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Individuals befriend others who are similar to them. One important source of similarity in relationships is similarity in felt emotion. In the present study, we used novel methods to assess whether greater similarity in the multivoxel brain representation of affective stimuli was associated with adolescents' proximity within real-world school-based social networks. We examined dyad-level neural similarity within a set of brain regions associated with the representation of affect including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), amygdala, insula, and temporal pole. Greater proximity was associated with greater vmPFC neural similarity during pleasant and neutral experiences. Moreover, we used unsupervised clustering on social networks to identify groups of friends and observed that individuals from the same (versus different) friend groups were more likely to have greater vmPFC neural similarity during pleasant and negative experiences. These findings suggest that similarity in the multivoxel brain representation of affect may play an important role in adolescent friendships., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Scholars have argued for centuries that affective states involve interoception, or representations of the state of the body. Yet, we lack a mechanistic understanding of how signals from the body are transduced, transmitted, compressed, and integrated by the brains of humans to produce affective states. We suggest that to understand how the body contributes to affect, we first need to understand information flow through the nervous system's interoceptive pathways. We outline such a model and discuss how unique anatomical and physiological aspects of interoceptive pathways may give rise to the qualities of affective experiences in general and valence and arousal in particular. We conclude by considering implications and future directions for research on interoception, affect, emotions, and human mental experiences., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests No interests are declared., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Thirty years of neuroimaging reveal the set of brain regions consistently associated with pleasant and unpleasant affect in humans-or the neural reference space for valence. Yet some of humans' most potent affective states occur in the context of other humans. Prior work has yet to differentiate how the neural reference space for valence varies as a product of the sociality of affective stimuli. To address this question, we meta-analyzed across 614 social and non-social affective neuroimaging contrasts, summarizing the brain regions that are consistently activated for social and non-social affective information. We demonstrate that across the literature, social and non-social affective stimuli yield overlapping activations within regions associated with visceromotor control, including the amygdala, hypothalamus, anterior cingulate cortex and insula. However, we find that social processing differs from non-social affective processing in that it involves additional cortical activations in the medial prefrontal and posterior cingulum that have been associated with mentalizing and prediction. A Bayesian classifier was able to differentiate unpleasant from pleasant affect, but not social from non-social affective states. Moreover, it was not able to classify unpleasantness from pleasantness at the highest levels of sociality. These findings suggest that highly social scenarios may be equally salient to humans, regardless of their valence., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

In the present study, we used an unsupervised classification algorithm to reveal both consistency and degeneracy in neural network connectivity during anger and anxiety. Degeneracy refers to the ability of different biological pathways to produce the same outcomes. Previous research is suggestive of degeneracy in emotion, but little research has explicitly examined whether degenerate functional connectivity patterns exist for emotion categories such as anger and anxiety. Twenty-four subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to unpleasant music and self-generating experiences of anger and anxiety. A data-driven model building algorithm with unsupervised classification (subgrouping Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation) identified patterns of connectivity among 11 intrinsic networks that were associated with anger vs anxiety. As predicted, degenerate functional connectivity patterns existed within these overarching consistent patterns. Degenerate patterns were not attributable to differences in emotional experience or other individual-level factors. These findings are consistent with the constructionist account that emotions emerge from flexible functional neuronal assemblies and that emotion categories such as anger and anxiety each describe populations of highly variable instances., (© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Not all adolescents are equally susceptible to peer influence, and for some, peer influence exerts positive rather than negative effects. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, the current study examined how intrinsic functional connectivity networks associated with processing social cognitive and affective stimuli predict adolescents' (n = 87, ages 11-14 years) prosocial tendencies and risky behaviors in the context of positive and negative peer norms. We tested the moderating role of four candidate intrinsic brain networks-associated with mentalizing, cognitive control, motivational relevance, and affective salience-in peer influence susceptibility. Only intrinsic connectivity within the affective salience network significantly moderated the association between peer norms and adolescent behavior above and beyond the other networks. Adolescents with high intrinsic connectivity within the affective salience network reported greater prosocial tendencies in contexts with more positive peer norms but greater risk-taking behavior in contexts with more negative peer norms. In contrast, peer norms were not associated with adolescent behavior for individuals with low affective salience within-network intrinsic connectivity. The mentalizing network, cognitive control network, and motivational relevance network were not associated with individual differences in peer influence susceptibility. This study identifies key neural mechanisms underlying differential susceptibility to positive and negative peer influence in early adolescence, with a particular emphasis on the role of affective salience over traditional mentalizing, regulatory, and motivational processes., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

