For more than two decades, research focusing on both clinical and non-clinical populations has suggested a key role for specific regions in the regulation of self-conscious emotions. It is speculated that both the expression and the interpretation of self-conscious emotions are critical in humans for action planning and response, communication, learning, parenting, and most social encounters. Empathy, Guilt, Jealousy, Shame, and Pride are all categorized as self-conscious emotions, all of which are crucial components to one’s sense of self. There has been an abundance of evidence pointing to the right Fronto-Temporal involvement in the integration of cognitive processes underlying the expression of these emotions. Numerous regions within the right hemisphere have been identified including the right temporal parietal junction (rTPJ), the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and the inferior parietal lobule (IPL). In this review, we aim to investigate patient cases, in addition to clinical and non-clinical studies. We also aim to highlight these specific brain regions pivotal to the right hemispheric dominance observed in the neural correlates of such self-conscious emotions and provide the potential role that self-conscious emotions play in evolution.

Social exclusion refers to the experience of rejection by one or more people during a social event and can induce pain-related sensations. Cyberball, a computer program, is one of the most common tools for analyzing social exclusion. Regions of the brain that underlie social pain include networks linked to the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Specifically, self-directed negative socially induced exclusion is associated with changes in DLPFC activity. Direct manipulation of this area may provide a better understanding of how the DLPFC can influence the perception of social exclusion and determine a causal role of the DLPFC. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to both the left and right DLPFC to gauge different reactions to the Cyberball experience. It was found that there were elevated exclusion indices following right DLPFC rTMS; participants consistently felt more excluded when the right DLPFC was excited. This may relate to greater feelings of social pain when the right DLPFC is manipulated. These data demonstrate that direct manipulation of the DLPFC results in changes in responses to social exclusion.