Murray Ryan J, Kreibig Sylvia D, Pehrs Corinna, Vuilleumier Patrik, Gross James J, Samson Andrea C
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Campus Biotech, Geneva, Switzerland.
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA.
Neuroimage. 2023 May 1;271:119973. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.119973. Epub 2023 Feb 26.
Neuroscience research has generally studied emotions each taken in isolation. However, mixed emotional states (e.g., the co-occurrence of amusement and disgust, or sadness and pleasure) are common in everyday life. Psychophysiological and behavioral evidence suggests that mixed emotions may have response profiles that are distinguishable from their constituent emotions. Yet, the brain bases of mixed emotions remain unresolved.
We recruited 38 healthy adults who viewed short, validated film clips, eliciting either positive (amusing), negative (disgusting), neutral, or mixed (a mix of amusement and disgust) emotional states, while brain activity was assessed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We assessed mixed emotions in two ways: first by comparing neural reactivity to ambiguous (mixed) with that to unambiguous (positive and negative) film clips and second by conducting parametric analyses to measure neural reactivity with respect to individual emotional states. We thus obtained self-reports of amusement and disgust after each clip and computed a minimum feeling score (shared minimum of amusement and disgust) to quantify mixed emotional feelings.
Both analyses revealed a network of the posterior cingulate (PCC), medial superior parietal lobe (SPL)/precuneus, and parieto-occipital sulcus to be involved in ambiguous contexts eliciting mixed emotions.
Our results are the first to shed light on the dedicated neural processes involved in dynamic social ambiguity processing. They suggest both higher-order (SPL) and lower-order (PCC) processes may be needed to process emotionally complex social scenes.
神经科学研究通常孤立地研究每种情绪。然而，混合情绪状态（例如，娱乐与厌恶同时出现，或悲伤与愉悦同时出现）在日常生活中很常见。心理生理学和行为学证据表明，混合情绪可能具有与其组成情绪不同的反应特征。然而，混合情绪的大脑基础仍未得到解决。
我们招募了38名健康成年人，他们观看经过验证的短片，引发积极（有趣）、消极（厌恶）、中性或混合（娱乐与厌恶混合）情绪状态，同时通过功能磁共振成像（fMRI）评估大脑活动。我们通过两种方式评估混合情绪：首先，比较对模糊（混合）与明确（积极和消极）短片的神经反应性；其次，进行参数分析以测量针对个体情绪状态的神经反应性。因此，我们在每个短片后获得了娱乐和厌恶的自我报告，并计算了最小感受分数（娱乐和厌恶的共同最小值）以量化混合情绪感受。
两项分析均显示，后扣带回（PCC）、内侧顶上叶（SPL）/楔前叶和顶枕沟网络参与了引发混合情绪的模糊情境。
我们的结果首次揭示了动态社会模糊处理中涉及的专门神经过程。它们表明，处理情感复杂的社会场景可能需要高阶（SPL）和低阶（PCC）过程。
