Shamay-Tsoory Simone G, Tibi-Elhanany Yasmin, Aharon-Peretz Judith
Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Brain. 2007 Jun;130(Pt 6):1663-78. doi: 10.1093/brain/awm093.
Facing a protagonist's emotional mental state can trigger social emotions (or 'fortune of others' emotion), such as envy or gloating, which reflect one's assessment of the consequences of the other's fortune. Here we suggest that these social emotions are mediated by the mentalizing network. The present article explores the notion that the understanding of social competitive emotions is particularly impaired in patients with ventromedial (VM) prefrontal lesions. By manipulating a simple Theory of Mind (ToM) task, we tested the ability of patients with localized lesions to understand 'fortune of others' emotions: envy and gloating (schadenfreude). Patients were also assessed for their ability to recognize control physical and identification conditions. While envy is an example of a negative experience in the face of another's fortunes, gloat is thought to be a positive experience in the face of another's misfortune. Whereas in schadenfreude and envy the emotion of the self and the protagonist may be opposite, identification involves matching between the protagonist's and the observer's emotions. Patients with VM (N = 10) lesions (particularly in the right hemisphere), although showing intact performance on a basic first order ToM condition, and relatively preserved understanding of identification, did not recognize envy (F[6,76] = 3.491, P = 0.004) and gloating (F[6,76] = 3.738, P = 0.003). Impaired recognition of gloating involved additionally lesions in the inferior parietal lobule (P = 0.001). Furthermore, while patients with lesions in the left hemisphere were more impaired in recognizing gloating (a positive emotion), right hemisphere patients were more impaired in recognizing envy (a negative emotion), suggesting that the valence of these emotions may also be affected by the asymmetry of the lesion (F[6,68] = 2.002, P = 0.011). In addition, the ability to identify these emotions was related to perspective-taking abilities and ToM. We suggest that these results indicate that the mentalizing network including the VM has a fundamental role in mediating the understanding of competitive emotions such as envy and gloating.
面对主角的情绪心理状态可能会引发社会情绪（或“他人的命运”情绪），如嫉妒或幸灾乐祸，这些情绪反映了一个人对他人命运后果的评估。在这里，我们认为这些社会情绪是由心理化网络介导的。本文探讨了这样一种观点，即腹内侧（VM）前额叶病变患者对社会竞争情绪的理解特别受损。通过操纵一个简单的心理理论（ToM）任务，我们测试了局限性病变患者理解“他人的命运”情绪（嫉妒和幸灾乐祸）的能力。还评估了患者识别对照身体和识别条件的能力。虽然嫉妒是面对他人命运时负面体验的一个例子，但幸灾乐祸被认为是面对他人不幸时的正面体验。在幸灾乐祸和嫉妒中，自我和主角的情绪可能相反，而识别涉及主角和观察者情绪之间的匹配。VM病变患者（N = 10）（特别是右半球），尽管在基本的一阶ToM条件下表现完好，并且对识别的理解相对保留，但无法识别嫉妒（F[6,76] = 3.491，P = 0.004）和幸灾乐祸（F[6,76] = 3.738，P = 0.003）。对幸灾乐祸的识别受损还涉及下顶叶小叶的病变（P = 0.001）。此外，虽然左半球病变患者在识别幸灾乐祸（一种正面情绪）方面受损更严重，但右半球患者在识别嫉妒（一种负面情绪）方面受损更严重，这表明这些情绪的效价也可能受到病变不对称性的影响（F[6,68] = 2.002，P = 0.011）。此外，识别这些情绪的能力与换位思考能力和ToM有关。我们认为这些结果表明，包括VM在内的心理化网络在介导对嫉妒和幸灾乐祸等竞争情绪的理解中具有基本作用。
