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

摘要： 社会疼痛是指个体实际或潜在的社会关系或社会价值受到威胁、破坏或失去时,产生的负性情绪体验。社会疼痛会影响个体的基本生存需求,甚至威胁身心健康。有效的情绪调节是缓解社会疼痛的重要方式。学者们对社会疼痛的神经机制展开了系列研究,发现前扣带回和前脑岛是社会疼痛体验的重要脑区,而社会疼痛的情绪调节依赖前额叶,尤其是腹外侧前额叶和背外侧前额叶皮层在外显情绪调节中发挥主要作用,内侧前额叶在内隐情绪调节中发挥主要作用。此外,社会疼痛内隐和外显情绪调节还需要社会认知脑网络的参与,重要节点包括后部颞上沟、颞顶联合区、顶下小叶、后扣带回皮层等。我们建议未来研究结合脑成像技术和神经调控技术,进一步揭示社会疼痛情绪调节的神经环路,开展旨在提高情绪障碍患者社会疼痛情绪调节能力的临床治疗研究。

关键词: 社会疼痛, 情绪调节, 腹外侧前额叶皮层, 背外侧前额叶皮层