scholarly journals Understanding Brain Mechanisms of Reactive Aggression

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Bertsch ◽  
Julian Florange ◽  
Sabine C. Herpertz
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Reactive Aggression ◽  
Reward System ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Specific Mechanism ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Tit For Tat ◽  
Aggressive Reactions

Abstract Purpose of Review To review the current literature on biobehavioral mechanisms involved in reactive aggression in a transdiagnostic approach. Recent Findings Aggressive reactions are closely related to activations in the brain’s threat circuitry. They occur in response to social threat that is experienced as inescapable, which, in turn, facilitates angry approach rather than fearful avoidance. Provocation-induced aggression is strongly associated with anger and deficits in cognitive control including emotion regulation and inhibitory control. Furthermore, the brain’s reward system plays a particular role in anger-related, tit-for-tat-like retaliatory aggression in response to frustration. More research is needed to further disentangle specific brain responses to social threat, provocation, and frustration. Summary A better understanding of the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms involved in reactive aggression may pave the way for specific mechanism-based treatments, involving biological or psychotherapeutic approaches or a combination of the two.

scholarly journals Punishment on Pause: Preliminary Evidence That Mindfulness Training Modifies Neural Responses in a Reactive Aggression Task

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hadley Rahrig ◽  
James M. Bjork ◽  
Camila Tirado ◽  
David S. Chester ◽  
J. David Creswell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Reactive Aggression ◽  
Active Coping ◽  
Mindfulness Training ◽  
Recent Theory ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Brain Physiology ◽  
Cognitive Control Training

Reactive aggression, a hostile retaliatory response to perceived threat, has been attributed to failures in emotion regulation. Interventions for reactive aggression have largely focused on cognitive control training, which target top-down emotion regulation mechanisms to inhibit aggressive impulses. Recent theory suggests that mindfulness training (MT) improves emotion regulation via both top-down and bottom-up neural mechanisms and has thus been proposed as an alternative treatment for aggression. Using this framework, the current pilot study examined how MT impacts functional brain physiology in the regulation of reactive aggression. Participants were randomly assigned to 2 weeks of MT (n = 11) or structurally equivalent active coping training (CT) that emphasizes cognitive control (n = 12). Following training, participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a retaliatory aggression task, a 16-trial game in which participants could respond to provocation by choosing whether or not to retaliate in the next round. Training groups did not differ in levels of aggression displayed. However, participants assigned to MT exhibited enhanced ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) recruitment during punishment events (i.e., the aversive consequence of losing) relative to those receiving active CT. Conversely, the active coping group demonstrated greater dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) activation when deciding how much to retaliate, in line with a bolstered top-down behavior monitoring function. The findings suggest that mindfulness and cognitive control training may regulate aggression via different neural circuits and at different temporal stages of the provocation-aggression cycle.Trial Registration: identification no. NCT03485807.

Do Young Children Modulate Their Cognitive Control?

2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solène Ambrosi ◽  
Patrick Lemaire ◽  
Agnès Blaye
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Age Range ◽  
Stroop Tasks ◽  
And Task

Abstract. Dynamic, trial-by-trial modulations of inhibitory control are well documented in adults but rarely investigated in children. Here, we examined whether 5-to-7 year-old children, an age range when inhibitory control is still partially immature, achieve such modulations. Fifty three children took flanker, Simon, and Stroop tasks. Above and beyond classic congruency effects, the present results showed two crucial findings. First, we found evidence for sequential modulations of congruency effects in these young children in the three conflict tasks. Second, our results showed both task specificities and task commonalities. These findings in young children have important implications as they suggest that, to be modulated, inhibitory control does not require full maturation and that the precise pattern of trial-by-trial modulations may depend on the nature of conflict.

Testing whether implicit emotion regulation mediates the association between discrimination and symptoms of psychopathology in late childhood: An RDoC perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
T.G. Vargas ◽  
V.A. Mittal
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Neurocognitive Functions ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Implicit Emotion Regulation ◽  
Multiple Units

Abstract Discrimination has been associated with adverse mental health outcomes, though it is unclear how early in life this association becomes apparent. Implicit emotion regulation, developing during childhood, is a foundational skill tied to a range of outcomes. Implicit emotion regulation has yet to be tested as an associated process for mental illness symptoms that can often emerge during this sensitive developmental period. Youth aged 9–11 were recruited for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Associations between psychotic-like experiences, depressive symptoms, and total discrimination (due to race, ethnicity, nationality, weight, or sexual minority status) were tested, as well as associations with implicit emotion regulation measures (emotional updating working memory and inhibitory control). Analyses examined whether associations with symptoms were mediated by implicit emotion regulation. Discrimination related to decreased implicit emotion regulation performance, and increased endorsement of depressive symptoms and psychotic-like experiences. Emotional updating working memory performance partially mediated the association between discrimination and psychotic-like experiences, while emotional inhibitory control did not. Discrimination and implicit emotion regulation could serve as putative transdiagnostic markers of vulnerability. Results support the utility of using multiple units of analysis to improve understanding of complex emerging neurocognitive functions and developmentally sensitive periods.

