Kateri McRae

The Neural Bases of Emotion Regulation: Reappraisal and Suppression of Negative Emotion

BACKGROUND Emotion regulation strategies are thought to differ in when and how they influence the emotion-generative process. However, no study to date has directly probed the neural bases of two contrasting (e.g., cognitive versus behavioral) emotion regulation strategies. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine cognitive reappraisal (a cognitive strategy thought to have its impact early in the emotion-generative process) and expressive suppression (a behavioral strategy thought to have its impact later in the emotion-generative process). METHODS Seventeen women viewed 15 sec neutral and negative emotion-eliciting films under four conditions--watch-neutral, watch-negative, reappraise-negative, and suppress-negative--while providing emotion experience ratings and having their facial expressions videotaped. RESULTS Reappraisal resulted in early (0-4.5 sec) prefrontal cortex (PFC) responses, decreased negative emotion experience, and decreased amygdala and insular responses. Suppression produced late (10.5-15 sec) PFC responses, decreased negative emotion behavior and experience, but increased amygdala and insular responses. CONCLUSIONS These findings demonstrate the differential efficacy of reappraisal and suppression on emotional experience, facial behavior, and neural response and highlight intriguing differences in the temporal dynamics of these two emotion regulation strategies.

Neural correlates of heart rate variability during emotion.

The vagal (high frequency [HF]) component of heart rate variability (HRV) predicts survival in post-myocardial infarction patients and is considered to reflect vagal antagonism of sympathetic influences. Previous studies of the neural correlates of vagal tone involved mental stress tasks that included cognitive and emotional elements. To differentiate the neural substrates of vagal tone due to emotion, we correlated HF-HRV with measures of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) derived from positron emission tomography (PET) and (15)O-water in 12 healthy women during different emotional states. Happiness, sadness, disgust and three neutral conditions were each induced by film clips and recall of personal experiences (12 conditions). Inter-beat intervals derived from electrocardiographic recordings during the 60-second scans were spectrally-analyzed, generating 12 separate measures of HF-HRV in each subject. The six emotion and six neutral conditions were grouped together and contrasted. We observed substantial overlap between emotion-specific rCBF and the correlation between emotion-specific rCBF and HF-HRV, particularly in the medial prefrontal cortex. Emotion-specific rCBF also correlated with HF-HRV in the caudate nucleus, periacqueductal gray and left mid-insula. We also observed that the elements of cognitive control inherent in this experiment (that involved focusing on the target mental state) had definable neural substrates that correlated with HF-HRV and to a large extent differed from the emotion-specific correlates of HF-HRV. No statistically significant asymmetries were observed. Our findings are consistent with the view that the medial visceromotor network is a final common pathway by which emotional and cognitive functions recruit autonomic support.

The neural bases of distraction and reappraisal

Distraction and reappraisal are two commonly used forms of cognitive emotion regulation. Functional neuroimaging studies have shown that each one depends upon interactions between pFC, interpreted as implementing cognitive control, and limbic regions, interpreted as mediating emotional responses. However, no study has directly compared distraction with reappraisal, and it remains unclear whether they draw upon different neural mechanisms and have different emotional consequences. The present fMRI study compared distraction and reappraisal and found both similarities and differences between the two forms of emotion regulation. Both resulted in decreased negative affect, decreased activation in the amygdala, and increased activation in prefrontal and cingulate regions. Relative to distraction, reappraisal led to greater decreases in negative affect and to greater increases in a network of regions associated with processing affective meaning (medial prefrontal and anterior temporal cortices). Relative to reappraisal, distraction led to greater decreases in amygdala activation and to greater increases in activation in prefrontal and parietal regions. Taken together, these data suggest that distraction and reappraisal differentially engage neural systems involved in attentional deployment and cognitive reframing and have different emotional consequences.

Gender Differences in Emotion Regulation: An fMRI Study of Cognitive Reappraisal

Despite strong popular conceptions of gender differences in emotionality and striking gender differences in the prevalence of disorders thought to involve emotion dysregulation, the literature on the neural bases of emotion regulation is nearly silent regarding gender differences (Gross, 2007; Ochsner & Gross, in press). The purpose of the present study was to address this gap in the literature. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we asked male and female participants to use a cognitive emotion regulation strategy (reappraisal) to down-regulate their emotional responses to negatively valenced pictures. Behaviorally, men and women evidenced comparable decreases in negative emotion experience. Neurally, however, gender differences emerged. Compared with women, men showed (a) lesser increases in prefrontal regions that are associated with reappraisal, (b) greater decreases in the amygdala, which is associated with emotional responding, and (c) lesser engagement of ventral striatal regions, which are associated with reward processing. We consider two non-competing explanations for these differences. First, men may expend less effort when using cognitive regulation, perhaps due to greater use of automatic emotion regulation. Second, women may use positive emotions in the service of reappraising negative emotions to a greater degree. We then consider the implications of gender differences in emotion regulation for understanding gender differences in emotional processing in general, and gender differences in affective disorders.

The development of emotion regulation: an fMRI study of cognitive reappraisal in children, adolescents and young adults

The ability to use cognitive reappraisal to regulate emotions is an adaptive skill in adulthood, but little is known about its development. Because reappraisal is thought to be supported by linearly developing prefrontal regions, one prediction is that reappraisal ability develops linearly. However, recent investigations into socio-emotional development suggest that there are non-linear patterns that uniquely affect adolescents. We compared older children (10-13), adolescents (14-17) and young adults (18-22) on a task that distinguishes negative emotional reactivity from reappraisal ability. Behaviorally, we observed no age differences in self-reported emotional reactivity, but linear and quadratic relationships between reappraisal ability and age. Neurally, we observed linear age-related increases in activation in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, previously identified in adult reappraisal. We observed a quadratic pattern of activation with age in regions associated with social cognitive processes like mental state attribution (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, anterior temporal cortex). In these regions, we observed relatively lower reactivity-related activation in adolescents, but higher reappraisal-related activation. This suggests that (i) engagement of the cognitive control components of reappraisal increases linearly with age and (ii) adolescents may not normally recruit regions associated with mental state attribution, but (iii) this can be reversed with reappraisal instructions.

