Emotional states as distinct configurations of functional brain networks
The conceptualization of emotional states as patterns of interactions between large-scale brain networks has recently gained support. Yet, few studies have directly examined the brain's network structure during emotional experiences. Here, we investigated the brain's functional network organization during experiences of sadness, amusement, and neutral states elicited by movies, in addition to a resting-state. We tested the effects of the experienced emotion on individual variability in the brain's functional connectome. Next, for each state, we defined a modular organization of the brain and quantified its segregation and integration. Our results show that emotional states increase the similarity between and within individuals in the brain's functional connectome. Second, in the brain's modular organization, sadness, relative to amusement, was associated with higher integration and increased connectivity of cognitive control networks: the salience and fronto-parietal networks. Modular metrics of brain segregation and integration were further associated with the reported emotional valence. Last, in both the functional connectome and emotional report, a higher similarity was found among women. Our results suggest that the experience of emotion is linked to a reconfiguration of whole-brain distributed, not emotion-specific, functional brain networks and that the topological structure carries information about the subjective emotional experience.