Individual differences in posterior cortical volume correlate with proneness to pride and gratitude

Posttraumatic survivor guilt is associated with white matter microstructure alterations

BACKGROUND

Military veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) commonly experience posttraumatic guilt. Guilt over commission or omission evolves when responsibility is assumed for an unfortunate outcome (e.g., the death of a fellow combatant). Survivor guilt is a state of intense emotional distress experienced by the weight of knowing that one survived while others did not.

METHODS

This study of the Translational Research Center for TBI and Stress Disorders (TRACTS) analyzed structural and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging data from 132 male Iraq/Afghanistan veterans with PTSD. The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-IV (CAPS-IV) was employed to classify guilt. Thirty (22.7 %) veterans experienced guilt over acts of commission or omission, 34 (25.8 %) experienced survivor guilt, and 68 (51.5 %) had no posttraumatic guilt. White matter microstructure (fractional anisotropy, FA), cortical thickness, and cortical volume were compared between veterans with guilt over acts of commission or omission, veterans with survivor guilt, and veterans without guilt.

RESULTS

Veterans with survivor guilt had significantly lower white matter FA compared to veterans who did not experience guilt (p < .001), affecting several regions of major white matter fiber bundles. There were no significant differences in white matter FA, cortical thickness, or volumes between veterans with guilt over acts of commission or omission and veterans without guilt (p > .050).

LIMITATIONS

This cross-sectional study with exclusively male veterans precludes inferences of causality between the studied variables and generalizability to the larger veteran population that includes women.

CONCLUSION

Survivor guilt may be a particularly impactful form of posttraumatic guilt that requires specific treatment efforts targeting brain health.

Neuroanatomical markers of social cognition in neglected adolescents

Growing up in neglectful households can impact multiple aspects of social cognition. However, research on neglect's effects on social cognition processes and their neuroanatomical correlates during adolescence is scarce. Here, we aimed to comprehensively assess social cognition processes (recognition of basic and contextual emotions, theory of mind, the experience of envy and Schadenfreude and empathy for pain) and their structural brain correlates in adolescents with legal neglect records within family-based care. First, we compared neglected adolescents (n = 27) with control participants (n = 25) on context-sensitive social cognition tasks while controlling for physical and emotional abuse and executive and intellectual functioning. Additionally, we explored the grey matter correlates of these domains through voxel-based morphometry. Compared to controls, neglected adolescents exhibited lower performance in contextual emotional recognition and theory of mind, higher levels of envy and Schadenfreude and diminished empathy. Physical and emotional abuse and executive or intellectual functioning did not explain these effects. Moreover, social cognition scores correlated with brain volumes in regions subserving social cognition and emotional processing. Our results underscore the potential impact of neglect on different aspects of social cognition during adolescence, emphasizing the necessity for preventive and intervention strategies to address these deficits in this population.

Influence of first-person and third-person perspectives on neural mechanisms of professional pride

Professional pride, including self-reflection and attitude toward one's own occupational group, induces individuals to behave in socially appropriate ways, and uniforms can encourage wearers to have this pride. This study was to elucidate the working pattern of professional pride by exploring neural responses when wearing uniforms and being conscious of a third-person's perspective. Twenty healthy adults who had an occupation requiring uniforms were scanned using functional MRI with a self-evaluation task consisting of 2 [uniform versus casual wear] × 2 [first-person perspective versus third-person perspective] conditions. The neural effects of clothing and perspective were analyzed and post-hoc tests were followed. The interaction effect was displayed in the bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, where uniform led to higher activity in third-person perspective than in first-person perspective, whereas casual wear led to the opposite pattern, suggesting this region may be involved in the awareness of third-person's perspective to uniform-wearing. The right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex showed functional connectivity with the right posterior superior temporal sulcus in uniform-third-person perspective compared to uniform-first-person perspective, suggesting this connection may work for processing information from third-person perspective in a uniform-wearing state. Professional pride may prioritize social information processing in third-person perspective rather than self-referential processing in first-person perspective.

