Neural circuitry of emotion regulation: Effects of appraisal,attention, and cortisol administration

Psychosocial well-being requires effective regulation of emotional responding in context of threat or stress. Neuroimaging studies have focused on instructed, volitional regulation (e.g., reappraisal or distancing), largely ignoring implicit regulation that does not involve purposeful effort to alter emotional experience. These implicit processes may or may not involve the same neural pathways as explicit regulatory strategies. We examined the neurobiology of implicit emotional regulation processes and the impact of the stress hormone cortisol on these processes. Our study task employed composite pictures of faces and places to examine neural activity during implicit emotional processing (of emotional faces), while these responses were implicitly regulated by attention shift away from the emotionally evocative stimuli, and while subjects reflectively appraised their own emotional response to them. Subjects completed the task in an fMRI scanner after random assignment to receive placebo or hydrocortisone (HCT), an orally administered version of cortisol. Implicit emotional processing activated insula/IFG, dACC/dMPFC, midbrain and amygdala. With attention shifting, we saw diminished signal in emotion generating/response regions (e.g., amygdala) and increased activations in task specific attention regions like parahippocampus. With appraisal of emotions, we observed robust activations in medial prefrontal areas, where activation is also seen in instructed reappraisal studies. We observed no main effects of HCT administration on brain, but males and females showed opposing neural effects in prefrontal areas. The data suggest that different types of emotion regulation utilize overlapping circuits, but with some strategy specific activation. Further study of the dimorphic sex response to cortisol is needed.     

Co-occurring anxiety influences patterns of brain activity in depression

Brain activation associated with anhedonic depression and co-occurring anxious arousal and anxious apprehension was measured by fMRI during performance of an emotion word Stroop task. Consistent with EEG findings, depression was associated with rightward frontal lateralization in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), but only when anxious arousal was elevated and anxious apprehension was low. Activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) was also reduced for depression under the same conditions. In contrast, depression was associated with more activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (dorsal ACC and rostral ACC) and the bilateral amygdala. Results imply that depression, particularly when accompanied by anxious arousal, may result in a failure to implement top-down processing by appropriate brain regions (left DLPFC, right IFG) due to increased activation in regions associated with responding to emotionally salient information (right DLPFC, amygdala).     

Individual differences in trait rumination and the neural systems supporting cognitive reappraisal

Cognitive reappraisal can alter emotional responses by changing one’s interpretation of a situation’s meaning. Functional neuroimaging has revealed that using cognitive reappraisal to increase or decrease affective responses involves left prefrontal activation and goal-appropriate increases or decreases in amygdala activation (Ochsner, Bunge, Gross, & Gabrieli, 2002; Ochsner, Ray, et al., 2004). The present study was designed to examine whether patterns of brain activation during reappraisal vary in relation to individual differences in trait rumination, which is the tendency to focus on negative aspects of one’s self or negative interpretations of one’s life. Individual differences in rumination correlated with increases in amygdala response when participants were increasing negative affect and with greater decreases in prefrontal regions implicated in self-focused thought when participants were decreasing negative affect. Thus, the propensity to ruminate may reflect altered recruitment of mechanisms that potentiate negative affect. These findings clarify relations between rumination and emotion regulation processes and may have important implications for mood and anxiety disorders.     

Functional overlap of top-down emotion regulation and generation: An fMRI study identifying common neural substrates between cognitive reappraisal and cognitively generated emotions

One factor that influences the success of emotion regulation is the manner in which the regulated emotion was generated. Recent research has suggested that reappraisal, a top-down emotion regulation strategy, is more effective in decreasing self-reported negative affect when emotions were generated from the top-down, versus the bottom-up. On the basis of a process overlap framework, we hypothesized that the neural regions active during reappraisal would overlap more with emotions that were generated from the top-down, rather than from the bottom-up. In addition, we hypothesized that increased neural overlap between reappraisal and the history effects of top-down emotion generation would be associated with increased reappraisal success. The results of several analyses suggested that reappraisal and emotions that were generated from the top-down share a core network of prefrontal, temporal, and cingulate regions. This overlap is specific; no such overlap was observed between reappraisal and emotions that were generated in a bottom-up fashion. This network consists of regions previously implicated in linguistic processing, cognitive control, and self-relevant appraisals, which are processes thought to be crucial to both reappraisal and top-down emotion generation. Furthermore, individuals with high reappraisal success demonstrated greater neural overlap between reappraisal and the history of top-down emotion generation than did those with low reappraisal success. The overlap of these key regions, reflecting overlapping processes, provides an initial insight into the mechanism by which generation history may facilitate emotion regulation.     

