Unconscious cognitive dysfunction in emotion dysregulation and psychopathology of panic disorder

Neural basis of implicit cognitive reappraisal in panic disorder: an event-related fMRI study

“…Significantly, this result contrasts with Ball et al’s report that PD individuals can successfully regulate emotions by use of explicit cognitive reappraisal strategies that require participants to deliberately transform aversive stimuli into less negative interpretation [ 9 , 12 ]. As emotion regulation impairment in PD could operate at an unconscious level of cognitive appraisal [ 18 , 28 ], such an explicit reappraisal paradigm may not sufficiently reveal the pathogenesis of PD.…”

“…Zhang et al adopted an implicit reappraisal paradigm to explore the neural basis and time processes in unconscious reappraisal in PD with event-related potentials (ERPs) [ 10 , 28 ]. In Zhang’s study, PD patients and healthy controls received a brief neutral or negative description before viewing the negative pictures.…”

“…These results demonstrate an impairment in the regulatory process of cognitive reappraisal in PD [ 10 ]. Moreover, the task used is a reactive reappraisal paradigm that avoids the effects of increased task effort or additional underlying emotional processes, providing further proof that reduced LPP modification supports aberrant implicit cognitive reappraisal in PD patients [ 28 ]. ERP can effectively reflect the time course of brain electrical activity, but the low spatial resolution means that it can be difficult to pinpoint the precise localization of functional neural correlates.…”