Pride: The Emotional Foundation of Social Rank Attainment

Pride is a self-conscious emotion, comprised of two distinct facets known as authentic and hubristic pride, and associated with a cross-culturally recognized nonverbal expression. Authentic pride involves feelings of accomplishment and confidence and promotes prosocial behaviors, whereas hubristic pride involves feelings of arrogance and conceit and promotes antisociality. Each facet of pride, we argue, contributes to a distinct means of attaining social rank: Authentic pride seems to promote prestige-a rank based on earned respect-whereas hubristic pride seems to promote dominance-a rank based on aggression and coercion. Both prestige and dominance are effective routes to power and influence in human groups, so both facets of pride are likely to be functional adaptations. Overall, the reviewed research suggests that pride is likely to be a human universal, critical for social relationships and rank attainment across human societies.

Comparing gratitude and pride: evidence from brain and behavior

Gratitude and pride are both positive emotions. Yet gratitude motivates people to help others and build up relationships, whereas pride motivates people to pursue achievements and build on self-esteem. Although these social outcomes are crucial for humans to be evolutionarily adaptive, no study so far has systematically compared gratitude and pride to understand why and how they can motivate humans differently. In this review, we compared gratitude and pride from their etymologies, cognitive prerequisites, motivational functions, and brain regions involved. By integrating the evidence from brain and behavior, we suggest that gratitude and pride share a common reward basis, yet gratitude is more related to theory of mind, while pride is more related to self-referential processing. Moreover, we proposed a cognitive neuroscientific model to explain the dynamics in gratitude and pride under a reinforcement learning framework.

Shame proneness is associated with individual differences in temporal pole white matter structure

Shame and guilt are distinct negative moral emotions, although they are usually regarded as overlapping affective experiences. Of these two emotions, shame is more closely related to concerns about other people's judgment, whereas guilt is more related to concerns about one's own judgment. Although some studies have tried to identify the psychological process underlying shame as opposed to guilt, there is no clear evidence of brain regions that are specifically relevant to the experience of shame rather than guilt and, more generally, self-blame. We therefore investigated associations between individual differences in shame- and guilt-proneness and the gray and white matter structures of the brain using magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry while controlling for associations with guilt- or shame-proneness. To accomplish this goal, we enrolled 590 healthy, right-handed individuals (338 men and 252 women; age, 20.6 ± 1.8 years). We administered a questionnaire to assess shame proneness and guilt proneness. Based on our hypothesis, we found that high shame proneness was associated with decreased regional white matter density only in the right inferior temporal pole, whereas no significant region was associated with guilt. The function of this area may be important for the underlying processes differentiating shame from guilt.

Self-Conscious Emotions and the Right Fronto-Temporal and Right Temporal Parietal Junction

For more than two decades, research focusing on both clinical and non-clinical populations has suggested a key role for specific regions in the regulation of self-conscious emotions. It is speculated that both the expression and the interpretation of self-conscious emotions are critical in humans for action planning and response, communication, learning, parenting, and most social encounters. Empathy, Guilt, Jealousy, Shame, and Pride are all categorized as self-conscious emotions, all of which are crucial components to one’s sense of self. There has been an abundance of evidence pointing to the right Fronto-Temporal involvement in the integration of cognitive processes underlying the expression of these emotions. Numerous regions within the right hemisphere have been identified including the right temporal parietal junction (rTPJ), the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and the inferior parietal lobule (IPL). In this review, we aim to investigate patient cases, in addition to clinical and non-clinical studies. We also aim to highlight these specific brain regions pivotal to the right hemispheric dominance observed in the neural correlates of such self-conscious emotions and provide the potential role that self-conscious emotions play in evolution.

Neurostructural correlates of dispositional self-compassion

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.

Neural dynamics of pride and shame in social context: an approach with event-related brain electrical potentials

The neural underpinnings of social emotions such as pride and shame are largely unknown. The present study aims to add evidence by exploiting the advantage of event-related brain electrical potentials (ERP) to examine the neural processes as they unfold over time. For this purpose, a dot-estimation task was adapted to explore these emotions as elicited in a simulated social context. Pride prompted an early negativity seemingly originated in medial parietal regions (precuneus) and possibly reflecting social comparison processes in successful trials. This was followed by a late positivity originated in medial frontal regions, probably reflecting the verification of singularly successful trials. Shame, in turn, elicited an early negativity apparently originated in the cuneus, probably related to mental imagery of the social situation. It was followed by a late positivity mainly originated in the same regions as the early negativity for pride, then conceivably reflecting social comparison processes, in this occasion in unsuccessful trials. None of these fluctuations correlated with self-reported feelings of either emotion, suggesting that they instead relate to social cognitive computations necessary to achieve them. The present results provide a dynamic depiction of neural mechanisms underlying these social emotions, probing the necessity to study them using an integrated approach with different techniques.

