1. Neural correlates of social well-being: gray matter density in the orbitofrontal cortex predicts social well-being in emerging adulthood.
- Author
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Kong, Feng, Yang, Kairong, Sajjad, Sonia, Yan, Wenjing, Li, Xuewen, and Zhao, Jingjing
- Subjects
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QUALITY of life , *SOCIAL factors , *NEUROSES , *VOXEL-based morphometry , *SOCIAL perception , *SOCIAL status - Abstract
Social well-being reflects the perception of one's social functioning, which plays an important role in physical and psychological health. However, the exact neuroanatomical substrate for social well-being remains unclear. To address the issue, we employed the voxel-based morphometry method to probe the neuroanatomical basis of individual variation in social well-being in young healthy adults (n = 136). The results revealed a significant negative association between social well-being and regional gray matter density (rGMD) in an anatomical cluster that mainly includes the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) that has been involved in emotion regulation and social cognition. Furthermore, a balanced 4-fold cross-validation using the machine learning approach revealed that rGMD in the left OFC could be reliably related to social well-being. More importantly, the multiple mediation analysis revealed that neuroticism and dispositional forgiveness independently mediated the association between rGMD in the left OFC and social well-being. In addition, all these results remained stable when subjective socioeconomic status was controlled. Together, our results provide the initial evidence that the OFC is a neuroanatomical substrate for social well-being and demonstrate that the OFC is a crucial neural site linking neuroticism and dispositional forgiveness to social well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
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