The neural correlates of sex differences in emotional reactivity and emotion regulation

AbstractBackgroundCognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for many patients suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD), but predictors of treatment outcome are lacking, and little is known about its neural mechanisms. We recently identified longitudinal changes in neural correlates of conscious emotion regulation that scaled with clinical responses to CBT for MDD, using a negative autobiographical memory-based task.MethodsWe now examine the neural correlates of emotional reactivity and emotion regulation during viewing of emotionally salient images as predictors of treatment outcome with CBT for MDD, and the relationship between longitudinal change in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) responses and clinical outcomes. Thirty-two participants with current MDD underwent baseline MRI scanning followed by 14 sessions of CBT. The fMRI task measured emotional reactivity and emotion regulation on separate trials using standardized images from the International Affective Pictures System. Twenty-one participants completed post-treatment scanning. Last observation carried forward was used to estimate clinical outcome for non-completers.ResultsPre-treatment emotional reactivity Blood Oxygen Level-Dependent (BOLD) signal within hippocampus including CA1 predicted worse treatment outcome. In contrast, better treatment outcome was associated with increased down-regulation of BOLD activity during emotion regulation from time 1 to time 2 in precuneus, occipital cortex, and middle frontal gyrus.ConclusionsCBT may modulate the neural circuitry of emotion regulation. The neural correlates of emotional reactivity may be more strongly predictive of CBT outcome. The finding that treatment outcome was predicted by BOLD signal in CA1 may suggest overgeneralized memory as a negative prognostic factor in CBT outcome.

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Neural correlates of mindful emotion regulation in high and low ruminators

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-020-71952-5 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

Author(s):

David Rosenbaum ◽

Agnes M. Kroczek ◽

Justin Hudak ◽

Julian Rubel ◽

Moritz J. Maier ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Emotional Distress ◽

Emotional Reactivity ◽

Near Infrared ◽

Treatment Options ◽

Neural Correlates ◽

Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽

Depressive Rumination ◽

Neural Underpinnings ◽

Depressive Episodes

Abstract Depressive rumination is considered a prominent risk factor for the occurrence, severity, and duration of depressive episodes. A variety of treatment options have been developed to treat depressive rumination of which mindfulness based programs are especially promising. In the current study, we investigated the neural underpinnings of a short mindfulness intervention and mindful emotion regulation in high and low trait ruminators in an ecologically valid environment using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Participants were randomly assigned to a mindfulness instruction (MT) group or an instructed thinking (IT) group. Participants in the MT group were trained to either focus their attention mindfully on their breath or their emotions, while the IT group focused their attention on the past or future. Afterwards, all participants underwent an emotion regulation paradigm in which they either watched negative or neutral movie clips. During both paradigms cortical hemodynamic changes were assessed by means of fNIRS. Participants in the MT group showed lower activity in the cognitive control network (CCN) during the focus on breath condition in comparison to the focus on emotion condition. Additionally, oxygenated hemoglobin in the MT group tended to be lower than in the IT group. Further, self-reports of emotional distress during the instruction paradigm were reduced in the MT group. During the emotion regulation paradigm, we observed reduced emotional reactivity in terms of emotional distress and avoidance in the MT group in comparison to the IT group. Furthermore, on a neural level, we observed higher CCN activity in the MT group in comparison to the IT group. We did not find any effect of rumination, neither on the intervention nor on the emotion regulation task. The results of this pilot study are discussed in light of the present literature on the neural correlates of mindfulness based interventions in rumination and emphasize the use of fNIRS to track neural changes in situ over the course of therapy.

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Neural correlates of emotional reactivity and regulation in traumatized North Korean refugees

Translational Psychiatry ◽

10.1038/s41398-021-01579-1 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Kyung Hwa Lee ◽

Ha Young Lee ◽

Inkyung Park ◽

Yu Jin Lee ◽

Nambeom Kim ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Emotional Reactivity ◽

Mental Health Problems ◽

Psychiatric Symptoms ◽

Trauma Exposure ◽

Region Of Interest ◽

Neural Correlates ◽

Affective Processing ◽

Post Traumatic Stress ◽

Psychophysiological Interaction

AbstractRefugees often report heightened emotional reactivity and emotion regulation difficulties and are at high risk for mental health problems. Given that refugees are repeatedly exposed to traumatic events that may cause changes in the brain, the present study examined neural correlates of emotional reactivity and regulation and their associations with refugee features (e.g., cumulative trauma) and the severity of psychiatric symptoms (e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) in North Korean (NK) refugees. Forty NK refugees with trauma exposure and varying levels of psychopathology and 41 healthy South Korean (SK) controls without trauma exposure participated in this study. They performed an emotion regulation task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) assessment. Region of interest (ROI), whole brain, and generalized psychophysiological interaction (gPPI) analyses were conducted. NK refugees with trauma exposure and varying levels of psychopathology showed increased activation in response to negative socio-affective pictures in regions involved in affective processing, including the amygdala and hippocampus, relative to healthy SK controls without trauma exposure. They also exhibited greater prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation, amygdala–PFC functional connectivity (FC), and hippocampal–PFC FC during emotion regulation. More severe PTSD symptoms were associated with greater hippocampal response to negative pictures (vs. neutral pictures) in NK refugees. This study provides neuroscientific evidence for neural alterations in association with emotional reactivity and regulation in traumatized refugees. These findings may contribute to a better mechanistic understanding of emotional reactivity and regulation in refugees and suggest potential ways to address the emotional and mental problems of traumatized refugees.

