Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
Cereb Cortex. 2019 Jun 1;29(6):2607-2623. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhy129.
Emotional distraction may come from the external world and from our mind, as internal distraction. Although external emotional distraction has been extensively investigated, less is known about the mechanisms associated with the impact of internal emotional distraction on cognitive performance, and those involved in coping with such distraction. These issues were investigated using a working memory task with emotional distraction, where recollected unpleasant autobiographical memories served as internal emotional distraction. Emotion regulation was manipulated by instructing participants to focus their attention either on or away from the emotional aspects of their memories. Behaviorally, focusing away from emotion was associated with better working memory performance than focusing on the recollected emotions. Functional MRI data showed reduced response in brain regions associated with the salience network, coupled with greater recruitment of executive prefrontal and memory-related temporoparietal regions, and with increased frontoparietal connectivity, when subjects focused on nonemotional contextual details of their memories. Finally, temporal dissociations were also identified between regions involved in self-referential (showing faster responses) versus context-related processing (showing delayed responses). These findings demonstrate that focused attention is an effective regulation strategy in coping with internal distraction, and are relevant for understanding clinical conditions where coping with distressing memories is dysfunctional.
情绪分心可能来自外部世界，也可能来自我们的内心，即内部分心。尽管外部情绪分心已经得到了广泛的研究，但对于与内部情绪分心对认知表现的影响相关的机制以及应对这种分心的机制知之甚少。本研究使用带有情绪分心的工作记忆任务来研究这些问题，其中回忆不愉快的自传体记忆作为内部情绪分心。通过指示参与者将注意力集中在记忆的情绪方面或不集中在情绪方面来进行情绪调节。行为上，与关注记忆中的情绪相比，将注意力从情绪上转移开与更好的工作记忆表现相关联。功能磁共振成像数据显示，当被试将注意力集中在记忆的非情绪上下文细节上时，与突显网络相关的大脑区域的反应减少，同时与执行前额叶和与记忆相关的颞顶叶区域的招募增加，以及额顶叶连接增加。最后，还在涉及自我参照（表现出更快的反应）和与上下文相关的处理（表现出延迟的反应）的区域之间识别出了时间分离。这些发现表明，集中注意力是应对内部分心的有效调节策略，对于理解应对痛苦记忆功能失调的临床情况具有重要意义。
