Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University. Henri Dunantlaan 2, B-9000 Gent, Belgium.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2013 Dec;8(8):903-10. doi: 10.1093/scan/nss090. Epub 2012 Sep 5.
It is a unique human ability to regulate negative thoughts and feelings. Two well-investigated emotion-regulation strategies (ERSs), cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, are associated with overlapping prefrontal neural correlates, but differ temporally during the emotion-generation process. Although functional imaging studies have mainly investigated these ERS as a reaction to an emotion-inducing event, the intention to regulate upcoming negative emotions might already be associated with differences in neural activity. Hence, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was recorded in 42 participants while they completed an emotion-regulation paradigm. During this task, participants were instructed to proactively prepare to use a specific ERS knowing that a negative, high-arousing image would appear after the preparation period. As expected, the results demonstrated prefrontal and parietal activation while participants were suppressing or reappraising their emotions (family-wise error (FWE)-corrected). The intention to suppress emotions was associated with increased activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral putamen, pre-supplementary motor area and right supramarginal gyrus (FWE-corrected). This enhanced proactive inhibitory control: (i) predicted decreased motoric activity during the actual suppression of emotional expressions and (2) trended toward a significant association with how successfully participants suppressed their emotions. However, neural correlates of preparatory control for cognitive reappraisal were not observed, possibly because contextual cues about the upcoming emotional stimulus are necessary to proactively start to cognitively reinterpret the situation.
调节负面想法和情绪是人类特有的能力。两种经过充分研究的情绪调节策略（ERS）——认知重评和表达抑制，与重叠的前额叶神经相关物有关，但在情绪产生过程中存在时间上的差异。尽管功能成像研究主要将这些 ERS 作为对引起情绪的事件的反应进行了研究，但对即将到来的负面情绪进行调节的意图可能已经与神经活动的差异有关。因此，在 42 名参与者完成情绪调节范式时，记录了事件相关功能磁共振成像。在这项任务中，参与者被指示主动准备使用特定的 ERS，因为在准备期结束后会出现一个消极的、高唤起的图像。正如预期的那样，结果表明，当参与者抑制或重新评价他们的情绪时，前额叶和顶叶会被激活（基于家庭错误率（family-wise error，FWE）校正）。抑制情绪的意图与右额下回、双侧壳核、预备运动区和右侧缘上回的激活增加有关（基于 FWE 校正）。这种增强的主动抑制控制：（i）预测了在实际抑制情绪表达时运动活动的减少；（ii）与参与者成功抑制情绪的程度呈显著关联。然而，没有观察到认知重评的预备控制的神经相关物，这可能是因为需要关于即将到来的情绪刺激的上下文线索来主动开始重新解释情况。
