Guan Fang, Liu Guanmin, Pedersen Walker S, Chen Outong, Zhao Sasa, Sui Jie, Peng Kaiping
Department of Psychology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Department of Psychology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Neuropsychologia. 2021 Sep 17;160:107978. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107978. Epub 2021 Jul 30.
Self-compassion is an important emotion regulation strategy predicting positive psychological health and fewer psychopathological problems, but little is known about its structural neural basis. In the current study, we investigated the neurostructural correlates of dispositional self-compassion and its components using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). We found that self-compassion was inversely correlated with gray matter volume (GMV) in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which was primarily driven by the reduced self-judgment component. We also found that the mindfulness component was associated with greater GMV in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex/anterior cingulate cortex and the left supplementary motor area, while the isolation and the over-identification components were both correlated with greater GMV in the right inferior temporal gyrus, and over-identification additionally related to less GMV in visual areas. Our findings suggest that dispositional self-compassion and its components are associated with brain structure in regions involved in emotion regulation, self-referential and emotion processing, with implications for the cognitive and neural mechanisms of self-compassion as well as those underlying the effects of self-compassion on its health outcomes.
自我同情是一种重要的情绪调节策略，可预测积极的心理健康状况并减少心理病理问题，但对其结构神经基础却知之甚少。在当前的研究中，我们使用基于体素的形态计量学（VBM）研究了特质性自我同情及其组成部分的神经结构相关性。我们发现，自我同情与左侧背外侧前额叶皮质（DLPFC）的灰质体积（GMV）呈负相关，这主要是由自我评判成分的减少所驱动。我们还发现，正念成分与背内侧前额叶皮质/前扣带回皮质以及左侧辅助运动区更大的GMV相关，而孤立和过度认同成分均与右侧颞下回更大的GMV相关，并且过度认同还与视觉区域较少的GMV相关。我们的研究结果表明，特质性自我同情及其组成部分与参与情绪调节、自我参照和情绪处理的脑区结构相关，这对自我同情的认知和神经机制以及自我同情对其健康结果影响的潜在机制具有启示意义。
