Functional imaging studies of emotion regulation: a synthetic review and evolving model of the cognitive control of emotion

Abstract

This paper reviews and synthesizes functional imaging research that over the past decade has begun to offer new insights into the brain mechanisms underlying emotion regulation. Towards that end, the first section of the paper outlines a model of the processes and neural systems involved in emotion generation and regulation. The second section surveys recent research supporting and elaborating the model, focusing primarily on studies of the most commonly investigated strategy, which is known as reappraisal. At its core, the model specifies how prefrontal and cingulate control systems modulate activity in perceptual, semantic and affect systems as a function of one's regulatory goals, tactics, and the nature of the stimuli and emotions being regulated. This section also shows how the model can be generalized to understand the brain mechanisms underlying other emotion regulation strategies as well as a range of other allied phenomena. The third and last section considers directions for future research, including how basic models of emotion regulation can be translated to understand changes in emotion across the lifespan and in clinical disorders.

Neural functional architecture and modulation during decision making under uncertainty in individuals with generalized anxiety disorder

“…The frontal regions that showed differential FC between GAD and HCs during high error feedback trials (i.e., dACC, sgACC, AI, DLPFC), are involved in salience identification, error monitoring and emotional control (Botvinick et al., 2004; Menon & Uddin, 2010; Ochsner et al., 2012; Uddin, 2015). Decreased PFC‐amygdala connectivity is perhaps the most consistent FC abnormality reported for these regions in GAD (Hilbert et al., 2014; Mochcovitch et al., 2014; Taylor & Whalen, 2015).…”

“…Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), dorsal, rostral, and subcallosal (including subgenual) ACC (dACC, rACC, sgACC), and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) are engaged during DM under uncertainty (Krain, Wilson, Arbuckle, Castellanos, & Milham, 2006); dACC, rACC, sgACC, and AI are activated during salience processing and error monitoring (Barch et al., 2001; Botvinick, Cohen, & Carter, 2004; Braver, Barch, Gray, Molfese, & Snyder, 2001; Menon & Uddin, 2010; Uddin, 2015; Ullsperger & von Cramon, 2001); and ACC, AI and amygdala are involved in emotion regulation (Ochsner, Silvers, & Buhle, 2012). Importantly, coupling of these regions comprises proposed neural networks underlying the cognitive‐emotional processes involved in DM (Khani & Rainer, 2016; Rushworth, Kolling, Sallet, & Mars, 2012).…”

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

“…Previous fMRI studies have related the mPFC to various processes involved in self‐ and other‐related cognition. For example, the mPFC was implicated in self‐referential processing (van der Meer et al., 2010; Northoff et al., 2006; Qin & Northoff, 2011) and attending to emotional responses related to the self (Satpute, Shu, Weber, Roy, & Ochsner, 2013) and emotion regulation (Ochsner et al., 2012). Furthermore, the mPFC is known to be functionally (Denny, Kober, Wager, & Ochsner, 2012; Kanske, Böckler, Trautwein, & Singer, 2015; Mitchell, Macrae, & Banaji, 2006; Yaoi, Osaka, & Osaka, 2009) and structurally (Valk, Bernhardt, Böckler, Trautwein, et al., 2016) involved in socio‐cognitive abilities, as well as meta‐cognition on perceptual information (Fleming & Dolan, 2012; Valk, Bernhardt, Böckler, Kanske, et al., 2016).…”

“…Interestingly, the right dlPFC was more strongly associated with increased negative emotional word use after the Perspective Module and is known to be related to self‐referential processing (Schmitz, Kawahara‐Baccus, & Johnson, 2004; Wu et al., 2015) as well as to self‐control (Steinbeis, Bernhardt & Singer, 2012) and emotion regulation (Moore et al., 2016; Ochsner & Gross, 2005; Ochsner et al., 2012). 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).…”

“…Several functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies found that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and, specifically, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are involved in self‐referential processing, particularly if the content is emotional (Araujo, Kaplan, Damasio, & Damasio, 2015; D'Argembeau et al., 2011; Fossati et al., 2003; Kim & Johnson, 2015; van der Meer, Costafreda, Aleman, & David, 2010). Interestingly, previous fMRI studies indicate that the mPFC is also involved in emotion regulation and extinction learning (Garvert, Moutoussis, Kurth‐Nelson, Behrens, & Dolan, 2015; Ochsner, Silvers, & Buhle, 2012; Peters, Kalivas, & Quirk, 2009), two processes that are found to be dysfunctional in psychopathological states with disrupted self‐referential processing like depression or anxiety disorders (Hofmann et al., 2013). …”