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Reappraisal versus distraction: The neural correlates of emotion regulation

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e520592012-855 ◽

2010 ◽

Author(s):

Brandy N. Johnson ◽

Robert L. West

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Neural Correlates

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Role of corticosteroid binding globulin in emotional reactivity sex differences in mice

Psychoneuroendocrinology ◽

10.1016/j.psyneuen.2014.07.029 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 50 ◽

pp. 252-263 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

A.M. Minni ◽

G.F. de Medeiros ◽

J.C. Helbling ◽

A. Duittoz ◽

N. Marissal-Arvy ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Sex Differences ◽

Emotional Reactivity ◽

Corticosteroid Binding Globulin

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Sex differences in neural and behavioral signatures of cooperation revealed by fNIRS hyperscanning

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/srep26492 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 57

Author(s):

Joseph M. Baker ◽

Ning Liu ◽

Xu Cui ◽

Pascal Vrticka ◽

Manish Saggar ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Sex Differences ◽

Temporal Cortex ◽

Neural Correlates ◽

Behavioral Signatures ◽

Computer Based ◽

Males And Females ◽

Brain And Behavior ◽

The Right ◽

And Behavior ◽

The Brain

Abstract Researchers from multiple fields have sought to understand how sex moderates human social behavior. While over 50 years of research has revealed differences in cooperation behavior of males and females, the underlying neural correlates of these sex differences have not been explained. A missing and fundamental element of this puzzle is an understanding of how the sex composition of an interacting dyad influences the brain and behavior during cooperation. Using fNIRS-based hyperscanning in 111 same- and mixed-sex dyads, we identified significant behavioral and neural sex-related differences in association with a computer-based cooperation task. Dyads containing at least one male demonstrated significantly higher behavioral performance than female/female dyads. Individual males and females showed significant activation in the right frontopolar and right inferior prefrontal cortices, although this activation was greater in females compared to males. Female/female dyad’s exhibited significant inter-brain coherence within the right temporal cortex, while significant coherence in male/male dyads occurred in the right inferior prefrontal cortex. Significant coherence was not observed in mixed-sex dyads. Finally, for same-sex dyads only, task-related inter-brain coherence was positively correlated with cooperation task performance. Our results highlight multiple important and previously undetected influences of sex on concurrent neural and behavioral signatures of cooperation.

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Neural Correlates of Emotion Regulation and Adolescent Suicidal Ideation

Biological Psychiatry Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging ◽

10.1016/j.bpsc.2017.08.008 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 125-132 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Adam Bryant Miller ◽

Katie A. McLaughlin ◽

Daniel S. Busso ◽

Stephanie Brueck ◽

Matthew Peverill ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Suicidal Ideation ◽

Neural Correlates

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Autobiographical Script-Driven Imagery Has No Detectable Effect on Emotion Regulation in Healthy Individuals

Neuropsychobiology ◽

10.1159/000518996 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-8

Author(s):

Stephan Köhler ◽

Veith Andreas Weilnhammer ◽

Henrik Walter ◽

Susanne Erk ◽

Philipp Sterzer ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Emotional Abuse ◽

Mood Induction ◽

Emotional State ◽

Neural Correlates ◽

Detectable Effect ◽

Dorsolateral Prefrontal ◽

Neuronal Processes ◽

The Right ◽

Healthy Participants

Introduction: Emotion regulation (ER), the ability to actively modulate one’s own emotion reactions, likely depends on the individual’s current emotional state. Here, we investigated whether negative emotions induced by an interpersonal autobiographic script affect the neuronal processes underlying ER. Methods: Twenty healthy participants were recruited and underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during performance of distancing, a specific ER strategy, while viewing emotionally arousing pictures. Participants were instructed to either naturally experience (“permit” condition) or to actively downregulate (“regulate” condition) their emotional responses to the presented stimuli. Before each of the 4 runs in total, a neutral or negative autobiographical audio script was presented. The negative script comprised an emotionally negative event from childhood or adolescence that represented either emotional abuse or emotional neglect. The second event comprised an everyday neutral situation. We aimed at identifying the neural correlates of ER and their modulation by script-driven imagery. Results: fMRI analyses testing for greater responses in the “regulate” than the “permit” condition replicated previously reported neural correlates of ER in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the right inferior parietal lobule. A significant ER effect was also observed in the left orbitofrontal cortex. In the amygdala, we found greater responses in the “permit” compared to the “regulate” condition. We did not observe a significant modulation of the ER effects in any of these regions by the negative emotional state induced by autobiographical scripts. Bayesian statistics confirmed the absence of such modulations by providing marginal evidence for null effects. Discussion: While we replicated previously reported neural correlates of ER, we found no evidence for an effect of mood induction with individualized autobiographical scripts on the neural processes underlying ER in healthy participants.

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Attitudes, Cognitive Structures and Emotional Reactivity to Sex and Security: Sex Differences

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.1974.34.3.715 ◽

1974 ◽

Vol 34 (3) ◽

pp. 715-725 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Richard S. Cimbalo ◽

Paulette A. Anzelone ◽

Patricia A. Ryan ◽

Marianne P. Younkers

Keyword(s):

Sex Differences ◽

Physiological Response ◽

Emotional Reactivity ◽

Free Association ◽

Cognitive Structures ◽

Sexual Stimuli ◽

Association Task

An attempt was made to determine if sex differences existed for attitudes, cognitive structures, and emotional reactivity for concepts of sex and security and for stimuli. It was hypothesized that for males, the concept of sex and/or sexual stimuli will be ranked higher, elicit a stronger physiological response, elicit a greater number of responses in a free-association task, and be more prevalent in compositions written about love, and that for females, the concept of security and/or security stimuli will be greater on the above measures. The data (with the exception of the paragraph written about love) were interpreted as supporting the sex differences along the sex and security dimensions.

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