Wang Junyu, Zhang Rong, Feng Tingyong
Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China; Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality, Ministry of Education, China.
Brain Cogn. 2022 Mar;157:105832. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2021.105832. Epub 2021 Dec 27.
Procrastination can lead to a variety of negative consequences, including poorer health conditions and more financial issues. Previous researches highlight that procrastination is a result of the failure of emotion-regulation. Although substantial studies have shown that emotion regulation plays an essential role in procrastination, little is known about the neural basis of the relationship between expressive suppression and procrastination. To address this question, we employed the voxel-based morphometry (VBM) method to investigate the neural basis underlying how expressive suppression links to procrastination across two independent samples (sample1, N = 98). Expressive suppression was significantly negatively associated with procrastination. Furthermore, VBM results indicated that expressive suppression was positively correlated with gray matter (GM) volumes of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). More importantly, the GM volumes in dlPFC mediated the relationship between expressive suppression and procrastination, which was further replicated in an independent sample (sample 2, N = 110). These findings suggest that dlPFC, which plays a crucial role in inhibitory control, may be the key brain region mediating the relation between expressive suppression and procrastination. The current work provides a new perspective to understand how emotion regulation in terms of expressive suppression plays a role in procrastination.
拖延会导致各种负面后果，包括健康状况变差和更多财务问题。先前的研究强调拖延是情绪调节失败的结果。尽管大量研究表明情绪调节在拖延中起着至关重要的作用，但对于表达抑制与拖延之间关系的神经基础却知之甚少。为了解决这个问题，我们采用基于体素的形态测量法（VBM）来研究在两个独立样本（样本1，N = 98）中表达抑制如何与拖延相关联的神经基础。表达抑制与拖延显著负相关。此外，VBM结果表明表达抑制与右侧背外侧前额叶皮质（dlPFC）的灰质（GM）体积呈正相关。更重要的是，dlPFC中的GM体积介导了表达抑制与拖延之间的关系，这在另一个独立样本（样本2，N = 110）中得到了进一步验证。这些发现表明，在抑制控制中起关键作用的dlPFC可能是介导表达抑制与拖延之间关系的关键脑区。当前的研究工作为理解表达抑制方面的情绪调节如何在拖延中发挥作用提供了一个新的视角。
