were instructed to perform the tasks based on either the expression [emotion (EMO)] or the identity (ID) of the same set of face stimuli. Consistent with previous studies, an increased anti-correlation between the FPC and DMN was observed during both tasks relative to the resting state. Specifically, this anti-correlation during the EMO task was stronger than during the ID task, as the former has a higher social load. Intriguingly, individual differences in self-reported empathy were significantly correlated with the FPC-DMN anti-correlation in the EMO task. These results indicate that the top-down signals from the FPC suppress the DMN to support social WM and empathy.

Reconciling cognitive and affective neuroscience perspectives on the brain basis of emotional experience

“…Third, the representations within these various regions will need to be made consciously accessible, via selective broadcasting to the frontal-parietal networks described above. This selective broadcasting likely involves bidirectional interactions with regions of the DMPFC associated with affective working memory maintenance (Waugh et al, 2014), but also plausibly involves similar interactions with lateral frontal-parietal networks Xin and Lei, 2015). Therefore, while subcortical emotion circuits are important for generating these broad multifaceted emotional reactions, from the CN perspective, a phenomenological emotional experience involves considerable cortical contributions associated with representation of bodily sensations and their conceptual meaning, as well as cortical mechanisms associated with affective working memory and selective broadcasting.…”

Functional neuroimaging of extraversion-introversion

“…Meanwhile, evidence from task-related neuroimaging revealed that extraversion is associated with the frontoparietal network [8,9] . Therefore, future studies should examine the relationships between these RSNs and personality traits when exploring the neuronal correlates of personality traits [57] .…”

Maintaining the feelings of others in working memory is associated with activation of the left anterior insula and left frontal-parietal control network

“…When maintaining emotions seen in faces (as in Xin and Lei, 2015), for example, it seems there are at least three such strategies: (1) one could hold the visual image of the emotional face in mind, (2) one could label the face with an emotion word (e.g. “sad”) and then hold that word in mind or (3) one could imagine the emotional feeling itself and hold that feeling in mind 1 .…”