Harenski Carla L, Hamann Stephan
Department of Psychology, Emory University, 532 North Kilgo Circle, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
Neuroimage. 2006 Mar;30(1):313-24. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.09.034. Epub 2005 Oct 24.
Previous neuroimaging studies have identified several brain regions associated with regulating emotional responses. Different kinds of emotional stimuli, however, may recruit different regulatory processes and, in turn, recruit different regions. We compared emotion regulation for two types of negative emotional stimuli: those involving moral violations (moral stimuli), and those not involving moral violations (non-moral stimuli). In addition, we investigated whether activation in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), a region implicated previously in specifically moral processing, may instead reflect greater social and emotional content. Ten female subjects were scanned using fMRI while they passively viewed or were instructed to decrease emotional reactions to moral and non-moral pictures closely matched on social and emotional content. Passive viewing of both picture types elicited similar activations in areas related to the processing of social and emotional content, including MPFC and amygdala. During regulation, different patterns of activation in these regions were observed for moral vs. non-moral pictures. These results suggest that the neural correlates of regulating emotional reactions are modulated by the emotional content of stimuli, such as moral violations. In addition, the current findings suggest that some brain regions previously implicated in moral processing reflect the processing of greater social and emotional content in moral stimuli.
以往的神经影像学研究已经确定了几个与调节情绪反应相关的脑区。然而，不同类型的情绪刺激可能会引发不同的调节过程，进而激活不同的脑区。我们比较了针对两种负面情绪刺激的情绪调节：一种涉及道德违规（道德刺激），另一种不涉及道德违规（非道德刺激）。此外，我们还研究了内侧前额叶皮质（MPFC）的激活情况，该区域先前被认为专门参与道德处理，但其激活是否可能反映了更多的社会和情感内容。10名女性受试者在功能磁共振成像（fMRI）扫描过程中，被动观看或被要求减少对在社会和情感内容上紧密匹配的道德和非道德图片的情绪反应。被动观看这两种图片类型在与社会和情感内容处理相关的区域引发了相似的激活，包括MPFC和杏仁核。在调节过程中，观察到道德图片和非道德图片在这些区域的激活模式不同。这些结果表明，调节情绪反应的神经关联受到刺激的情感内容（如道德违规）的调节。此外，目前的研究结果表明，一些先前被认为与道德处理相关的脑区反映了道德刺激中更多的社会和情感内容的处理。
