The study of moral emotions (i.e. Schadenfreude and envy) is critical to understand the ecological complexity of everyday interactions between cognitive, affective, and social cognition processes. Most previous studies in this area have used correlational imaging techniques and framed Schadenfreude and envy as unified and monolithic emotional domains. Here, we profit from a relevant neurodegeneration model to disentangle the brain regions engaged in three dimensions of Schadenfreude and envy: deservingness, morality, and legality. We tested a group of patients with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), patients with Alzheimer’s disease, as a contrastive neurodegeneration model, and healthy controls on a novel task highlighting each of these dimensions in scenarios eliciting Schadenfreude and envy. Compared with the Alzheimer’s disease and control groups, patients with bvFTD obtained significantly higher scores on all dimensions for both emotions. Correlational analyses revealed an association between envy and Schadenfreude scores and greater deficits in social cognition, inhibitory control, and behaviour disturbances in bvFTD patients. Brain anatomy findings (restricted to bvFTD and controls) confirmed the partially dissociable nature of the moral emotions’ experiences and highlighted the importance of socio-moral brain areas in processing those emotions. In all subjects, an association emerged between Schadenfreude and the ventral striatum, and between envy and the anterior cingulate cortex. In addition, the results supported an association between scores for moral and legal transgression and the morphology of areas implicated in emotional appraisal, including the amygdala and the parahippocampus. By contrast, bvFTD patients exhibited a negative association between increased Schadenfreude and envy across dimensions and critical regions supporting social-value rewards and social-moral processes (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, angular gyrus and precuneus). Together, this study provides lesion-based evidence for the multidimensional nature of the emotional experiences of envy and Schadenfreude. Our results offer new insights into the mechanisms subsuming complex emotions and moral cognition in neurodegeneration. Moreover, this study presents the exacerbation of envy and Schadenfreude as a new potential hallmark of bvFTD that could impact in diagnosis and progression.

中文翻译：

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嫉妒和Schadenfreude的病变模型：神经变性揭示的法律，应得性和道德层面

对道德情感（例如，Schadenfreude和嫉妒）的研究对于理解认知，情感和社会认知过程之间日常交互的生态复杂性至关重要。该领域以前的大多数研究都使用了相关的成像技术，并将Schadenfreude和嫉妒框定为统一的整体情感领域。在这里，我们从相关的神经退行性模型中受益，以解开参与Schadenfreude三维的大脑区域和嫉妒：应得，道德和合法性。我们测试了一组行为变异额颞叶痴呆（bvFTD）的患者，阿尔茨海默氏病的患者，作为对比性神经退行性模型，并通过一项新颖的任务对健康的对照组进行了测试，该任务突出了引起Schadenfreude和嫉妒的每个方面。与阿尔茨海默氏病和对照组相比，bvFTD患者在两种情感上的所有方面得分均明显更高。相关分析显示，嫉妒与Schadenfreude之间存在关联分数和bvFTD患者的社会认知，抑制控制和行为障碍方面的更大缺陷。脑部解剖学发现（仅限于bvFTD和对照）证实了道德情感体验的部分可分离性，并强调了社会道德大脑区域在处理这些情感中的重要性。在所有受试者中，Schadenfreude与腹侧纹状体之间，嫉妒与前扣带回皮层之间均存在关联。此外，结果支持道德和法律违规得分与涉及情感评估的区域（包括杏仁核和海马旁）的形态之间的关联。相比之下，bvFTD患者在Schadenfreude增加之间表现出负相关并羡慕支持社会价值奖励和社会道德过程（背外侧前额叶皮层，角回和前突）的各个维度和关键区域。在一起，这项研究为嫉妒和Schadenfreude的情感体验的多维性质提供了基于损伤的证据。我们的研究结果提供了新的见解，对神经变性中包含复杂情绪和道德认知的机制进行了研究。此外，这项研究提出了羡慕和加剧幸灾乐祸作为bvFTD的新的潜在标志，可以在诊断和进展的影响。