Subjective responses to emotional stimuli during labeling, reappraisal, and distraction

Although multiple neuroimaging studies suggest that affect labeling (i.e., putting feelings into words) can dampen affect-related responses in the amygdala, the consequences of affect labeling have not been examined in other channels of emotional responding. We conducted four studies examining the effect of affect labeling on self-reported emotional experience. In study one, self-reported distress was lower during affect labeling, compared to passive watching, of negative emotional pictures. Studies two and three added reappraisal and distraction conditions, respectively. Affect labeling showed similar effects on self-reported distress as both of these intentional emotion regulation strategies. In each of the first three studies, however, participant predictions about the effects of affect labeling suggest that unlike reappraisal and distraction, people do not believe affect labeling to be an effective emotion regulation strategy. Even after having the experience of affect labels leading to lower distress, participants still predicted that affect labeling would increase distress in the future. Thus, affect labeling is best described as an incidental emotion regulation process. Finally, study four employed positive emotional pictures and here, affect labeling was associated with diminished self-reported pleasure, relative to passive watching. This suggests that affect labeling tends to dampen affective responses in general, rather than specifically alleviating negative affect.     

Putting feelings into words: affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli

Putting feelings into words (affect labeling) has long been thought to help manage negative emotional experiences; however, the mechanisms by which affect labeling produces this benefit remain largely unknown. Recent neuroimaging studies suggest a possible neurocognitive pathway for this process, but methodological limitations of previous studies have prevented strong inferences from being drawn. A functional magnetic resonance imaging study of affect labeling was conducted to remedy these limitations. The results indicated that affect labeling, relative to other forms of encoding, diminished the response of the amygdala and other limbic regions to negative emotional images. Additionally, affect labeling produced increased activity in a single brain region, right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (RVLPFC). Finally, RVLPFC and amygdala activity during affect labeling were inversely correlated, a relationship that was mediated by activity in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). These results suggest that affect labeling may diminish emotional reactivity along a pathway from RVLPFC to MPFC to the amygdala.     

Developing connections for affective regulation: age-related changes in emotional brain connectivity

The regulation of affective arousal is a critical aspect of children’s social and cognitive development. However, few studies have examined the brain mechanisms involved in the development of this aspect of “hot” executive functioning. This process has been conceptualized as involving prefrontal control of the amygdala. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the brain mechanisms involved in the development of affective regulation in typically developing 5- to 11-year-olds and an adult comparison sample. Children and adults displayed differing patterns of increased anterior cingulate cortex and decreased amygdala activation during episodes in which emotion regulation was required. Specifically, amygdala activation increased in adults but decreased in children during recovery from a frustrating episode. In addition, we used effective connectivity analyses to investigate differential correlations between key emotional brain areas in response to the regulatory task demands. We found reliable increases in effective connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala during periods of increased demand for emotion regulation. This effective connectivity increased with age.     

Emotion regulation and amygdala-precuneus connectivity: Focusing on attentional deployment

Attentional deployment is an emotion regulation strategy that involves shifting attentional focus. Deploying attention to non-arousing, compared to arousing, regions of unpleasant images has been associated with reduced negative affect, reduced amygdala activation, and increased activity in fronto-parietal control networks. The current study examined neural correlates and functional connectivity associated with using attentional deployment to increase negative affect (deploying attention towards arousing unpleasant information) or to decrease negative affect (deploying attention away from arousing unpleasant information), compared to naturally viewing unpleasant images, in 42 individuals while concurrently monitoring eye movements. Directing attention to both arousing and non-arousing regions resulted in enhanced fronto-parietal activation compared to natural viewing, but only directing attention to non-arousing regions was associated with changes in amygdala activation. There were no significant differences in connectivity between naturally viewing unpleasant images and focusing on arousing regions. However, naturally viewing unpleasant images, relative to focusing on non-arousing regions, was associated with increased connectivity between the amygdala and visual cortex, while focusing on non-arousing regions of unpleasant images, compared to natural viewing, was associated with increased connectivity between the amygdala and the precuneus. Amygdala-precuneus connectivity correlated positively with eye-tracking measures of attentional deployment success and with trait reappraisal. Deploying attention away from arousing unpleasant information, then, may depend upon functional relationships between the amygdala and parietal regions implicated in attentional control. Furthermore, these relationships might relate to the ability to successfully implement attentional deployment, and the predisposition to utilize adaptive emotion regulation strategies.     

