Liu Zhiyuan, Cheng Xuemei, Liu Sijia, Zhang Zhenyu, Li Shuang, Li Lin, Guo Xiuyan
Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China.
Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Beijing Polytechnic, Beijing, China.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2020 Nov;157:23-31. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2020.08.002. Epub 2020 Sep 6.
As a common negative emotion in daily life, regret is harmful to mental health and even inclined to induce mental illness. Therefore, to modulate and reduce regret is of wide concern. The current fMRI study aimed to investigate the modulation of attentional deployment training on subsequent regret by using a sequential risk taking task. On each trial of the task, participants were asked to open a series of boxes consecutively and decided when to stop. Each box contained a reward, except for one containing a devil to zero one's gain in the trial. After participants stopped, both collected gains and missed chances were revealed. The study consisted of training and testing stages. At training stage, attentional deployment manipulation was carried out during the outcome feedback of the task, i.e. participants were induced to focus on gains or missed chances by highlighting different parts of the outcome. In the testing stage followed, participants completed the task with no attentional deployment manipulation. Behaviorally, after a training stage focusing on gains, participants felt less regret when encountered with worse outcome at testing stage. At the neural level, more activities of reward related brain regions such as right putamen and cognitive control related brain regions such as dmPFC, SFG and MFG were observed at testing stage followed by a training stage focusing on gains. The current study highlighted that attentional deployment training could modulate the subsequent regret effectively, and that dmPFC, SFG and MFG played a key role in this process.
后悔作为日常生活中一种常见的负面情绪，对心理健康有害，甚至倾向于诱发精神疾病。因此，调节和减少后悔受到广泛关注。当前的功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究旨在通过使用连续冒险任务来探究注意力分配训练对后续后悔的调节作用。在任务的每次试验中，参与者被要求连续打开一系列盒子，并决定何时停止。每个盒子都包含一个奖励，但有一个盒子包含一个“恶魔”，会使参与者在该试验中的收益归零。参与者停止操作后，已收集的收益和错过的机会都会显示出来。该研究包括训练和测试阶段。在训练阶段，在任务的结果反馈期间进行注意力分配操作，即通过突出结果的不同部分，诱导参与者关注收益或错过的机会。在随后的测试阶段，参与者在没有注意力分配操作的情况下完成任务。在行为层面上，在经历了专注于收益的训练阶段后，参与者在测试阶段遇到较差结果时感到的后悔较少。在神经层面上，在经历了专注于收益的训练阶段后的测试阶段，观察到奖励相关脑区（如右侧壳核）和认知控制相关脑区（如背内侧前额叶皮质、额上回和额中回）有更多活动。当前的研究强调，注意力分配训练可以有效调节后续的后悔，并且背内侧前额叶皮质、额上回和额中回在这一过程中发挥了关键作用。
