Social Neuroscience Lab

Most instances of social interaction provide a wealth of information about the states of other people, be it sensations, feelings, thoughts, or convictions. How we represent these states has been a major question in social neuroscience, leading to the identification of two routes to understanding others: an affective route for the direct sharing of others' emotions (empathy) that involves, among others, anterior insula and middle anterior cingulate cortex and a cognitive route for representing and reasoning about others' states (Theory of Mind) that entails, among others, ventral temporoparietal junction and anterior and posterior midline regions. Additionally, research has revealed a number of situational and personal factors that shape the functioning of empathy and Theory of Mind. Concerning situational modulators, it has been shown, for instance, that ingroup membership enhances empathic responding and that Theory of Mind performance seems to be susceptible to stress. Personal modulators include psychopathological conditions, for which alterations in empathy and mentalizing have consistently been demonstrated; people on the autism spectrum, for instance, are impaired specifically in mentalizing, while spontaneous empathic responding seems selectively reduced in psychopathy. Given the multifaceted evidence for separability of the two routes, current research endeavors aiming at fostering interpersonal cooperation explore the differential malleability of affective and cognitive understanding of others.

Despite the ubiquity of endogenous emotions and their role in both resilience and pathology, the processes supporting their generation are largely unknown. We propose a neural component process model of endogenous generation of emotion (EGE) and test it in two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments (N ¼ 32/293) where participants generated and regulated positive and negative emotions based on internal representations, usin self-chosen generation methods. EGE activated nodes of salience (SN), default mode (DMN) and frontoparietal control (FPCN) networks. Component processes implemented by these networks were established by investigating their functional associations, activation dynamics and integration. SN activation correlated with subjective affect, with midbrain nodes exclusively distinguishing between positive and negative affect intensity, showing dynamics consistent generation of core affect. Dorsomedial DMN, together with ventral anterior insula, formed a pathway supporting multiple generation methods, with activation dynamics suggesting it is involved in the generation of elaborated experiential representations. SN and DMN both coupled to left frontal FPCN which in turn was associated with both subjective affect and representation formation, consistent with FPCN supporting the executive coordination of the generation process. These results provide a foundation for research into endogenous emotion in normal, pathological and optimal function.