Over 20 years of research on terror management theory has demonstrated that reminders of death (mortality salience; MS) heighten individuals' investment in prioritized bases of value and meaning. Research in this vein has shown that MS intensifies people's efforts to demonstrate personal value on tasks relevant to their self-esteem ("self-esteem striving"). Though much work illustrates that such responses function to mitigate death-related concerns, to date no work has directly assessed the particular regulatory mechanisms that implement MS-induced self-esteem striving. The present study aimed to do so by measuring neural indices of performance monitoring. During a tasked framed as diagnostic of self-esteem relevant attributes, participants were randomly assigned to receive subliminal primes of the word death or of control terms. Response-locked brain signals were recorded to assess reactivity to correct and incorrect responses during the task. Results showed that death-primed (vs. control) participants exhibited greater neural reactivity following error commission as indexed by larger amplitude of the Error Related Negativity (ERN). Death-primed (vs. control) participants also exhibited intensified behavioral efforts to improve their performance following error commission (i.e., post-error slowing, post-error accuracy), effects that were likely mediated by the activity of neural mechanisms that generate the ERN. Furthermore, among death-primed participants, behavioral improvements on the self-esteem relevant task correlated with attenuations in death thought accessibility. Receiving death primes did not influence neural reactivity to correct responses (Correct Related Negativity; CRN) nor did it heighten a neural index of explicit error awareness (Error Positivity; Pe). Together these findings suggest that MS-induced self-esteem striving is implemented via automatic monitoring and avoidance of errors. The role of avoidance motivation in self-esteem striving is thus discussed.

Un pilier d'une vie sociale fructueuse est la capacité de prédire correctement les actions des autres et de percevoir leurs états émotionnels. Des études d'interaction sociale chez les primates ont montré qu'ils sont capables de déduire ce que les autres peuvent entendre ou voir, et de prédire leurs émotions et intentions. Il a été montré qu'ils peuvent manifester différents degrés de comportements prosociaux, allant de la coopération jusqu'à des comportements altruistes et empathiques. Des études d'imageries fonctionnelles chez l'homme ont identifié l'insula antérieur (AI) comme une région cérébrale clé dans le traitement de l'empathie.Spécifiquement, cette région apparait comme l'aire intégratrice des activités liées à la douleur ressentie et observée, suggérant que l'empathie pourrait impliquer un modèle « miroir » des propriétés affectives et sensorielles de la douleur d'autrui. Cependant, les bases neuronales de ce processus n'ont pas encore été découvertes. Dans le but d'examiner le rôle de l'AI dans le traitement de l'empathie, nous avons enregistré l'activité des neurones dans l'AI de deux singes pendant qu'ils sont engagés dans une tâche sociale leur permettant de délivrer un stimulus aversif ou appétitif à leur partenaire, à lui-même ou à personne. Les résultats comportementaux ont montré que les singes prennent en compte le bien-être de leur partenaire. Les données neuronales rapportent différentes populations neuronales répondant aux stimuli aversif ou appétitif et ceux délivrés à soi ou à autrui. Notamment, la population neuronale répondant au stimulus aversif a montré trois profils d'activité : une représentation neuronale de l'expérience désagréable du partenaire, une représentation neuronale de sa propre sensation désagréable et une minorité de neurones montrant des propriétés miroirs entre soi et autrui. Nos résultats suggèrent un modèle neuronal de l'empathie représentant des propriétés distinctes entre l'expérience vécue et observée / A cornerstone of a successful social life is the ability to correctly predict others’ actions and empathically perceive their emotional states. Studies on primates’ social interaction have shown that thanks to their keen cognitive abilities monkeys are able to deduce what others can hear or see, and to predict others’ emotions and intentions. It has been shown that primates are able to display different degrees of prosocial behavior, from cooperation to even altruism and empathically driven behavior. Studies using fMRI techniques inhumans have identified the anterior insula (AI) as a key brain region in the processing of empathy. More precisely, this region emerged as the overlapping area activated for both experienced and observed pain,leading to the idea that empathy for pain may involve a mirror-matching model of the affective and sensory features of others' pain. However, the neuronal basis of this process has yet to be uncovered. In an attempt toextend and to investigate the role of the AI in the process of empathy we have recorded single cell activity inthe AI of two monkeys while they were engaged in a social task where based on the performed trials positiveor negative reinforcements could be delivered to self, another monkey, or nobody. Behavioral results showed that monkeys take into account the welfare of their partners even when this has no impact on their ownwelfare. Our neuronal findings report that distinct population of neurons respond differentially to outcomesfor self and other, and to appetitive and aversive outcomes. Interestingly the neuronal population responding to the aversive outcome showed mainly three profiles of activity: neuronal representation of conspecifics’unpleasant experience, neuronal representation of own unpleasant experience and a minority of neurons showing mirroring properties between self and other. Thus, our results suggest a neuronal model of empathy that accounts for the distinctive features between feeling and empathizing

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This thesis is an interdisciplinary project in experimental social psychology, psychopharmacology, neuroscience, and neuroethics. The role of emotion in higher order psychological processes – social and moral judgments – was investigated. Specifically the role of noradrenergic mediated emotional arousal was researched. Behavioural studies demonstrated that acute beta adrenergic blockade with propranolol led to a reduction in negative implicit racial associations and also a modification of moral decision making. These findings suggest that basic affective processes might be causally relevant for higher order evaluations. However, enhancement with the noradrenergic potentiating agent reboxetine did not show effects opposite to those of propranolol on racial attitudes or moral judgments, which might indicate that emotional arousal, specific to beta-adrenoceptors might be involved in the effects of propranolol. Further a pharmacological fMRI study demonstrated that the activation pattern in brain regions commonly associated with intergroup bias -- such as the amygdala, insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and fusiform gyrus -- was affected by propranolol, and that the effect in the amygdala was correlated with implicit racial bias. Taken together the research suggests that automatic emotional arousal plays a role in higher order psychological processes, such as moral and social judgments, which aids the understanding of the underlying neurobiology of such processes. Finally, the ethical implications – such as the prospect of pharmacological moral enhancement – are discussed. The findings also suggest that the moral and social effects of already widely used psychotropic medications should be subject to further empirical and ethical investigation.