Functional neuroimaging provides an avenue for earlier diagnosis and tailored treatment of psychological disorders characterised by emotional impairment. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) 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.

中文翻译：

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使用 NIRS 测量健康个体情绪处理过程中神经激活的研究的系统回顾


功能神经影像学为以情绪障碍为特征的心理障碍的早期诊断和定制治疗提供了途径。与其他神经成像技术相比，近红外光谱 (NIRS) 具有生态优势，并且适合测量涉及情绪功能的区域。进行了系统评价，以评估 NIRS 检测情绪处理过程中激活的能力，并为未来的研究提供建议。经过全面的文献检索，我们回顾了 85 篇期刊文章，将健康参与者的情绪体验、调节或感知过程中的激活与中性条件或基线期进行了比较。由于研究之间缺乏标准化，结果的定量综合仅限于主题分析。尽管大多数研究发现在情绪体验和调节过程中前额叶活动有所增加，但研究结果在情绪感知方面更加不一致。一些研究人员报告在任务期间活动增加，一些研究人员报告减少，一些没有显着变化，还有一些报告根据化合价和区域的混合结果。我们认为认知任务和刺激、招募样本以及数据测量和分析的变化是不一致的主要原因。提出了通过仔细考虑人群、认知任务和分析方法的选择来提高未来研究一致性的建议。