A systematic Review of Studies that Used NIRS to Measure Neural Activation During Emotion Processing in Healthy Individuals

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Author(s)
Westgarth, MMP
Hogan, CA
Neumann, DL
Shum, DHK
Year published
2021
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Show full item recordAbstract
Functional neuroimaging provides an avenue for earlier diagnosis and tailored treatment of psychological disorders characterized by emotional impairment. Near-infrared spectroscopy offers ecological advantages compared to other neuroimaging techniques and suitability of measuring regions involved in emotion functions. A systematic review was conducted to evaluate the capacity of NIRS to detect activation during emotion processing and to provide recommendations for future research. Following a comprehensive literature search, we reviewed 85 journal articles which compared activation during emotional experience, regulation or ...
View more >Functional neuroimaging provides an avenue for earlier diagnosis and tailored treatment of psychological disorders characterized by emotional impairment. Near-infrared spectroscopy offers ecological advantages compared to other neuroimaging techniques and suitability of measuring regions involved in emotion functions. A systematic review was conducted to evaluate the capacity of NIRS to detect activation during emotion processing and to provide recommendations for future research. Following a comprehensive literature search, we reviewed 85 journal articles which compared activation during emotional experience, regulation or perception with either a neutral condition or baseline period among healthy participants. The quantitative synthesis of outcomes was limited to thematical analysis, owing to the lack of standardisation between studies. Although most studies found increased prefrontal activity during emotional experience and regulation, the findings were more inconsistent for emotion perception. Some researchers reported increased activity during the task, some reported decreases, some no significant changes, and some reported mixed findings depending on the valence and region. We propose that variations in the cognitive task and stimuli, recruited sample, and measurement and analysis of data are the primary causes of inconsistency. Recommendations to improve consistency in future research by carefully considering the choice of population, cognitive task and analysis approach are provided.
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View more >Functional neuroimaging provides an avenue for earlier diagnosis and tailored treatment of psychological disorders characterized by emotional impairment. Near-infrared spectroscopy offers ecological advantages compared to other neuroimaging techniques and suitability of measuring regions involved in emotion functions. A systematic review was conducted to evaluate the capacity of NIRS to detect activation during emotion processing and to provide recommendations for future research. Following a comprehensive literature search, we reviewed 85 journal articles which compared activation during emotional experience, regulation or perception with either a neutral condition or baseline period among healthy participants. The quantitative synthesis of outcomes was limited to thematical analysis, owing to the lack of standardisation between studies. Although most studies found increased prefrontal activity during emotional experience and regulation, the findings were more inconsistent for emotion perception. Some researchers reported increased activity during the task, some reported decreases, some no significant changes, and some reported mixed findings depending on the valence and region. We propose that variations in the cognitive task and stimuli, recruited sample, and measurement and analysis of data are the primary causes of inconsistency. Recommendations to improve consistency in future research by carefully considering the choice of population, cognitive task and analysis approach are provided.
View less >
Journal Title
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Copyright Statement
© 2021 Oxford University Press. This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Brain following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version A systematic Review of Studies that Used NIRS to Measure Neural Activation During Emotion Processing in Healthy Individuals , Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2021 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsab017.
Note
This publication has been entered as an advanced online version in Griffith Research Online.
Subject
Neurosciences
Psychology
Cognitive and computational psychology
emotion
near-infrared spectroscopy
neuroimaging
prefrontal cortex
review