Abstract

In the present study, we report results from an experiment inquiring behavioral and neural differences related to the ability to regulate social (RES) and non-social emotions (RENS). To date, we still do not know if RES and RENS are overlapping in terms of psychological and brain mechanisms, or whether they are independent. The present study was aimed to test the hypothesis of their independence. We found that: 1) the RES and RENS abilities are independent (non-correlation of behavioral results); 2) and through innovative brain morphometric analyses (Source-based Morphometry), we showed that the RES and RENS relie on different neural structures. RES involved large portions of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, of the temporo-parietal junction, of the fusiform gyrus and of the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas, RENS involved the superior and middle frontal gyrus, and the superior temporal gyrus.