Concurrent and lasting effects of emotion regulation on amygdala response in adolescence and young adulthood

This study used functional MRI (fMRI) to examine a novel aspect of emotion regulation in adolescent development: whether age predicts differences in both the concurrent and lasting effects of emotion regulation on amygdala response. In the first, active regulation, phase of the testing session, fMRI data were collected while 56 healthy individuals (age range: 10.50–22.92 years) reappraised aversive stimuli so as to diminish negative responses to them. After a short delay, the second, re‐presentation, phase involved passively viewing the aversive images from the reappraisal task. During active regulation, older individuals showed greater drops in negative affect and inverse rostrolateral prefrontal‐amygdala connectivity. During re‐presentation, older individuals continued to show lasting reductions in the amygdala response to aversive stimuli they had previously reappraised, an effect mediated by rostrolateral PFC. These data suggest that one source of heightened emotionality in adolescence is a diminished ability to cognitively down‐regulate aversive reactions.     

Psychobiology of mindfulness

There is controversy about whether mindfulness-based approaches to psychotherapy represent a new wave of cognitive-behavioral therapy or a core process in all psychotherapies. One way of conceptualizing mindfulness is in terms of emotion regulation; mindfulness is a strategy aimed at opposing suppression and avoidance. Dispositional mindfulness has been associated with greater activation in prefrontal cortex and greater deactivation of amygdala during affect labeling. A number of rigorous studies of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression have been positive. However, much remains to be discovered about the underlying mechanisms of and clinical indications for mindfulness-based approaches.     

认知重评和表达抑制情绪调节策略的脑网络分析：来自EEG和ERP的证据

本文旨在对认知重评和表达抑制两种常用情绪调节策略的自发脑网络特征及认知神经活动进行深入探讨。研究采集36名在校大学生的静息态和任务态脑电数据, 经过源定位和图论分析发现节点效率与两种情绪调节显著相关的脑区, 以及脑区之间的功能连接。研究结果表明, 在使用认知重评进行情绪调节时会激活前额叶皮质、前扣带回、顶叶、海马旁回和枕叶等多个脑区, 在使用表达抑制进行情绪调节时会激活前额叶皮质、顶叶、海马旁回、枕叶、颞叶和脑岛等多个脑区。因此, 这些脑区的节点效率或功能连接强度可能成为评估个体使用认知重评和表达抑制调节情绪效果的指标。     

Cognitive reappraisal reduces perceived exertion during endurance exercise

Emotion regulation may influence psychological responses to exercise. We examined whether the emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and distraction, influenced psychological state and prefrontal cortex oxygenation during endurance exercise. Twenty-four endurance runners ran for 90 min at 75–85% maximum heart rate in three separate sessions with no instruction or with instructions to use cognitive reappraisal or distraction. Participants rated their emotional arousal, emotional valence, and perceived exertion before, every 30 min during, and after exercise. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy quantified changes in prefrontal cortex oxygenation. Participants felt lower emotional arousal and physical exertion when instructed to utilize cognitive reappraisal than when given no emotion regulation instruction. Such responses to distraction did not differ from the other conditions. Emotion regulation strategies did not influence emotional valence or prefrontal cortex oxygenation. Participants’ analytical interpretation of the cognitive reappraisal instruction could contribute to small effect sizes and limited effects. Further research should determine contexts under which emotion regulation strategies most benefit endurance exercise experience.     

Resisting emotional interference: Brain regions facilitating working memory performance during negative distraction

Survival-relevant information has privileged access to our awareness even during active cognitive engagement. Previous work has demonstrated that during working memory (WM) negative emotional distraction disrupts activation in the lateral prefrontal regions while also engaging the amygdala. Here, using slow eventrelated fMRI, we replicate and extend previous work examining the effect of negative emotional distraction on WM: (1) We demonstrate that prefrontal regions showed activation differences between correct and incorrect trials during negative, but not neutral, distraction. Specifically, frontopolar prefrontal cortex showed more deactivation for incorrect trials faced with negative distraction, whereas ventrolateral prefrontal regions showed less activation; (2) individual differences in amygdala activity predicted WM performance during negative as well as neutral distraction, such that lower activity predicted better performance; and (3) amygdala showed negative correlations with prefrontal and parietal cortical regions during resting state. However, during negative distraction, amygdala signals were more negatively correlated with prefrontal cortical regions than was found for resting state and neutral distraction. These results provide further evidence for an inverse relationship between dorsal prefrontal cortical regions and the amygdala when processing aversive stimuli competes with ongoing cognitive operations, and further support the importance of the prefrontal cortex in resisting emotional interference. Supplemental materials associated with this article may be downloaded from http://cabn.psychonomic-journals .org/content/supplemental.     

