Abstract: This study gradually worked out a new paradigm to arouse vital loss emotions and its neural mechanisms in laboratory settings without substantial damage and found both the contrast effects of importance of alternatives and a huge compensation payment can relieve the vital-related loss emotions by a series of behavior and imaging experiments. The results showed that the defense mechanism not only did prevent individuals from thoroughly imagining and experiencing the given loss situation to arouse emotions, but induced emotions comprehensively and automatically under vital loss decisions. Furthermore, our results revealed that a huge compensation payment or contrast effects can relieve vital loss emotions. The findings from this research will not only promote the understanding of the brain mechanisms of vital loss emotions in information processing, and the behavior and imaging evidences from emotional regulations will also advance the development of psychological consultation and insurance compensation system.

Key words: vital loss, emotion, compensation payment, contrast effects, fMRI