As humans, we face a variety of social stressors on a regular basis. Given the established role of social stress in influencing physical and psychological functioning, researchers have focused immense efforts on understanding the psychological and physiological changes induced by exposure to acute social stressors. With the advancement of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), more recent work has sought to identify the neural correlates of processing acute social stress. In this review, we provide an overview of research on the neural underpinnings of social stress processing to date. Specifically, we summarize research that has examined the neural underpinnings of three types of social stressors commonly studied in the literature: social rejection, social evaluation, and racism-related stress. Within our discussion of each type of social stressor, we describe the methods used to induce stress, the brain regions commonly activated among studies investigating that type of stress, and recommendations for future work. This review of the current literature identifies activity in midline regions in both prefrontal and parietal cortices, as well as lateral prefrontal regions, as being associated with processing social rejection. Activity in the insula, thalamus, and inferior frontal gyrus is often found in studies using social evaluation tasks. Finally, racism-related stress is associated with activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and rostral anterior cingulate cortex. We conclude by taking a "30,000-foot view" of this area of research to provide suggestions for the future of research on the neuroscience of social stress., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

Emotions are often assumed to manifest in subcortical limbic and brainstem structures. While these areas are clearly important for representing affect (e.g., valence and arousal), we propose that the default mode network (DMN) is additionally important for constructing discrete emotional experiences (of anger, fear, disgust, etc.). Findings from neuroimaging studies, invasive electrical stimulation studies, and lesion studies support this proposal. Importantly, our framework builds on a constructionist theory of emotion to explain how instances involving diverse physiological and behavioral patterns can be conceptualized as belonging to the same emotion category. We argue that this ability requires abstraction (from concrete features to broad mental categories), which the DMN is well positioned to support, and we make novel predictions from our proposed framework., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Neurobiological models of adolescent decision-making emphasize developmental changes in brain regions involved in affect (e.g., ventral striatum) and cognitive control (e.g., lateral prefrontal cortex). Although social context plays an important role in adolescent decision-making, current models do not discuss brain regions implicated in processing social information (e.g., dorsomedial prefrontal cortex). We conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis using the Multilevel peak Kernel Density Analysis (MKDA) method to test the hypothesis that brain regions involved in affect, cognitive control, and social information processing support adolescent decision-making in social contexts (N = 21 functional neuroimaging studies; N = 1292 participants). Results indicated that dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus/insula and ventral striatum are consistently associated with adolescent decision-making in social contexts. Activity within these regions was modulated by the type of social context and social actors involved. Findings suggest including brain regions involved in social information processing into models of adolescent decision-making. We propose a 'constructionist' model, which describes psychological processes and corresponding neural networks related to affect, cognitive control, and social information processing., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Recent behavioral and neuroimaging studies demonstrate that labeling one's emotional experiences and perceptions alters those states. Here, we used a comprehensive meta-analysis of the neuroimaging literature to systematically explore whether the presence of emotion words in experimental tasks has an impact on the neural representation of emotional experiences and perceptions across studies. Using a database of 386 studies, we assessed brain activity when emotion words (e.g. 'anger', 'disgust') and more general affect words (e.g. 'pleasant', 'unpleasant') were present in experimental tasks vs not present. As predicted, when emotion words were present, we observed more frequent activations in regions related to semantic processing. When emotion words were not present, we observed more frequent activations in the amygdala and parahippocampal gyrus, bilaterally. The presence of affect words did not have the same effect on the neural representation of emotional experiences and perceptions, suggesting that our observed effects are specific to emotion words. These findings are consistent with the psychological constructionist prediction that in the absence of accessible emotion concepts, the meaning of affective experiences and perceptions are ambiguous. Findings are also consistent with the regulatory role of 'affect labeling'. Implications of the role of language in emotion construction and regulation are discussed., (© The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press.)

The ability to experience pleasant or unpleasant feelings or to represent objects as "positive" or "negative" is known as representing hedonic "valence." Although scientists overwhelmingly agree that valence is a basic psychological phenomenon, debate continues about how to best conceptualize it scientifically. We used a meta-analysis of 397 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography studies (containing 914 experimental contrasts and 6827 participants) to test 3 competing hypotheses about the brain basis of valence: the bipolarity hypothesis that positive and negative affect are supported by a brain system that monotonically increases and/or decreases along the valence dimension, the bivalent hypothesis that positive and negative affect are supported by independent brain systems, and the affective workspace hypothesis that positive and negative affect are supported by a flexible set of valence-general regions. We found little evidence for the bipolar or bivalent hypotheses. Findings instead supported the hypothesis that, at the level of brain activity measurable by fMRI, valence is flexibly implemented across instances by a set of valence-general limbic and paralimbic brain regions., (© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

