Neural correlates of regulating negative emotions related to moral violations

Harenski, Carla L.; Hamann, Stephan

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.09.034

Cited by 209 publications

(168 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…A large body of evidence shows a prominent role for this area in social cognitive functions such as theory of mind, empathy, moral reasoning and social decision making. 28,[50][51][52] In addition, vmPFC has been strongly implicated in explicit emotion regulation, particularly when subjects utilize an egocentric strategy. 53 Aberrant serotonin signalling in medial PFC is implicated impulsive decision making, 54 and deleterious changes in reward-based decision making and social behavior, including impulsive violence, are seen following damage to vmPFC in humans.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic variation in MAOA modulates ventromedial prefrontal circuitry mediating individual differences in human personality

Buckholtz¹,

Callicott²,

Kolachana³

et al. 2007

Mol Psychiatry

197

170

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Little is known about neural mechanisms underlying human personality and temperament, despite their considerable importance as highly heritable risk mediators for somatic and psychiatric disorders. To identify these circuits, we used a combined genetic and imaging approach focused on Monoamine Oxidase A (MAOA), encoding a key enzyme for monoamine metabolism previously associated with temperament and antisocial behavior. Male carriers of a low-expressing genetic variant exhibited dysregulated amygdala activation and increased functional coupling with ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Stronger coupling predicted increased harm avoidance and decreased reward dependence scores, suggesting that this circuitry mediates a part of the association of MAOA with these traits. We utilized path analysis to parse the effective connectivity within this system, and provide evidence that vmPFC regulates amygdala indirectly by influencing rostral cingulate cortex function. Our data implicate a neural circuit for variation in human personality under genetic control, provide an anatomically consistent mechanism for vmPFC-amygdala interactions underlying this variation, and suggest a role for vmPFC as a superordinate regulatory area for emotional arousal and social behavior.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic variation in MAOA modulates ventromedial prefrontal circuitry mediating individual differences in human personality

Buckholtz¹,

Callicott²,

Kolachana³

et al. 2007

Mol Psychiatry

197

170

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Although exposure times of 2 s or even less are standard in fMRI research involving emotional stimuli and effective to activate relevant brain structures (e.g., Britton et al, 2006;Goossens et al, 2009;Hariri et al, 2002;Norris et al, 2004), may paradigms in the field of emotion regulation have employed longer picture viewing times (e.g., Beauregard et al, 2001;Kim & Hamann, 2007;Koenigsberg et al, 2010;Levesque et al, 2003;Mak et al, 2009;Ochsner et al, 2002;Ochsner, Ray et al, 2004). However, in contrast to these investigations where regulation strategies alternate on a trial-by-trial basis and hence require the search for imagespecific adjustments (e.g., re-interpretations during REAP), here we applied a blocked design where regulation could be implemented in a more sustained manner (as already used elsewhere, e.g., Harenski & Hamann, 2006;Phan et al, 2005) and was guided by controlled instructions (e.g., "pretend unreal" for the REAP strategy) for all stimulus conditions and all participants. Therefore, although precluding a modulation of longer emotional "states" (see Eryilmaz, Van De Ville, Schwartz, & Vuilleumier, 2011), our study nonetheless could focus on the selective effects of REAP and/or ESUP on stimulus-driven emotional responses and was actually capable of delineating pronounced modulations in several subcortical and limbic brain areas.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of emotion regulation strategy on brain responses to the valence and social content of visual scenes

2011

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a b s t r a c tEmotion Regulation (ER) includes different mechanisms aiming at volitionally modulating emotional responses, including cognitive re-evaluation (re-appraisal; REAP) or inhibition of emotion expression and behavior (expressive suppression; ESUP). However, despite the importance of these ER strategies, previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have not sufficiently disentangled the specific neural impact of REAP versus ESUP on brain responses to different kinds of emotion-eliciting events. Moreover, although different effects have been reported for stimulus valence (positive vs. negative), no study has systematically investigated how ER may change emotional processing as a function of particular stimulus content variables (i.e., social vs. nonsocial). Our fMRI study directly compared brain activation to visual scenes during the use of different ER strategies, relative to a "natural" viewing condition, but also examined the effects of ER as a function of the social versus nonsocial content of scenes, in addition to their negative versus positive valence (by manipulating these factors orthogonally in a 2 × 2 factorial design). Our data revealed that several prefrontal cortical areas were differentially recruited during either REAP or ESUP, independent of the valence and content of images. In addition, selective modulations by either REAP or ESUP were found depending on the negative valence of scenes (medial fusiform gyrus, anterior insula, dmPFC), and on their nonsocial (middle insula) or social (bilateral amygdala, mPFC, posterior cingulate) significance. Furthermore, we observed a significant lateralization in the amygdala for the effect of the two different ER strategies, with a predominant modulation by REAP on the left side but by ESUP on the right side. Taken together, these results do not only highlight the distributed nature of neural changes induced by ER, but also reveal the specific impact of different strategies (REAP or ESUP), and the specific sites implicated by different dimensions of emotional information (social or negative).

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“…The majority of these studies focus on participants' negative evaluations of moral violations, for instance, hitting people with trolleys, breaking promises, distributing resources unfairly, and eating dead pets (Borg, Hynes, Van Horn, Grafton, & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2006;Cushman, 2008;Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004;Hauser, Cushman, Young, Jin, & Mikhail, 2007;Hsu, Anen, & Quartz, 2008). Moral judgments across these cases reflect a multitude of cognitive processes, including emotional responses to bad behavior and its effects (Harenski & Hamaan, 2006;Heekeren, Wartenburger, Schmidt, Schwintowski, & Villringer, 2003), as well as representations of the agent's mind, including his or her beliefs and intentions, i.e. "theory of mind" (ToM) (Borg, et al, 2006;Young, Cushman, Hauser, & Saxe, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural evidence for “intuitive prosecution”: The use of mental state information for negative moral verdicts

Young

Scholz

Saxe

2011

Social Neuroscience

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Neural correlates of regulating negative emotions related to moral violations

Cited by 209 publications

References 44 publications

Genetic variation in MAOA modulates ventromedial prefrontal circuitry mediating individual differences in human personality

Genetic variation in MAOA modulates ventromedial prefrontal circuitry mediating individual differences in human personality

Effects of emotion regulation strategy on brain responses to the valence and social content of visual scenes

Neural evidence for “intuitive prosecution”: The use of mental state information for negative moral verdicts

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