Event-Related Potential Responses to Beloved and Familiar Faces in Different Marriage Styles: Evidence from Mosuo Subjects.

Research on familiar face recognition has largely focused on the neural correlates of recognizing a beloved partner or family member. However, no research has explored the effect of marriage style on the recognition of a beloved partner’s face, especially in matriarchal societies. Here, we examined the time course of event-related potentials (ERP) in response to the face of a beloved partner, sibling, or unknown person in a sample of individuals from the matriarchal Mosuo tribe. Two groups were assessed: intermarriage and walking marriage groups (i.e., couples in a committed relationship who do not cohabitate during the daytime). In agreement with previous reports, ERP results revealed more positive VPP, N250, and P300 waveforms for beloved faces than sibling faces in both groups. Moreover, P300 was more positive for beloved partner versus sibling faces; however, this difference emerged at fronto-central sites for the walking marriage group and at posterior sites for the intermarriage group. Overall, we observed that marriage style affects the later stage processing of a beloved partner’s face, and this may be associated with greater affective arousal and familiarity.

对熟悉面孔识别的研究主要集中在识别亲密伴侣或家庭成员的神经关联上。然而，没有研究探讨婚姻形式对识别亲密伴侣面孔的影响，尤其是在母系社会中。在此，我们在母系摩梭族的个体样本中检测了对亲密伴侣、兄弟姐妹或陌生人面孔的事件相关电位（ERP）的时间进程。对两组进行了评估：族外通婚组和走婚组（即处于稳定关系但白天不同居的情侣）。与先前的报告一致，ERP结果显示，两组中对亲密面孔比对兄弟姐妹面孔的VPP、N250和P300波形都更正向。此外，对亲密伴侣面孔比对兄弟姐妹面孔的P300更正向；然而，这种差异在走婚组出现在额中央部位，在族外通婚组出现在后部部位。总体而言，我们观察到婚姻形式影响对亲密伴侣面孔的后期加工，这可能与更强的情感唤起和熟悉度有关。