Nicole R. Giuliani

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.

Emotion regulation and brain plasticity: expressive suppression use predicts anterior insula volume.

Expressive suppression is an emotion regulation strategy that requires interoceptive and emotional awareness. These processes both recruit the anterior insula. It is not known, however, whether increased use of expressive suppression is associated with increased anterior insula volume. In the present study, high-resolution anatomical MRI images were used to calculate insula volumes in a set of 50 healthy female subjects (mean 21.9 years) using both region of interest (ROI) and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) approaches. Participants also completed trait measures of expressive suppression usage, cognitive reappraisal usage, and negative emotional reactivity (the latter two served as control measures). As predicted, both ROI and VBM methods found that expressive suppression usage, but not negative affect and cognitive reappraisal, was positively related to anterior insula volume. These findings are consistent with the idea that trait patterns of emotion processing are related to brain structure.

Anterior cingulate cortex volume and emotion regulation: is bigger better?

Emotion dysregulation is a key feature of mood and anxiety disorders. Many of these disorders also involve volumetric reductions in brain regions implicated in emotion regulation, including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). Investigating this relationship in healthy individuals may clarify the link between emotion regulation and volumetric reductions in this key brain region. High-resolution anatomical MRI images were used to calculate dACC volumes in 50 healthy female subjects. Trait measures of emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) and negative affect were also obtained. As predicted, cognitive reappraisal was positively related to dACC volume, but not the volume of a control region, the ventral ACC. Expressive suppression, negative affect, and age were not related to dACC volume. These findings indicate that individual differences in cognitive reappraisal are related to individual differences in dACC volume in healthy participants.

Neural systems underlying the reappraisal of personally craved foods

Craving of unhealthy food is a common target of self-regulation, but the neural systems underlying this process are understudied. In this study, participants used cognitive reappraisal to regulate their desire to consume idiosyncratically craved or not craved energy-dense foods, and neural activity during regulation was compared with each other and with the activity during passive viewing of energy-dense foods. Regulation of both food types elicited activation in classic top–down self-regulation regions including the dorsolateral prefrontal, inferior frontal, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices. This main effect of regulation was qualified by an interaction, such that activation in these regions was significantly greater during reappraisal of craved (versus not craved) foods and several regions, including the dorsolateral prefrontal, inferior frontal, medial frontal, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices, were uniquely active during regulation of personally craved foods. Body mass index significantly negatively correlated with regulation-related activation in the right dorsolateral PFC, thalamus, and bilateral dorsal ACC and with activity in nucleus accumbens during passive viewing of craved (vs. neutral, low-energy density) foods. These results suggest that several of the brain regions involved in the self-regulation of food craving are similar to other kinds of affective self-regulation and that others are sensitive to the self-relevance of the regulation target.

Age-related changes in reappraisal of appetitive cravings during adolescence.

The ability to regulate temptation and manage appetitive cravings is an important aspect of healthy adolescent development, but the neural systems underlying this process are understudied. In the present study, 60 healthy females evenly distributed from 10 to 23years of age used reappraisal to regulate the desire to consume personally-craved and not craved unhealthy foods. Reappraisal elicited activity in common self-regulation regions including the dorsal and ventral lateral prefrontal cortex (specifically superior and inferior frontal gyri), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and inferior parietal lobule. Viewing personally-craved foods (versus not craved foods) elicited activity in regions including the ventral striatum, as well as more rostral and ventral anterior cingulate cortex extending into the orbitofrontal cortex. Age positively correlated with regulation-related activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus, and negatively correlated with reactivity-related activity in the right superior and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. Age-adjusted BMI negatively correlated with regulation-related activity in the predominantly left lateralized frontal and parietal regions. These results suggest that the age-related changes seen in the reappraisal of negative emotion may not be as pronounced in the reappraisal of food craving. Therefore, reappraisal of food craving in particular may be an effective way to teach teenagers to manage cravings for other temptations encountered in adolescence, including alcohol, drugs, and unhealthy food.

Comparison of text messaging and paper-and-pencil for ecological momentary assessment of food craving and intake

Electronic devices such as mobile phones are quickly becoming a popular way to gather participant reports of everyday thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, including food cravings and intake. Electronic devices offer a number of advantages over alternative methods such as paper-and-pencil (PNP) assessment including automated prompts, on-the-fly data transmission, and participant familiarity with and ownership of the devices. However, only a handful of studies have systematically compared compliance between electronic and PNP methods of ecological momentary assessment (EMA), and none have examined eating specifically. Existing comparisons generally find greater compliance for electronic devices than PNP, but there is variability in the results across studies that may be accounted for by differences across research domains. Here, we compared the two EMA methods in an unexamined domain - eating - in terms of response rate and response latency, and their sensitivity to individual difference variables such as body mass index (BMI). Forty-four participants were randomly assigned to report on their food craving, food intake, and hunger four times each day for 2 weeks using either a PNP diary (N = 19) or text messaging (TXT; N = 25). Response rates were higher for TXT than PNP (96% vs. 70%) and latencies were faster (29 min vs. 79 min), and response rate and latency were less influenced by BMI in the TXT condition than in the PNP condition. These results support the feasibility of using text messaging for EMA in the eating domain, and more broadly highlight the ways that research domain-specific considerations (e.g., the importance of response latency in measuring short-lived food craving) interact with assessment modality during EMA.

