Distinct resting-state but comparable emotion-evoked prefrontal function between coal miners and university students: evidence from portable fNIRS

Whether neuroimaging findings from university student samples generalise to occupational populations has rarely been tested. Using portable functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), we compared prefrontal cortex function between 52 male coal miners (predominantly aged 36–45) and 55 male university students (predominantly aged ≤25) across resting-state and task-state (emotional video viewing) conditions. Graph-theoretic analysis of resting-state functional connectivity revealed that miners’ prefrontal network efficiency was markedly lower than students’ (global efficiency d = −1.34, node strength d = −0.93, clustering coefficient d = −0.81; all p < .001), with global efficiency remaining significant across multi-level sensitivity analyses. No emotion-evoked prefrontal activation differences survived false discovery rate correction, though power was adequate only for large effects. Behaviourally, miners exhibited greater valence differentiation and higher arousal. These findings indicate that inter-group neural differences preferentially manifest in baseline network organisation rather than emotion-evoked responses, challenging the assumption that student-derived prefrontal baselines generalise to occupational populations.