Chen Shengdong, Ding Nanxiang, Wang Fushun, Li Zhihao, Qin Shaozheng, Biswal Bharat B, Yuan Jiajin
The Laboratory for Affect Cognition and Regulation (ACRLAB), Institute of Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, China.
School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Neural Plast. 2021 Jan 5;2021:6639739. doi: 10.1155/2021/6639739. eCollection 2021.
Automatic emotion regulation (AER) plays a vital role in the neuropathology underlying both suicide and self-harm via modifying emotional impact effortlessly. However, both the effortless account and the neural mechanisms of AER are undetermined. To investigate the neural changes at AER, we collected functional MRI (fMRI) in 31 participants who attended to neutral and disgust pictures in three conditions: watching, goal intention (GI), and reappraisal by implementation intention (RII). Results showed that RII (but not GI) decreased negative feelings and bilateral amygdala activity without increasing cognitive efforts, evidenced by the reduced effort rating and less prefrontal engagement during RII compared with during watching and GI. These emotion-regulatory effects of RII cannot be explained by emotional habituation, as the supplementary experiment ( = 31) showed no emotional habituation effects when the same disgust pictures were presented repeatedly three times for each watching and GI condition. Task-based network analysis showed both RII and GI relative to watching increased functional connectivities (FCs) of the ventral anterior cingulate cortex to the left insula and right precuneus during conditions, two FCs subserving goal setup. However, RII relative to GI exhibited weaker FCs in brain networks subserving effortful control, memory retrieval, aversive anticipation, and motor planning. In these FCs, the FC intensity of putamen-operculum/lingual and paracentral-superior temporal gyri positively predicted regulatory difficulty ratings. These findings suggest that the setup of implementation intention automatizes emotion regulation by reducing the online mobilization of emotion-coping neural systems.
自动情绪调节（AER）通过轻松改变情绪影响，在自杀和自我伤害的神经病理学中起着至关重要的作用。然而，AER的轻松调节机制和神经机制均未确定。为了研究AER过程中的神经变化，我们对31名参与者进行了功能磁共振成像（fMRI），这些参与者在三种条件下观看中性和厌恶图片：观看、目标意图（GI）和通过实施意图进行重新评估（RII）。结果表明，RII（而非GI）降低了负面情绪和双侧杏仁核活动，且未增加认知努力，这表现为与观看和GI期间相比，RII期间努力程度评分降低，前额叶参与度降低。RII的这些情绪调节作用无法用情绪习惯化来解释，因为补充实验（n = 31）表明，在观看和GI条件下，当相同的厌恶图片重复呈现三次时，没有出现情绪习惯化效应。基于任务的网络分析表明，与观看相比，RII和GI在两种条件下均增加了腹侧前扣带回皮层与左侧脑岛和右侧楔前叶之间的功能连接（FCs），这两个FCs有助于目标设定。然而，与GI相比，RII在服务于努力控制、记忆检索、厌恶预期和运动规划的脑网络中表现出较弱的FCs。在这些FCs中，壳核 - 岛盖/舌回和中央旁 - 颞上回的FC强度与调节难度评分呈正相关。这些发现表明，实施意图的设定通过减少情绪应对神经系统的在线动员，使情绪调节自动化。
