Poster No:
1902
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Ava White1, Sophie Henegar1, Jennifer Robinson1
Institutions:
1Auburn University, Auburn, AL
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Strategies of emotion regulation are essential for everyday living, and deficits in these skills can be detrimental to one's mental, physical, and social wellbeing (Webb, Mills, & Sheeran, 2012). Further, maladaptive emotion regulation greatly increases the risk for developing mental illnesses such as mood and anxiety disorders (Joorman & Silver, 2014). The field of emotion regulation research largely focuses on explicit regulatory processes, but markedly less research examines automatic or implicit processes (Mauss, Bunge, & Gross, 2007). Implicit reappraisal research lacks a specific neural network, but researchers have suggested that it may draw on similar pathways as explicit reappraisal, specifically highlighting regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) downregulating activity of the amygdala (Kanske et al., 2011; Burklund et al., 2014). However, some research has suggested that implicit reappraisal may be more adaptive than explicit reappraisal, highlighting the need for research on this process (Yuan et al., 2015). The purpose of this project is to assess the neural correlates of implicit cognitive reappraisal using 7 Tesla (7T) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Methods:
The sample size for this study is N = 30 (10M/20F) ages 18-30 (M = 22.93, SD = 2.80). To evoke implicit reappraisal, participants were shown negative video stimuli (rated for negative affect equivalency during a prior pilot study) that were preceded by either a negative, positive, or neutral description. In order to ensure that participants were unaware that their emotions were being examined (which would shift the regulation from implicit to explicit), the project was described to participants as a memory study and participants completed a multiple-choice question and a memory task following each video. Blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) responses were collected from various regions of interest (ROIs), including the bilateral dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC), dorsomedial PFC (dmPFC), ventrolateral PFC (vlPFC), and amygdalae. We hypothesized that activation levels in the dlPFC, dmPFC, and vlPFC would be increased and activation levels in the amygdala would be decreased in the positive prompt condition compared to the negative prompt condition. As such, we performed repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) to look for neural activation differences in these ROIs as a function of prompt condition.
Results:
Results suggested that the left dlPFC and dmPFC showed significantly greater activation when viewing stimuli preceded by a negative prompt compared to either a positive or neutral prompt (left dlPFC, F(1.41, 40.78) = 9.68, p < .001; left dmPFC, F(1.71, 46.14) = 8.75, p < .001). Amygdala activation was decreased in the positive prompt condition compared to the negative prompt condition, but these differences failed to reach significance (left amygdala, F(1.29, 36.19) = 2.33, p = 0.129; right amygdala, F(1.48, 41.43) = 0.92, p = 0.381).
Conclusions:
These results suggest decreased activation in regions of the left PFC associated with positively prompted negative videos. This finding is inconsistent with the hypothesized role of the PFC demonstrated in explicit reappraisal, and one potential explanation for this is that implicit reappraisal may operate from slightly different neural pathways than explicit reappraisal. Another potential explanation for these results differing from what may be expected could be a result of using novel video stimuli, rather than still images that are typically used in cognitive reappraisal research. Altogether, these findings support some hemispheric disparities where regions of the left hemisphere may be more responsive to negative emotional stimuli, and may suggest some differences in neural activation patterns in implicit reappraisal compared to explicit reappraisal.
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotional Learning 2
Emotion and Motivation Other
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Activation (eg. BOLD task-fMRI)
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
BOLD fMRI 1
Keywords:
Affective Disorders
Emotions
FUNCTIONAL MRI
HIGH FIELD MR
Limbic Systems
MRI
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Please indicate below if your study was a "resting state" or "task-activation” study.
Task-activation
Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):
Healthy subjects
Was this research conducted in the United States?
Yes
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Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel?
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Not applicable
Please indicate which methods were used in your research:
Functional MRI
Structural MRI
For human MRI, what field strength scanner do you use?
7T
Which processing packages did you use for your study?
FSL
Provide references using APA citation style.
Burklund, L. J., Creswell, J. D., Irwin, M. R., & Lieberman, M. D. (2014). The common and distinct neural bases of affect labeling and reappraisal in healthy adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00221
Joormann, J. & Siemer, M. (2014). Emotion regulation in mood disorders. In J.J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (pp. 413–427). The Guilford Press.
Kanske, P., Heissler, J., Schönfelder, S., Bongers, A., & Wessa, M. (2011). How to Regulate Emotion? Neural Networks for Reappraisal and Distraction. Cerebral Cortex, 21(6), 1379–1388. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhq216
Mauss, I. B., Bunge, S. A., & Gross, J. J. (2007). Automatic Emotion Regulation: Automatic Emotion Regulation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 1(1), 146–167. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00005.x
Webb, T. L., Miles, E., & Sheeran, P. (2012). Dealing with feeling: A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation. Psychological Bulletin, 138(4), 775–808. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027600
Yuan, J., Ding, N., Liu, Y., & Yang, J. (2015). Unconscious emotion regulation: Nonconscious reappraisal decreases emotion-related physiological reactivity during frustration. Cognition and Emotion, 29(6), 1042–1053. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2014.965663
No