Neuroticism and psychopathy predict brain activation during moral and nonmoral emotion regulation

Functional neuroimaging has identified brain regions associated with voluntary regulation of emotion, including the prefrontal cortex and amygdala. The neural mechanisms underlying individual differences in emotion regulation have not been extensively studied. We investigated the neural correlates of neuroticism and psychopathic personality traits in the context of an emotion regulation task. Results showed that amygdala activity elicited by unpleasant pictures was positively correlated with neuroticism and negatively correlated with a specific psychopathic trait related to emotional underreactivity. During active attempts to decrease emotional responses to unpleasant pictures, superior and ventrolateral prefrontal activity was positively correlated with psychopathy, but not with neuroticism. In contrast, dorsolateral prefrontal activity was positively correlated with neuroticism, but not with psychopathy. Psychopathy was also negatively correlated with medial prefrontal activity in response to pictures depicting moral violations, suggesting reduced emotional responses to moral stimuli in individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits. These results demonstrate dissociable influences of different personality traits on neural activity associated with responses to emotional stimuli and on the recruitment of regulation-related brain activity during the active down-regulation of responses to negative emotional stimuli. These results have implications for the etiology of trait-based psychopathology involving emotional dysregulation.     

Spontaneous emotion regulation during evaluated speaking tasks: associations with negative affect, anxiety expression, memory, and physiological responding

In these studies, the correlates of spontaneously using expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal during stressful speeches were examined. Spontaneous emotion regulation means that there were no instructions of how to regulate emotions during the speech. Instead, participants indicated after the speech to what extent they used self-motivated expressive suppression or reappraisal during the task. The results show that suppression is associated with less anxiety expression, greater physiological responding, and less memory for the speech while having no impact on negative affect. In contrast, reappraisal has no impact on physiology and memory while leading to less expression and affect. Taken together, spontaneous emotion regulation in active coping tasks has similar consequences as experimentally induced emotion regulation in passive tasks.     

Neural correlates of automatic mood regulation in girls at high risk for depression

Daughters of depressed mothers are at significantly elevated risk for developing a depressive disorder themselves. We have little understanding, however, of the specific factors that contribute to this risk. The ability to regulate negative affect effectively is critical to emotional and physical health and may play an important role in influencing risk for depression. We examined whether never-disordered daughters whose mothers have experienced recurrent episodes of depression during their daughters' lifetime differ from never-disordered daughters of never-disordered mothers in their patterns of neural activation during a negative mood induction and during automatic mood regulation. Sad mood was induced in daughters through the use of film clips; daughters then recalled positive autobiographical memories, a procedure shown previously to repair negative affect. During the mood induction, high-risk girls exhibited greater activation than did low-risk daughters in brain areas that have frequently been implicated in the experience of negative affect, including the amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. In contrast, during automatic mood regulation, low-risk daughters exhibited greater activation than did their high-risk counterparts in brain areas that have frequently been associated with top-down regulation of emotion, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. These findings indicate that girls at high and low risk for depression differ in their patterns of neural activation both while experiencing, and while repairing negative affect, and suggest that anomalies in neural functioning precede the onset of a depressive episode.     

Functional neuroimaging studies of human emotions

Neuroimaging studies with positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging have begun to describe the functional neuroanatomy of human emotion. Taken separately, specific studies vary in task dimensions and in type(s) of emotion studied, and are limited by statistical power and sensitivity. By examining findings across studies in a meta-analysis, we sought to determine if common or segregated patterns of activations exist in different emotions and across various emotional tasks. We surveyed over 55 positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging activation studies, which investigated emotion in healthy subjects. This paper will review observations in several regions of interest in limbic (eg, amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex) and paralimbic (eg, medial prefrontal cortex, insula) brain regions in emotional responding.     

Emotional regulation: implications for the psychobiology of psychotherapy

A range of studies have contributed to understanding the psychobiology of emotional regulation. Functional imaging studies have demonstrated that cortico-limbic circuitry plays an important role in mediating processes such as reappraisal and suppression. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may be important in conscious reframing, while ventromedial prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex may be particularly important in emotion evaluation. Gene variants and early environments impact underlying emotional regulation and its neurobiology. It may be hypothesized that during interventions such as psychotherapy there are improvements in emotional regulation, together with the normalization of related psychobiological mechanisms.     

情绪大脑机制研究的进展

文章综述情绪大脑机制研究的最新进展。情绪的脑机制——大脑回路,包括前额皮层、杏仁核、海马、前部扣带回、腹侧纹状体等。前额皮层中的不对称性与趋近和退缩系统有关,左前额皮层与趋近系统和积极感情有关,右前额皮层与消极感情和退缩有关。杏仁核易被消极的感情刺激所激活,尤其是恐惧。海马在情绪的背景调节中起着重要作用。前额皮层和杏仁核激活不对称性的个体差异是情绪个体差异的生理基础。情绪的中枢回路有可塑性。