Neural mechanisms of the cognitive control of emotion

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 144-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa J. Green ◽  
Gin S. Malhi
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Psychological Health ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Emotion Perception ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Emotion Generation

Background:Emotion regulation involves the initiation of new emotional responses and continual alteration of current emotions in response to rapidly changing environmental and social stimuli. The capacity to effectively implement emotion regulation strategies is essential for psychological health; impairments in the ability to regulate emotions may be critical to the development of clinical levels of depression, anxiety and mania.Objective:This review provides a summary of findings from current research examining the neural mechanisms of emotion regulation by means of conscious cognitive strategies of reappraisal. These findings are considered in the context of related concepts of emotion perception and emotion generation, with discussion of the likely cognitive neuropsychological contributions to emotion regulation and the implications for psychiatric disorders.Results:Convergent evidence implicates an inhibitory role of prefrontal cortex and cingulate regions upon subcortical and cortical emotion generation systems in the cognitive control of emotional experience. Concurrent modulation of cortical activity by the peripheral nervous system is highlighted by recent studies using simultaneous physiological and neuroimaging techniques. Individual differences in emotion perception, generation of affect and neuropsychological skills are likely to have direct consequences for emotion regulation.Conclusions:Emotion regulation relies on synergy within brain stem, limbic and cortical processes that promote the adaptive perception, generation and regulation of affect. Aberrant emotion processing in any of these stages may disrupt this self-sustaining regulatory system, with the potential to manifest in distinct forms of emotion dysregulation as seen in major psychiatric disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

scholarly journals The impact of exercise intensity on neurophysiological indices of food-related inhibitory control and cognitive control: A randomized crossover event-related potential (ERP) study

NeuroImage ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118162
Author(s):  
Bruce W. Bailey ◽  
Alexandra M. Muir ◽  
Ciera L. Bartholomew ◽  
William F. Christensen ◽  
Kaylie A. Carbine ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Exercise Intensity ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Crossover Event ◽  
The Impact

scholarly journals On the interrelation of 1/f neural noise and norepinephrine system activity during motor response inhibition

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (5) ◽  
pp. 1633-1643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maik Pertermann ◽  
Moritz Mückschel ◽  
Nico Adelhöfer ◽  
Tjalf Ziemssen ◽  
Christian Beste
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Response Inhibition ◽  
Pupil Diameter ◽  
Human Information Processing ◽  
System Activity ◽  
Neural Noise ◽  
Control Processes ◽  
Norepinephrine System

Several lines of evidence suggest that there is a close interrelation between the degree of noise in neural circuits and the activity of the norepinephrine (NE) system, yet the precise nexus between these aspects is far from being understood during human information processing and cognitive control in particular. We examine this nexus during response inhibition in n = 47 healthy participants. Using high-density EEG recordings, we estimate neural noise by calculating “1/ f noise” of those data and integrate these EEG parameters with pupil diameter data as an established indirect index of NE system activity. We show that neural noise is reduced when cognitive control processes to inhibit a prepotent/automated response are exerted. These neural noise variations were confined to the theta frequency band, which has also been shown to play a central role during response inhibition and cognitive control. There were strong positive correlations between the 1 /f neural noise parameter and the pupil diameter data within the first 250 ms after the Nogo stimulus presentation at centro-parietal electrode sites. No such correlations were evident during automated responding on Go trials. Source localization analyses using standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography show that inferior parietal areas are activated in this time period in Nogo trials. The data suggest an interrelation of NE system activity and neural noise within early stages of information processing associated with inferior parietal areas when cognitive control processes are required. The data provide the first direct evidence for the nexus between NE system activity and the modulation of neural noise during inhibitory control in humans. NEW & NOTEWORTHY This is the first study showing that there is a nexus between norepinephrine system activity and the modulation of neural noise or scale-free neural activity during inhibitory control in humans. It does so by integrating pupil diameter data with analysis of EEG neural noise.

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