Journal
NEUROIMAGE
Volume 52, Issue 4, Pages 1720-1726Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.05.038
Keywords
Moral emotions; fMRI; Psychophysiological interaction; Anterior temporal lobe; Subgenual cingulate cortex; Septal region; Orbitofrontal cortex; Semantics; Guilt; Indignation; Anger; Major depression
Funding
- NINDS (USA)
- Federal Ministry of Education and Research [BMBF-LPD 9901/8-122]
- MRC
- Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, The University of Manchester, UK
- LABS-D'Or Hospital Network, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Queens' College, Cambridge, UK
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It has been hypothesized that the experience of different moral sentiments such as guilt and indignation is underpinned by activation in temporal and fronto-mesolimbic regions and that functional integration between these regions is necessary for the differentiated experience of these moral sentiments. A recent fMRI study revealed that the right superior anterior temporal lobe (ATL) was activated irrespective of the context of moral feelings (guilt or indignation). This region has been associated with context-independent conceptual social knowledge which allows us to make fine-grained differentiations between qualities of social behaviours (e.g. critical and faultfinding). This knowledge is required to make emotional evaluations of social behaviour. In contrast to the context-independent activation of the ATL, there were context-dependent activations within different fronto-mesolimbic regions for guilt and indignation. However, it is unknown whether functional integration occurs between these regions and whether regional patterns of integration are distinctive for the experience of different moral sentiments. Here, we used fMRI and psychophysiological interaction analysis, an established measure of functional integration to investigate this issue. We found selective functional integration between the right superior ATL and a subgenual cingulate region during the experience of guilt and between the right superior ATL and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex for indignation. Our data provide the first evidence for functional integration of conceptual social knowledge representations in the right superior ATL with representations of different feeling contexts in fronto-mesolimbic regions. We speculate that this functional architecture allows for the conceptually differentiated experience of moral sentiments in healthy individuals. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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