Neural responses to intention and benefit appraisal are critical in distinguishing gratitude and joy

Gratitude and joy are critical for promoting well-being. However, the differences between the two emotions and corresponding neural correlates are not understood. Here we addressed these issues by eliciting the two emotions using the same stimuli in an fMRI task. In this help reception task, participants imagined them in a situation where they need financial aid. Critically, we manipulated the benefactor's intention to provide help and the value of the benefit. Behaviorally, gratitude was stronger than joy when the benefactor-intention was strong and the benefit-value was low compared to other conditions. In parallel, gratitude activated mentalizing-related (e.g. precuneus) and reward-related regions (e.g. putamen) more strongly than joy in corresponding conditions compared to others. Moreover, gratitude was more negatively (or less positively) encoded in the region associated with mentalizing (i.e. the left superior temporal gyrus) than joy. Multivariate pattern analysis further demonstrated that the modulation patterns of benefactor-intention and benefit-value in mentalizing-related (e.g. precuneus, temporo-parietal junction) and reward-related regions (e.g. putamen, perigenual anterior cingulate/ventromedial prefrontal cortex) could distinguish the two emotions. The findings suggest that benefactor-intention and benefit-value appraisal and their neural correlates are critical in distinguishing gratitude and joy. Direct implications for gratitude interventions were discussed.

Praising others differently: neuroanatomical correlates to individual differences in trait gratitude and elevation

Differing from basic emotions such as happiness, gratitude and elevation are important other-praising emotions. Previous behavioral studies have established that these complex emotions differ from each other; however, it remains under-investigated whether proneness to these emotions have common or distinct neuroanatomical correlates. Here we used voxel-based morphometry to identify the common and distinct neuroanatomical correlates of trait (i.e. proneness to) gratitude and elevation. We used the Gratitude Questionnaire-6 and the trait elevation scale to measure these affective traits. We demonstrated that trait gratitude was positively correlated with gray matter volume (GMV) in the left cerebellum extending to fusiform gyrus, and also the right middle occipital gyrus (MOG) extending to posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and temporoparietal junction (TPJ), while trait elevation was negatively correlated with GMV in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. While controlling each other, all the regions still held significant, except the right MOG and pSTS/TPJ. The results indicate that there are distinct neuroanatomical correlates for proneness to gratitude and elevation, while the evidence is mixed that pSTS/TPJ may be the common correlates for them. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Effect of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex on the Gratitude of Individuals with Heterogeneous Ability in an Experimental Labor Market

Gratitude is an important aspect of human sociality, which benefits mental health and interpersonal relationships. Thus, elucidating the neural mechanism of gratitude, which is only now beginning to be investigated, is important. To this end, this study specifies the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) involved in the gratitude of heterogeneous individuals using the transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) technique. Previous neural studies have shown the involvement of mPFC in social cognition and value evaluation, which are closely related to gratitude. However, the causal relationship between this neural area and gratitude has not been fully examined and the effect of individual social heterogeneity has been ignored. Meanwhile, behavioral economics studies have proposed that the abilities of employees in the labor market would affect their gratitude and emotional response. Thus, we designed an experiment based on gift exchange game to investigate the relationship between mPFC and gratitude of heterogeneous employees. Before the experiment, participants were asked to perform self-cognition of their abilities through an appropriately difficult task. We then used the effort of participants to imply their gratitude and analyzed the effort levels of employees with different abilities under anodal, cathodal, and sham stimulations. The results showed that employees under anodal stimulation were significantly likely to increase their effort than those under sham stimulation, and employees under cathodal stimulation ranked at the bottom of the list. Moreover, the effort levels of low-ability employees were obviously higher than those of high-ability employees. The cathodal stimulation of mPFC significantly reduced the effort levels of low-ability employees, whereas its anodal tDCS stimulation increased the effort levels of high-ability employees. These outcomes verify the relationship between mPFC and gratitude using tDCS and provided one of the first instances of neural evidence for the incentive mechanism design in the labor market to a certain extent.

Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations During Resting State Differentially Predicts Authentic and Hubristic Pride

OBJECTIVE

Pride is an important, self-conscious emotion composed of two distinct conceptual facets: arrogant, egotistic "hubristic pride," and pro-social, achievement-oriented "authentic pride." However, little is known about the neural basis of the two facets of pride. Here, we investigated the association between spontaneous brain activity and these two facets of pride in resting state.

METHOD

We measured 276 participants on authentic and hubristic pride. The fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) was used to identify pride-related regions.

RESULTS

The results revealed individual differences in authentic pride were associated with the fALFF in the bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STG), which has been implicated in social processing. In contrast, individual differences in hubristic pride were associated with the fALFF in the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), which have been implicated in self-referential and reward processing.

CONCLUSIONS

Together, our results provide initial evidence for the distinct neural substrates for authentic and hubristic pride.

Increased Grey Matter Associated with Long-Term Sahaja Yoga Meditation: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study

OBJECTIVES

To investigate regional differences in grey matter volume associated with the practice of Sahaja Yoga Meditation.

DESIGN

Twenty three experienced practitioners of Sahaja Yoga Meditation and twenty three non-meditators matched on age, gender and education level, were scanned using structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging and their grey matter volume were compared using Voxel-Based Morphometry.

RESULTS

Grey matter volume was larger in meditators relative to non-meditators across the whole brain. In addition, grey matter volume was larger in several predominantly right hemispheric regions: in insula, ventromedial orbitofrontal cortex, inferior temporal and parietal cortices as well as in left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and left insula. No areas with larger grey matter volume were found in non-meditators relative to meditators.

CONCLUSIONS

The study shows that long-term practice of Sahaja Yoga Meditation is associated with larger grey matter volume overall, and with regional enlargement in several right hemispheric cortical and subcortical brain regions that are associated with sustained attention, self-control, compassion and interoceptive perception. The increased grey matter volume in these attention and self-control mediating regions suggests use-dependent enlargement with regular practice of this meditation.

Neural correlates of gratitude

Gratitude is an important aspect of human sociality, and is valued by religions and moral philosophies. It has been established that gratitude leads to benefits for both mental health and interpersonal relationships. It is thus important to elucidate the neurobiological correlates of gratitude, which are only now beginning to be investigated. To this end, we conducted an experiment during which we induced gratitude in participants while they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. We hypothesized that gratitude ratings would correlate with activity in brain regions associated with moral cognition, value judgment and theory of mind. The stimuli used to elicit gratitude were drawn from stories of survivors of the Holocaust, as many survivors report being sheltered by strangers or receiving lifesaving food and clothing, and having strong feelings of gratitude for such gifts. The participants were asked to place themselves in the context of the Holocaust and imagine what their own experience would feel like if they received such gifts. For each gift, they rated how grateful they felt. The results revealed that ratings of gratitude correlated with brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex, in support of our hypotheses. The results provide a window into the brain circuitry for moral cognition and positive emotion that accompanies the experience of benefitting from the goodwill of others.

Cerebral lateralization of pro- and anti-social tendencies

Mounting evidence suggest that the right-hemisphere (RH) has a relative advantage, over the left-hemisphere (LH), in mediating social intelligence - identifying social stimuli, understanding the intentions of other people, awareness of the dynamics in social relationships, and successful handling of social interactions. Furthermore, a review and synthesis of the literature suggest that pro-social attitudes and behaviors are associated with physiological activity in the RH, whereas unsocial and anti-social tendencies are mediated primarily by the LH. This hemispheric asymmetry is rooted in several neurobiological and functional differences between the two hemispheres. (I) Positive social interactions often require inhibiting one's immediate desires and considering the perspectives and needs of others. Given that self-control is mediated by the RH, pro-social emotions and behaviors are, therefore, inherently associated with the RH as it subserves the brain's self-restraint mechanisms. (II) The RH mediates experiences of vulnerability. It registers the relative clumsiness and motor weakness of the left limbs, and it is involved, more than the LH, in processing threats and mediating fear. Emotional states of vulnerability trigger the need for affiliation and sociality, therefore the RH has a greater role in mediating pro-social attitudes and behaviors. (III) The RH mediates a holistic mode of representing the world. Holistic perception emphasizes similarities rather than differences, takes a long-term perspective, is associated with divergent thinking and seeing other points-of-view, and it mediates a personal mode of relating to people. All these features of holistic perception facilitate a more empathetic attitude toward others and pro-social behaviors.