We tested two competing models for the brain basis of emotion, the basic emotion theory and the conceptual act theory of emotion, using resting-state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fcMRI). The basic emotion view hypothesizes that anger, sadness, fear, disgust and happiness each arise from a brain network that is innate, anatomically constrained and homologous in other animals. The conceptual act theory of emotion hypothesizes that an instance of emotion is a brain state constructed from the interaction of domain-general, core systems within the brain such as the salience, default mode and frontoparietal control networks. Using peak coordinates derived from a meta-analysis of task-evoked emotion fMRI studies, we generated a set of whole-brain rs-fcMRI 'discovery' maps for each emotion category and examined the spatial overlap in their conjunctions. Instead of discovering a specific network for each emotion category, variance in the discovery maps was accounted for by the known domain-general network. Furthermore, the salience network is observed as part of every emotion category. These results indicate that specific networks for each emotion do not exist within the intrinsic architecture of the human brain and instead support the conceptual act theory of emotion., (© The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Several studies have investigated the neural basis of effortful emotion regulation (ER) but the neural basis of automatic ER has been less comprehensively explored. The present study investigated the neural basis of automatic ER supported by 'implementation intentions'. 40 healthy participants underwent fMRI while viewing emotion-eliciting images and used either a previously-taught effortful ER strategy, in the form of a goal intention (e.g., try to take a detached perspective), or a more automatic ER strategy, in the form of an implementation intention (e.g., "If I see something disgusting, then I will think these are just pixels on the screen!"), to regulate their emotional response. Whereas goal intention ER strategies were associated with activation of brain areas previously reported to be involved in effortful ER (including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), ER strategies based on an implementation intention strategy were associated with activation of right inferior frontal gyrus and ventro-parietal cortex, which may reflect the attentional control processes automatically captured by the cue for action contained within the implementation intention. Goal intentions were also associated with less effective modulation of left amygdala, supporting the increased efficacy of ER under implementation intention instructions, which showed coupling of orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala. The findings support previous behavioural studies in suggesting that forming an implementation intention enables people to enact goal-directed responses with less effort and more efficiency.

The 'faculty psychology' approach to the mind, which attempts to explain mental function in terms of categories that reflect modular 'faculties', such as emotions, cognitions, and perceptions, has dominated research into the mind and its physical correlates. In this paper, we argue that brain organization does not respect the commonsense categories belonging to the faculty psychology approach. We review recent research from the science of emotion demonstrating that the human brain contains broadly distributed functional networks that can each be re-described as basic psychological operations that interact to produce a range of mental states, including, but not limited to, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and so on. When compared to the faculty psychology approach, this 'constructionist' approach provides an alternative functional architecture to guide the design and interpretation of experiments in cognitive neuroscience., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Scientists have traditionally assumed that different kinds of mental states (e.g., fear, disgust, love, memory, planning, concentration, etc.) correspond to different psychological faculties that have domain-specific correlates in the brain. Yet, growing evidence points to the constructionist hypothesis that mental states emerge from the combination of domain-general psychological processes that map to large-scale distributed brain networks. In this paper, we report a novel study testing a constructionist model of the mind in which participants generated three kinds of mental states (emotions, body feelings, or thoughts) while we measured activity within large-scale distributed brain networks using fMRI. We examined the similarity and differences in the pattern of network activity across these three classes of mental states. Consistent with a constructionist hypothesis, a combination of large-scale distributed networks contributed to emotions, thoughts, and body feelings, although these mental states differed in the relative contribution of those networks. Implications for a constructionist functional architecture of diverse mental states are discussed., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

In our response, we clarify important theoretical differences between basic emotion and psychological construction approaches. We evaluate the empirical status of the basic emotion approach, addressing whether it requires brain localization, whether localization can be observed with better analytic tools, and whether evidence for basic emotions exists in other types of measures. We then revisit the issue of whether the key hypotheses of psychological construction are supported by our meta-analytic findings. We close by elaborating on commentator suggestions for future research.

Researchers have wondered how the brain creates emotions since the early days of psychological science. With a surge of studies in affective neuroscience in recent decades, scientists are poised to answer this question. In this target article, we present a meta-analytic summary of the neuroimaging literature on human emotion. We compare the locationist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories consistently and specifically correspond to distinct brain regions) with the psychological constructionist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories are constructed of more general brain networks not specific to those categories) to better understand the brain basis of emotion. We review both locationist and psychological constructionist hypotheses of brain-emotion correspondence and report meta-analytic findings bearing on these hypotheses. Overall, we found little evidence that discrete emotion categories can be consistently and specifically localized to distinct brain regions. Instead, we found evidence that is consistent with a psychological constructionist approach to the mind: A set of interacting brain regions commonly involved in basic psychological operations of both an emotional and non-emotional nature are active during emotion experience and perception across a range of discrete emotion categories.