Department of Experimental Psychology and Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
PLoS One. 2011 Jan 26;6(1):e16569. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016569.
There is a growing appreciation that individuals differ systematically in their use of particular emotion regulation strategies. Our aim was to examine the structural correlates of the habitual use of expressive suppression of emotions. Based on our previous research on the voluntary suppression of actions we expected this response-focused emotion regulation strategy to be associated with increased grey matter volume in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). On high-resolution MRI scans of 42 college-aged healthy adults we computed optimized voxel-based-morphometry (VBM) to explore the correlation between grey matter volume and inter-individual differences in the tendency to suppress the expression of emotions assessed by means of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003). We found a positive correlation between the habitual use of expressive suppression as an emotion regulation strategy and grey matter volume in the dmPFC. No other brain area showed a significant positive or negative correlation with the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire scores. The association between the suppression of expression of emotions and volume in the dmPFC supports the behavioural stability and biological foundation of the concept of this particular emotion regulation strategy within an age-homogenous sample of adults.
人们越来越认识到，个体在使用特定的情绪调节策略方面存在系统性差异。我们的目的是研究习惯性使用表达抑制情绪的结构相关性。基于我们之前关于自愿抑制动作的研究，我们预计这种以反应为中心的情绪调节策略与背内侧前额叶皮层(dmPFC)的灰质体积增加有关。在对 42 名成年大学生进行的高分辨率 MRI 扫描中，我们通过计算优化体素形态计量学(VBM)来探索灰质体积与个体间差异之间的相关性，个体间差异通过情绪调节问卷(Gross & John, 2003)来评估。我们发现，习惯性地使用表达抑制作为一种情绪调节策略与 dmPFC 的灰质体积呈正相关。没有其他脑区与情绪调节问卷评分表现出显著的正相关或负相关。情绪表达抑制与 dmPFC 体积之间的关联支持了在年龄同质的成年人群体中，这种特定情绪调节策略的行为稳定性和生物学基础的概念。