Bottom-Up and Top-Down Processes in Emotion Generation Common and Distinct Neural Mechanisms

Emotions are generally thought to arise through the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes. However, prior work has not delineated their relative contributions. In a sample of 20 females, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the neural correlates of negative emotions generated by the bottom-up perception of aversive images and by the top-down interpretation of neutral images as aversive. We found that (a) both types of responses activated the amygdala, although bottom-up responses did so more strongly; (b) bottom-up responses activated systems for attending to and encoding perceptual and affective stimulus properties, whereas top-down responses activated prefrontal regions that represent high-level cognitive interpretations; and (c) self-reported affect correlated with activity in the amygdala during bottom-up responding and with activity in the medial prefrontal cortex during top-down responding. These findings provide a neural foundation for emotion theories that posit multiple kinds of appraisal processes and help to clarify mechanisms underlying clinically relevant forms of emotion dysregulation.

Individual Differences in Typical Reappraisal Use Predict Amygdala and Prefrontal Responses

BACKGROUND Participants who are instructed to use reappraisal to downregulate negative emotion show decreased amygdala responses and increased prefrontal responses. However, it is not known whether individual differences in the tendency to use reappraisal manifests in similar neural responses when individuals are spontaneously confronted with negative situations. Such spontaneous emotion regulation might play an important role in normal and pathological responses to the emotional challenges of everyday life. METHODS Fifty-six healthy women completed a blood oxygenation-level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging challenge paradigm involving the perceptual processing of emotionally negative facial expressions. Participants also completed measures of typical emotion regulation use, trait anxiety, and neuroticism. RESULTS Greater use of reappraisal in everyday life was related to decreased amygdala activity and increased prefrontal and parietal activity during the processing of negative emotional facial expressions. These associations were not attributable to variation in trait anxiety, neuroticism, or the use of another common form of emotion regulation, namely suppression. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that, like instructed reappraisal, individual differences in reappraisal use are associated with decreased activation in ventral emotion generative regions and increased activation in prefrontal control regions in response to negative stimuli. Such individual differences in emotion regulation might predict successful coping with emotional challenges as well as the onset of affective disorders.

Cognitive reappraisal of negative affect: converging evidence from EMG and self-report.

Prior psychophysiological studies of cognitive reappraisal have generally focused on the down-regulation of negative affect, and have demonstrated either changes in self-reports of affective experience, or changes in facial electromyography, but not both. Unfortunately, when taken separately, these measures are vulnerable to different sources of bias, and alternative explanations might account for changes in these indicators of negative affect. What is needed is a study that (a) obtains measures of self-reported affect together with facial electromyography, and (b) examines the use of reappraisal to regulate externally and internally generated affective responses. In the present study, participants up- or down-regulated negative affect in the context of both negative and neutral pictures. Up-regulation led to greater self reports of negative affect, as well as greater corrugator and startle responses to both negative and neutral stimuli. Down-regulation led to lesser reports of negative affect, and lesser corrugator responses to negative and neutral stimuli. These results extend prior research by (a) showing simultaneous effects on multiple measures of affect, and (b) demonstrating that cognitive reappraisal may be used both to regulate responses to negative stimuli and to manufacture a negative response to neutral stimuli.

The up- and down-regulation of amusement: Experiential, behavioral, and autonomic consequences.

A growing body of research has examined the regulation of negative emotions. However, little is known about the physiological processes underlying the regulation of positive emotions, such as when amusement is enhanced during periods of stress or attenuated in the pursuit of social goals. The aim of this study was to examine the psychophysiological consequences of the cognitive up- and down-regulation of amusement. To address this goal, participants viewed brief, amusing film clips while measurements of experience, behavior, and peripheral physiology were collected. Using an event-related design, participants viewed each film under the instructions either to (a) watch, (b) use cognitive reappraisal to increase amusement, or (c) use cognitive reappraisal to decrease amusement. Findings indicated that emotion experience, emotion-expressive behavior, and autonomic physiology (including heart rate, respiration, and sympathetic nervous system activation) were enhanced and diminished in accordance with regulation instructions. This finding is a critical extension of the growing literature on the voluntary regulation of emotion, and has the potential to help us better understand how people use humor in the service of coping and social goals.

Association between trait emotional awareness and dorsal anterior cingulate activity during emotion is arousal-dependent

The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) is commonly thought to subserve primarily cognitive functions, but has been strongly implicated in the allocation of attention to emotional information. In a previous positron emission tomography (PET) study, we observed that women with higher emotional awareness as measured by the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) showed greater changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in dACC induced by emotional films and recall. In the current study, we tested whether these effects were due to the processing of any non-neutral stimulus, or were specific to conditions of high emotional arousal. Our results extend the previous finding by demonstrating a positive correlation between emotional awareness and dACC activity only in the context of viewing highly arousing pictures. No such relationship was observed when comparing pleasant or unpleasant pictures to neutral or to each other. We also observed that the relationship between LEAS and dACC activity was present in both sexes but stronger in women than men. These results reinforce the concept that greater trait awareness of ones own emotional experiences is associated with greater engagement of the dACC during emotional arousal, which we suggest may reflect greater attentional processing of emotional information.