School of Applied Psychology, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, 4122, Australia.
Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon City District, 100077, Hong Kong.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2021 Mar 24;16(4):345-369. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsab017.
Functional neuroimaging provides an avenue for earlier diagnosis and tailored treatment of psychological disorders characterised by emotional impairment. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) offers ecological advantages compared to other neuroimaging techniques and suitability of measuring regions involved in emotion functions. A systematic review was conducted to evaluate the capacity of NIRS to detect activation during emotion processing and to provide recommendations for future research. Following a comprehensive literature search, we reviewed 85 journal articles, which compared activation during emotional experience, regulation or perception with either a neutral condition or baseline period among healthy participants. The quantitative synthesis of outcomes was limited to thematical analysis, owing to the lack of standardisation between studies. Although most studies found increased prefrontal activity during emotional experience and regulation, the findings were more inconsistent for emotion perception. Some researchers reported increased activity during the task, some reported decreases, some no significant changes, and some reported mixed findings depending on the valence and region. We propose that variations in the cognitive task and stimuli, recruited sample, and measurement and analysis of data are the primary causes of inconsistency. Recommendations to improve consistency in future research by carefully considering the choice of population, cognitive task and analysis approach are provided.
功能神经影像学为以情绪障碍为特征的心理障碍的早期诊断和个性化治疗提供了一种途径。与其他神经影像学技术相比，近红外光谱 (NIRS) 具有生态优势，适合测量涉及情绪功能的区域。我们进行了一项系统评价，以评估 NIRS 在检测情绪处理过程中的激活的能力，并为未来的研究提供建议。在全面的文献检索之后，我们回顾了 85 篇期刊文章，这些文章比较了健康参与者在情绪体验、调节或感知过程中与中性条件或基线期的激活情况。由于研究之间缺乏标准化，因此结果的定量综合仅限于主题分析。尽管大多数研究发现情绪体验和调节过程中前额叶活动增加，但情绪感知的结果则更加不一致。一些研究人员报告在任务期间活动增加，一些报告活动减少，一些报告没有显著变化，一些报告根据情绪的效价和区域而出现混合结果。我们提出，认知任务和刺激、招募的样本以及数据的测量和分析的变化是不一致的主要原因。我们建议通过仔细考虑人群、认知任务和分析方法的选择，在未来的研究中提高一致性，并提供了相关建议。
