A neurocognitive theory of flexible emotion control: The role of the lateral frontal pole in emotion regulation

Abstract

Emotion regulation is essential to survive in a world full of challenges with rapidly changing contextual demands. The ability to flexibly shift between different emotional control strategies is critical to successfully deal with these demands. Recently, decision neuroscience has shown the importance of monitoring alternative control strategies.However, this insight has not been incorporated into current neurocognitive models of emotional control. Here, we integrate insights from decision and affective sciences into a novel viewpoint on emotion control, the Flexible Emotion Control Theory (FECT). This theory explains how an individual can flexibly change emotion-regulatory behavior to adapt to varying goals and contextual demands. Crucially, FECT proposes that rapid switching between alternative emotional control strategies requires concurrent evaluation of current as well as alternative (unchosen) options. The neural implementation of FECT relies on the involvement of distinct prefrontal structures, including the lateral frontal pole (FPl) and its connections with other cortical (prefrontal, parietal, motor) and subcortical systems. This novel account of emotion control integrates insights from decision sciences, clinical research, as well as meta-analytic evidence for the consistent FPl involvement during emotional control when monitoring of alternative emotional control strategies is required. Moreover, it provides novel, neurocognitively grounded starting points for interventions to improve emotion control in affective disorders, such as anxiety and aggression.

Increased Activity in the Prefrontal Cortex Related to Planning during a Handwriting Task

“…Middle PFC activity was significantly higher in the prediction condition than in the trace condition of the PL pattern task. The middle PFC has been suggested to be associated with executive function switching [15]. In the PL pattern task of this study, the drawn figure and the next figure were different symbols.…”

“…Executive function is strongly associated with the PFC [7,8], and individual executive functions may be related to their area of localization within the PFC [9][10][11][12]. Previous studies have suggested that the right PFC is associated with inhibitory control of executive function [13,14] and that the middle PFC is associated with executive function switching [15]. A previous study that focused on tempo when Psych 2023, 5 writing letters showed a relationship with the right inferior parietal lobule [16].…”

Evidence for a causal-mechanistic role for positive appraisal style in stress resilience

“…One major challenge for future work will be to complement the existing self-report instruments for PAS with more objective, task-based measures. Another challenge will be to empirically compare and integrate PASTOR with theories emphasizing the role of flexible coping and emotion regulation for resilience (e.g., [53][54][55][56][57][58] ). From the perspective of PASTOR, regulatory flexibility may be one aspect of optimized stress response regulation and depend on PAS 12,14 .…”

The Developing an Emotion Regulation Training Module for Improving Emotion of Regulation of Adolescents in Muara Bulian Class II Youth Correctional Facility

“…(Koch et al, 2018)explains that strategies are needed to regulate emotions optimally in an unfamiliar environment. Emotional regulation is essential for someone to be able to live life; the ability to be flexible in regulating emotions shows the importance of someone having an emotional regulation strategy (Roelofs et al, 2023).…”