Neural Mechanism of Emotion Regulation of Social Pain

Mo Licheng; Li Sijin; Zhang Dandan

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240303

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2024, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (3) : 530-537. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240303

General Psychology，Experimental Psychology & Ergonomics

Neural Mechanism of Emotion Regulation of Social Pain

Mo Licheng, Li Sijin, Zhang Dandan

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Abstract

Human beings are “social animals”. Social relationships play a vital role in one’s survival and development. Individuals with destroyed social relationships often describe themselves feel like “heartbroken” or “heartache”. This negative "pain" experience caused by the breakdown of social relationships is called social pain. Social pain affects individuals’ basic survival needs, including senses of belonging, control, and meaningful existence. Studies have found that over-sensitive to social pain is related to various mental disorders. Due to the severe impacts caused by social pain, it is urgent to uncover the neural mechanism of social pain and how to deal with it.
Neuroimaging studies usually used the cyberball paradigm to evoke social pain in the lab, which have found that anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), especially its dorsal part (dorsal ACC, dACC) and anterior insula (AI) are key brain regions for pain perception and emotion experience. Emotion regulation is an important way to effectively alleviate the painful feelings and negative experience evoked by social pain. However, compared with the neural mechanism of social pain experience, we have limited knowledge about the neural mechanism of emotion regulation of social pain. Uncovering the latter will help to deepen our understanding of emotion regulation and potentially contribute to the development of interventions for social pain relief in clinics.
Literatures focusing on emotion regulation in general have demonstrated that people use various strategies to regulate negative emotions; among which distraction and cognitive reappraisal are the most frequently used methods. Neuroimaging studies have found that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the key brain region for emotion regulation. Compared with healthy individuals, patients with emotional disorders show abnormal response in brain areas associated with emotion regulation. Furthermore, recent findings indicate that PFC regions, especially its lateral part (including ventrolateral and dorsolateral PFC, vlPFC, and dlPFC) are crucial for emotion regulation of social pain and non-social pain/negative emotions. In addition to PFC regions, emotion regulation of social pain also recruits the social cognitive brain network, including posterior superior temporal sulcus, temporal-parietal junction activity, inferior parietal lobe, and posterior cingulate cortex. Using non-invasive brain stimulation (e.g., transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)) to enhance the neural activation of the vlPFC and dlPFC could effectively alleviate social pain. Interestingly, the vlPFC and dlPFC have been found show functional specificity for reappraisal and distraction.
Future studies are suggested to further investigate the following questions. First, it is urgent to clarify the key brain regions involved in emotion regulation of social pain. Secondly, it is necessary to combine brain imaging with brain modulation techniques, together with patient data to uncover dynamic causal model of brain networks underlying emotion regulation of social pain. Third, neuromodulation or neurofeedback techniques can be used in clinics to help relieve social pain and restore social functions of patients.

Key words

social pain / emotion regulation / ventrolateral prefrontal cortex / dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

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Mo Licheng, Li Sijin, Zhang Dandan. Neural Mechanism of Emotion Regulation of Social Pain[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2024, 47(3): 530-537 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240303

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