title: Deconstructing Anger in the Human Brain.
abstract: Anger may be caused by a wide variety of triggers, and though it has negative consequences on health and well-being, it is also crucial in motivating to take action and approach rather than avoid a confrontation. While anger is considered a survival response inherent in all living creatures, humans are endowed with the mental flexibility that enables them to control and regulate their anger, and adapt it to socially accepted norms. Indeed, a profound interpersonal nature is apparent in most events which evoke anger among humans. Since anger consists of physiological, cognitive, subjective, and behavioral components, it is a contextualized multidimensional construct that poses theoretical and operational difficulties in defining it as a single psychobiological phenomenon. Although most neuroimaging studies have neglected the multidimensionality of anger and thus resulted in brain activations dispersed across the entire brain, there seems to be several reoccurring neural circuits subserving the subjective experience of human anger. Nevertheless, to capture the large variety in the forms and fashions in which anger is experienced, expressed, and regulated, and thus to better portray the related underlying neural substrates, neurobehavioral investigations of human anger should aim to further embed realistic social interactions within their anger induction paradigms.
authors.affiliation: Functional Brain Center, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, 6, Weizmann, 64239, Tel Aviv, Israel. gadi.gilam@gmail.com.|School of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel. gadi.gilam@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Gadi
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gilam
authors.affiliation: Functional Brain Center, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, 6, Weizmann, 64239, Tel Aviv, Israel. talma@tasmc.health.gov.il.|School of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel. talma@tasmc.health.gov.il.|Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel. talma@tasmc.health.gov.il.|Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel. talma@tasmc.health.gov.il.
authors.forename: Talma
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hendler
mesh_terms: D000786:Anger / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations
keywords: Anger; Angry brain; Emotion regulation; Neuroimaging; Social interaction