Guangming Ran

Relation between Emotion Regulation and Mental Health: A Meta-Analysis Review

This meta-analysis examined the relationship between emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression) and mental health (measured by life-satisfaction, positive affect, depression, anxiety, and negative affect). 48 studies, which included 51 independent samples, 157 effect sizes, and 21,150 participants, met the inclusion criteria. The results showed that cognitive reappraisal was correlated significantly and positively with positive indicators of mental health (r=.26) and negatively with negative indicators of mental health (r=–.20). Expressive suppression was correlated negatively with positive indicators of mental health (r=–.12), and positively with negative indicators of mental health (r=.15). Expressive suppression was correlated positively with positive indicators of mental health within the category of samples with Western cultural values (r=–.11) but not the category with Eastern cultural values. Moreover, the correlation of expressive suppression and negative indicators of mental health was stronger in the Western cultural values category (r=.19) than in the Eastern cultural values category (r=.06). Therefore, it is necessary for follow-up studies about emotion regulation and mental health to consider some moderator variable like the culture.

Attention Modulates Neural Responses to Unpredictable Emotional Faces in Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex

Unpredictability about upcoming emotional events disrupts our ability to prepare for them and ultimately results in anxiety. Here, we investigated how attention modulates the neural responses to unpredictable emotional events. Brain activity was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants performed a variation of the emotional task. Behaviorally, we reported a fear-unpredictable effect and a happy-unpredictable effect. The fMRI results showed increased activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) for unpredictable fear faces (Experiment 1) and decreased activity in the left dlPFC for unpredictable happy faces (Experiment 2) when these faces were unattended, probably reflecting that unpredictability amplifies the negative impact of fear faces and reduces the positive impact of happy faces. More importantly, it was found that the right dlPFC activity to unpredictable fear faces was diminished (Experiment 1) and the left dlPFC activity to unpredictable happy faces was enhanced (Experiment 2) when these faces were attended. These results suggest that attention may contribute to reducing the unpredictability about future emotional events.

The effects of attachment style and security priming on the perception of others’ pain

Abundant evidence has demonstrated a relationship between adult attachment and the experience of one’s own pain. However, few studies have investigated the associations between adult attachment and perception of others’ pain. The current studies examined the effects of attachment style and security priming on the perception of others’ pain. In Study 1, we explored the influence of avoidant and anxious attachment styles on the perception of pain in pictures representing pain or no pain. The results indicated that individuals high on anxiety and low on avoidance (i.e., preoccupied attachment style) reported more pain intensity and unpleasantness for painful pictures; individuals high on both anxiety and avoidance (i.e., fearful attachment style) reported less pain intensity for painful pictures. In Study 2, we examined the effects of security priming and attachment style on the perception of pain in pictures representing pain or no pain by adopting a security priming paradigm. The results suggested that security priming attenuated perceived pain intensity for painful pictures for individuals with high attachment anxiety. In Study 3, we used another well-validated security priming paradigm; results indicated that security priming reduced perceived pain intensity for pain pictures among individuals high on anxiety and low on avoidance (i.e., preoccupied attachment style) but increased perceived pain intensity for painful pictures among individuals high on both anxiety and avoidance (i.e., fearful attachment style). Directions for future research, clinical implications, and limitations of the present studies are discussed.

Neurobiological Underpinnings of Empathy: Neurobiological Underpinnings of Empathy

Empathy occurs when an observer perceives or imagines someone elses affect and this triggers a response such that the observer partially feels what the target is feeling.It includes two independent elements:emotional empathy and cognitive empathy.Neural network of emotional empathy includes AI,ACC and MNS.The main brain region of cognitive empathy is vmPFC.Neural network of empathy matures gradually in the individual development and it is regulated by cognitive appraisal.Oxytocin and gene polymorphism of oxytocin receptor relate to empathy closely.Future researches need to focus on the function of somatosensory cortex on pain empathy,neural network difference between empathy and personal emotions,facilitation of oxytocin on defective individuals empathy ability,relationship between gene polymorphism and neural network of empathy by using imaging genetic technology and improvement of ecological validity of empathy research paradigm.

Cognitive Mechanism and Neural Mechanism of Developmental Prosopagnosia: Cognitive Mechanism and Neural Mechanism of Developmental Prosopagnosia

Developmental prosopagnosia is characterized by severely impaired face recognition, which has no intellectual deterioration, affective disorder, difficulty of object recognition, history of brain damage. The cognitive mechanism involving in developmental prosopagnosia includes the face-specific mechanisms, the disorder of configural processing, the face detection, the face memory deficits and the facial identity recognition. The neural network of developmental prosopagnosia involves the core network and the extended network. The core network associates with facial selective responses and memory representation, while the extended network is responsible for the facial knowledge representation and the facial memory. The future research should develop the extended network and cognitive mechanism, focus on the association of face detection with developmental prosopagnosia, inspect the genetic mechanisms of it, and enhance the developmental study and rehabilitation work of it.

The Metaphorical Mapping of Social Affection on Temperature: Action Mechanisms and Its Explanation: The Metaphorical Mapping of Social Affection on Temperature: Action Mechanisms and Its Explanation

Based on the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory, several recent empirical studies have suggested that there is a deeper psychological significance to the connection between temperature and social affection. Metaphor consistency effects and metaphor compensation effects are used to illustrate its mechanism. And this temperature-social affection metaphor is grounded on the early experience of the social world, and developed through scaffolding processes. In addition, the insula may be a key shared neural substrate that mediates the influence of temperature on social affection processes. Future researches on temperature-social affection metaphor should focus on the following aspects, such as improving the experimental paradigm of this metaphor, deepening our understanding of its action mechanisms, exploring the formation mechanisms from the perspective of development and at last carrying out the application work of temperature-social affection metaphor.