Cognitive Reappraisal of Emotion: A Meta-Analysis of Human Neuroimaging Studies

Abstract

In recent years, an explosion of neuroimaging studies has examined cognitive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy that involves changing the way one thinks about a stimulus in order to change its affective impact. Existing models broadly agree that reappraisal recruits frontal and parietal control regions to modulate emotional responding in the amygdala, but they offer competing visions of how this is accomplished. One view holds that control regions engage ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), an area associated with fear extinction, that in turn modulates amygdala responses. An alternative view is that control regions modulate semantic representations in lateral temporal cortex that indirectly influence emotion-related responses in the amygdala. Furthermore, while previous work has emphasized the amygdala, whether reappraisal influences other regions implicated in emotional responding remains unknown. To resolve these questions, we performed a meta-analysis of 48 neuroimaging studies of reappraisal, most involving downregulation of negative affect. Reappraisal consistently 1) activated cognitive control regions and lateral temporal cortex, but not vmPFC, and 2) modulated the bilateral amygdala, but no other brain regions. This suggests that reappraisal involves the use of cognitive control to modulate semantic representations of an emotional stimulus, and these altered representations in turn attenuate activity in the amygdala.

Prefrontal Reactivity to Social Signals of Threat as a Predictor of Treatment Response in Anxious Youth

“…Precentral and postcentral gyri are involved in somatosensory processing and voluntary movement and have also been shown to activate during emotion regulation (Buhle et al, 2014;Goldin et al, 2008;Kohn et al, 2014). Though these regions have previously been related to treatment response in anxious adults (Klumpp et al, 2013;Phan et al, 2013), very …”

Self-regulation via neural simulation

“…Accordingly, it may be possible to harness the type of emotional perspective-taking studied here as an emotion regulation strategy, aimed at helping individuals cope with emotional distress. Extant research within the field of emotion regulation has shown that people can effectively down-regulate negative affect by using topdown cognitive control (2). However, a limitation of many cognitive emotion regulation strategies is that they depend on attentional, linguistic, and working memory systems supported by lateral prefrontal regions.…”

“…Given this, it isn't surprising that the last decade has seen enormous growth in behavioral and brain research asking how we can effectively regulate our emotions. Although this work has made many important advances (1,2), it has focused almost entirely on cognitive regulatory strategies that involve controlling attention to and/or rethinking the meaning of stimuli and events. As such, this work has completely overlooked the way in which social cognitive processes can be used to regulate our emotions.…”

“…On one hand, research on emotion regulation has shown that activity in lateral prefrontal cortex (i.e., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex) and middle medial prefrontal cortex (i.e., presupplementary motor area, anterior ventral midcingulate cortex, and anterior dorsal midcingulate cortex) (19) supports the use of cognitive strategies to modulate activity in (largely) subcortical systems for triggering affective responses, such as the amygdala, thereby altering individuals' emotional responses (2). On the other hand, research on perspective-taking has shown that drawing inferences about the mental states of others (also known as "mentalizing")-as would be involved in simulating their perspective on an event-is supported by a network of regions centered on the anterior medial frontal cortex, specifically, the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC) and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) (13,19,20).…”

Change in emotional self‐concept following socio‐cognitive training relates to structural plasticity of the prefrontal cortex

“…In a previous study, dlPFC and also mPFC activity were related to cognitive reappraisal and mindfulness as strategies to regulate one's emotions (Opialla et al., 2015). Furthermore, prior research has shown that the dlPFC indirectly modulates amygdala activity through connections with the vmPFC (Buhle et al., 2014). Engaging the dlPFC might be particularly important to exert cognitive control in terms of cognitive reappraisal of negative emotional self‐content throughout the practice of the daily Perspective Dyad (Böckler, Herrmann, et al., 2017; Holmes et al., 2007).…”