Kim Sang Hee, Hamann Stephan
Psychology Department, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2007 May;19(5):776-98. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2007.19.5.776.
The ability to cope adaptively with emotional events by volitionally altering one's emotional reactions is important for psychological and physical health as well as social interaction. Cognitive regulation of emotional responses to aversive events engages prefrontal regions that modulate activity in emotion-processing regions such as the amygdala. However, the neural correlates of the regulation of positive emotions remain largely unexplored. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural correlates of cognitively increasing and decreasing emotional reactions to positive and negative stimuli. Participants viewed negative, positive, and neutral pictures while attempting to increase, decrease, or not alter their emotional reactions. Subjective reactions were assessed via on-line ratings. Consistent with previous studies, increasing negative and positive emotion engaged primarily left-lateralized prefrontal regions, whereas decreasing emotion activated bilateral prefrontal regions. Different activations unique to increasing versus decreasing emotion were observed for positive and negative stimuli: Unique increase-related activations were observed only for positive stimuli, whereas unique decrease-related activations were observed only for negative stimuli. Regulation also modulated activity in the amygdala, a key emotion-processing region. Regulation effects on amygdala activity were larger for positive than for negative stimuli, potentially reflecting a greater malleability of positive emotional reactions. Increasing and decreasing positive and negative emotion can thus increase and decrease subjective reactions and associated amygdala activity in line with regulatory goals, and is associated with different patterns of prefrontal activation as a function of emotional valence and regulatory goal.
通过自主改变情绪反应来适应性应对情绪事件的能力，对心理和身体健康以及社会交往都很重要。对厌恶事件的情绪反应进行认知调节时，前额叶区域会参与其中，这些区域会调节诸如杏仁核等情绪处理区域的活动。然而，对积极情绪调节的神经关联在很大程度上仍未得到探索。我们使用事件相关功能磁共振成像来研究对正负刺激的情绪反应进行认知增强和减弱时的神经关联。参与者观看负面、正面和中性图片，同时尝试增强、减弱或不改变他们的情绪反应。通过在线评分评估主观反应。与先前的研究一致，增强负面和正面情绪主要激活左侧前额叶区域，而减弱情绪则激活双侧前额叶区域。对于正负刺激，观察到增强与减弱情绪时不同的独特激活：仅对正面刺激观察到与增强相关的独特激活，而仅对负面刺激观察到与减弱相关的独特激活。调节也会调节杏仁核（一个关键的情绪处理区域）的活动。调节对杏仁核活动的影响对正面刺激比对负面刺激更大，这可能反映了正面情绪反应具有更大的可塑性。因此，增强和减弱正负情绪可以根据调节目标增强和减弱主观反应以及相关的杏仁核活动，并且与前额叶激活的不同模式相关，这取决于情绪效价和调节目标。
