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. Toward 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 life span and in clinical disorders.

Figure 1

A multi-level approach to building model of emotion regulation. A. In cognitive, affective and social neuroscience research we seek to describe phenomena in terms of relationships between three levels of analysis: experience and behavior, psychological processes and neural systems. The bidirectional arrows between levels indicate that the relationships among them are bidirectional. B. Through measurement and/or experimental manipulation, neuroimaging research on emotion regulation can observe phenomena at the behavioral level and the neural level and use these observations to infer the nature of the intervening cognitive and/or affective processes. The direction of the arrows from the behavioral and neural levels towards the process level indicates the direction of causal inference (i.e. we can't observe the operation of these processes directly, but infer their operation based on behavioral and neural observations).

Figure 2

A model of the cognitive control of emotion (MCCE). A. Diagram of the processing steps involved in generating an emotion and the ways in which cognitive control processes (blue box) might be used to regulate them. As described in the text, the effects of different emotion regulation strategies (the red arrows descending from the cognitive control processes box) can be understood in terms of the stages of of the emotion generation sequence that they impact. The pink box seen at the appraisal stage is meant to indicate that neural systems involved in generating emotion support this process. B. Neural systems involve in using cognitive strategies, such as reappraisal, to regulate emotion (left, blue boxes),systems involved in generating those responses (left, pink boxes), and systems with an undefined or intermediary role in reappraisal (left, yellow boxes).

Figure 3

Plots of activation foci from the 43 studies of reappraisal described in the text and Table. A. Plots of foci as a function of the goals to descrease or increase emotion. B. Plots of foci as a function of the specific reappraisal tactics used – either reinterpeting the meaning of events depicted in stimuli or actively changing one’s psychological distance from them. C. Plots of foci as a function of the valence of the stimuli eliciting the emotions that participants attempted to regulate. Blue boxes illustrate regions that are purported to support reappraisal (increase>look and decrease>look contrasts). Pink boxes illustrate regions that are purported to be modulated by reappraisal (look>decrease and increase>look contrasts; for clarity only foci falling within the boundaries of the amygdala and striatum are shown).

Figure 4

Two kind of mediation pathways involved in reappraisal. A. and B. show pathways identified in two studies of the down regulation of negative emotion whereby dorsomedial or ventrolateral prefrontal regions diminish amygdala responses via their impact on ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These studies did not report weights for the mediation paths between regions or test for full vs. partial mediation. C. and D. show pathways identified in two studies of the down regulation of negative or positive emotion whereby ventrolateral or dorsolateral prefrontal regions diminish self-reports of negative affect or craving via their impact on the amygdala or ventral striatum, respectively. Path weights in the mediation model are shown. * = p < .05, ** = p < .01, *** = p < .001.