Duan Lian, Feng Qiudi, Xu Pengfei
Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Center for Brain Disorders and Cognitive Sciences, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
School of Policing Studies, Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, China.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2020 Jun 10;14:197. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00197. eCollection 2020.
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a promising brain imaging modality for studying the neural substrates of moral emotions. However, the feasibility of using fNIRS to measure moral emotions has not been established. In the present study, we used fNIRS to detect the brain activation evoked by two typical moral emotions-guilt and shame. We presented the participants with guilt and shame context to evoke emotional responses and measured the brain activity by using fNIRS. The univariate general linear model analysis showed significant activations for both emotions in the orbitofrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and middle temporal gyrus, and specific activation for guilt in the right temporoparietal junction. The multivariate classification analysis showed an overall recognition accuracy of 52.50%, which was significantly higher than the chance level in classifying the guilt, shame, and neutral emotions. These results suggested the feasibility of using fNIRS to assess the brain activation evoked by guilt and shame and demonstrated the potentials of fNIRS in studying the neural correlates of moral emotions.
功能近红外光谱技术（fNIRS）是一种很有前景的脑成像方式，可用于研究道德情感的神经基础。然而，使用fNIRS测量道德情感的可行性尚未得到证实。在本研究中，我们使用fNIRS来检测由两种典型道德情感——内疚和羞耻所引发的大脑激活情况。我们向参与者呈现内疚和羞耻情境以唤起情绪反应，并使用fNIRS测量大脑活动。单变量一般线性模型分析显示，眶额皮质、背外侧前额叶皮质和颞中回在两种情绪下均有显著激活，且右侧颞顶联合区在内疚情绪下有特定激活。多变量分类分析显示，在区分内疚、羞耻和中性情绪时，总体识别准确率为52.50%，显著高于随机水平。这些结果表明使用fNIRS评估由内疚和羞耻引发的大脑激活具有可行性，并证明了fNIRS在研究道德情感的神经关联方面的潜力。
