Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2500, USA.
Neuroscience. 2009 Nov 24;164(1):43-54. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2009.06.049. Epub 2009 Jun 25.
Emotions can be powerful drivers of behavior that may be adaptive or maladaptive for the individual. Thus, the ability to alter one's emotions, to regulate them, should be beneficial to an individual's success of survival and fitness. What is the biological basis of this ability? And what are the biological mechanisms that impart individual differences in the ability to regulate emotion? In this article, we will first introduce readers to the construct of emotion regulation, and the various strategies that individuals may utilize to regulate their emotions. We will then point to evidence that suggests genetic contributions (alongside environmental contributions) to individual differences in emotion regulation. To date, efforts to identify specific genetic mechanisms involved in emotion regulation have focused on common gene variants (i.e. variants that exist in >1% of the population, referred to as polymorphisms) and their association with specific emotion regulation strategies or the neural substrate mediating these strategies. We will discuss these efforts, and conclude with a call to expand the set of experimental paradigms and putative molecular mechanisms, in order to significantly advance our understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which genes are involved in emotion regulation.
情绪是行为的强大驱动力，可能对个体具有适应性或不适应性。因此，改变一个人的情绪、调节情绪的能力应该对个体的生存和适应能力有益。这种能力的生物学基础是什么？是什么生物学机制赋予了个体在调节情绪方面的差异？在本文中，我们将首先向读者介绍情绪调节的结构，以及个体可能用来调节情绪的各种策略。然后，我们将指出有证据表明遗传因素（与环境因素一起）对情绪调节的个体差异有贡献。迄今为止，确定与情绪调节相关的特定遗传机制的努力主要集中在常见基因变异体（即存在于> 1%的人群中的变异体，称为多态性）及其与特定情绪调节策略或介导这些策略的神经基质的关联上。我们将讨论这些努力，并呼吁扩大实验范式和假定的分子机制集，以显著推进我们对基因参与情绪调节的分子机制的理解。
