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Patterns of brain activity associated with nostalgia: A social-cognitive neuroscience perspective

Patterns of brain activity associated with nostalgia: A social-cognitive neuroscience perspective
Patterns of brain activity associated with nostalgia: A social-cognitive neuroscience perspective

Nostalgia arises from tender and yearnful reflection on meaningful life events or important persons from one's past. In the last two decades, the literature has documented a variety of ways in which nostalgia benefits psychological well-being. Only a handful of studies, however, have addressed the neural basis of the emotion. In this prospective review, we postulate a neural model of nostalgia. Self-reflection, autobiographical memory, regulatory capacity and reward are core components of the emotion. Thus, nostalgia involves brain activities implicated in self-reflection processing (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus), autobiographical memory processing (hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus), emotion regulation processing (anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex) and reward processing (striatum, substantia nigra, ventral tegmental area and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Nostalgia's potential to modulate activity in these core neural substrates has both theoretical and applied implications.

autobiographical memory, emotion regulation, nostalgia, reward, self-reflection
1749-5016
1131-1144
Yang, Ziyan
0ec1ccc3-6ae4-4a34-822f-73ccc3e455b3
Wildschut, Tim
4452a61d-1649-4c4a-bb1d-154ec446ff81
Izuma, Keise
07f45d8b-a7a6-40ae-8957-009cef2a0683
Gu, Ruolei
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Luo, Yu L.L.
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Cai, Huajian
93a231d6-8e65-4781-883b-b85543a5ddfc
Sedikides, Constantine
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Yang, Ziyan
0ec1ccc3-6ae4-4a34-822f-73ccc3e455b3
Wildschut, Tim
4452a61d-1649-4c4a-bb1d-154ec446ff81
Izuma, Keise
07f45d8b-a7a6-40ae-8957-009cef2a0683
Gu, Ruolei
b13ac0e2-0a5e-4620-8e59-1ebbb850f11b
Luo, Yu L.L.
a7247078-dccb-434e-9bc0-d672398a6637
Cai, Huajian
93a231d6-8e65-4781-883b-b85543a5ddfc
Sedikides, Constantine
9d45e66d-75bb-44de-87d7-21fd553812c2

Yang, Ziyan, Wildschut, Tim, Izuma, Keise, Gu, Ruolei, Luo, Yu L.L., Cai, Huajian and Sedikides, Constantine (2022) Patterns of brain activity associated with nostalgia: A social-cognitive neuroscience perspective. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 17 (12), 1131-1144. (doi:10.1093/scan/nsac036).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Nostalgia arises from tender and yearnful reflection on meaningful life events or important persons from one's past. In the last two decades, the literature has documented a variety of ways in which nostalgia benefits psychological well-being. Only a handful of studies, however, have addressed the neural basis of the emotion. In this prospective review, we postulate a neural model of nostalgia. Self-reflection, autobiographical memory, regulatory capacity and reward are core components of the emotion. Thus, nostalgia involves brain activities implicated in self-reflection processing (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus), autobiographical memory processing (hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus), emotion regulation processing (anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex) and reward processing (striatum, substantia nigra, ventral tegmental area and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Nostalgia's potential to modulate activity in these core neural substrates has both theoretical and applied implications.

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nsac036 - Version of Record
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Yang et al., 2022, SCAN
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 12 May 2022
Published date: 1 December 2022
Additional Information: Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press.
Keywords: autobiographical memory, emotion regulation, nostalgia, reward, self-reflection

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 457535
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/457535
ISSN: 1749-5016
PURE UUID: 9b971bf5-1c7e-433b-a40a-d5781098b744
ORCID for Tim Wildschut: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6499-5487
ORCID for Constantine Sedikides: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-4036-889X

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 10 Jun 2022 16:40
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 02:53

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Contributors

Author: Ziyan Yang
Author: Tim Wildschut ORCID iD
Author: Keise Izuma
Author: Ruolei Gu
Author: Yu L.L. Luo
Author: Huajian Cai

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