Relazione tra attivazione della corteccia prefrontale e meccanismi di appraisal nel riconoscimento emotivo: uno studio fNIRS

[Autom. eng. transl.] In recent decades, neuroscience has shown a growing interest in the study of the ability to process emotions and in understanding the neural mechanisms that support these processes. This scientific context has contributed to the development of explanatory models of emotional processing that explain the different cortical recruitment in relation to the valence of the stimulus and hemispherical lateralization. However, the role played by the right and left hemisphere in the processes of evaluation, interpretation and emotional regulation remains to be clarified, as well as the relationship that exists with explicit mechanisms of cognitive evaluation. The aim of the present study is to investigate the presence of a possible systematic relationship between hemodynamic changes and appraisal mechanisms associated with the recognition of emotional patterns. Subjects performed an emotional recognition task by presenting IAPS images, selected on the basis of valence and arousal. The hemodynamic indices were detected by functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), in order to verify any phenomena of laterization and interhemispheric coupling in emotional recognition. Furthermore, participants were asked to evaluate the stimuli presented with respect to the valence-arousal dichotomy, on a 5-step likert scale (SAM). The analysis of the data, on correlational indices, showed that it is possible to associate different hemodynamic patterns in relation to the different behavioral evaluation patterns. Specifically, a relationship is observed between the hemodynamic profile of the prefrontal cortex and the self-report evaluation expressed by the participants for emotional images in relation to their value. The results show a different intervention of the prefrontal cortex in the processing phase of emotional stimuli correlated to the valence-related behavioral response profile.