Craving Is an Affective State and Its Regulation Can Be Understood in Terms of the Extended Process Model of Emotion Regulation

We argue that craving is an affective state per the definition offered in the target article, and as such the Extended Process Model provides a strong theoretical framework to understand the self-regulation of craving. First, we briefly define craving in general and food craving in particular and relate those constructs to the definitions of affect and emotion in the target article. We then apply the Extended Process Model to cognitive strategies for self-regulation of food craving and related clinical interventions. In doing so, we illustrate how the Extended Process Model of Emotion Regulation is a useful tool for bridging related topics within affective science (e.g., craving and emotion) and for analyzing and improving programs that target affective states (e.g., dietary interventions).

Organization of mnemonic and response operations within prefrontal cortex

There is mounting evidence that prefrontal cortex (PFC) is activated during mnemonic operations such as working memory maintenance and also during response-related operations. In the current study, we examine the neural organization of mnemonic and response operations with respect to each other within PFC. Stimulus-evoked and sustained functional MRI activity was recorded during performance of a mental calculation task. The presence or absence of mnemonic and response demands was manipulated in a 2 x 2 factorial design with conditions requiring: (1) memory encoding and maintenance (M+); (2) response selection and execution (R+); (3) encoding, maintenance, and response execution (M+R+); (4) neither mnemonic nor response-related processes (M-R-). The first step of the analyses identified PFC voxels exhibiting differential activity during (M+) vs. (R+) trials. Within these voxels, we then examined activity during multiple phases of (M+R+) trials. Greater stimulus-evoked and sustained activity was observed within the anterior extent of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (BA 46) during R+ vs. M+ trials. In contrast, greater activity was observed in the posterior extent of dorsolateral PFC during M+ vs. R+ trials. Importantly, both regions were activated during (M+R+) trials. Activity levels during all of these conditions exceeded levels observed during (M-R-) control trials. These results suggest that integrative functions of PFC that allow past information to guide future actions may emerge from communication between discrete subregions supporting mnemonic and response operations.

Neurodevelopmental changes across adolescence in viewing and labeling dynamic peer emotions

Highlights • Dynamic peer facial stimuli recruit key regions involved in emotion processing.• LPFC shows a nonlinear age trend across adolescence to labeling dynamic peer faces.• MOFC/vMPFC shows a linear decrease with age to viewing dynamic peer faces.• No significant age trends were observed in amygdala during viewing or labeling dynamic peer faces.

Prediction of daily food intake as a function of measurement modality and restriction status.

Objective Research on eating relies on various indices (e.g., stable, momentary, neural) to accurately reflect food-related reactivity (e.g., disinhibition) and regulation (e.g., restraint) outside the laboratory. The degree to which they differentially predict real-world consumption remains unclear. Further, the predictive validity of these indices might vary depending on whether an individual is actively restricting intake. Methods We assessed food craving reactivity and regulation in 46 healthy participants (30 women, 18–30 years) using standard measurements in three modalities: a) self-reported (stable) traits using surveys popular in the eating literature, and b) momentary craving ratings and c) neural activation using aggregated functional magnetic resonance imaging data gathered during a food reactivity-and-regulation task. We then used these data to predict variance in real-world consumption of craved energy-dense “target” foods across 2 weeks among normal-weight participants randomly assigned to restrict or monitor target food intake. Results The predictive validity of four indices varied significantly by restriction. When participants were not restricting intake, momentary (B = 0.21, standard error [SE] = 0.05) and neural (B = 0.08, SE = 0.04) reactivity positively predicted consumption, and stable (B = −0.22, SE = 0.05) and momentary (B = −0.24, SE = 0.05) regulation negatively predicted consumption. When restricting, stable (B = 0.36, SE = 0.12) and neural (B = 0.51, SE = 0.12) regulation positively predicted consumption. Conclusions Commonly-used indices of regulation and reactivity differentially relate to an ecologically-valid eating measurement, depending on the presence of restriction goals, and thus have strong implications for predicting real-world behaviors.