Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T15:58:48.327Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Neural mechanisms of the cognitive control of emotion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2014

Melissa J. Green  and
Gin S. Malhi
Melissa J. Green*
Affiliation:
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Mood Disorders Unit, Black Dog Institute, Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, New South Wales, Australia
Gin S. Malhi
Affiliation:
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Mood Disorders Unit, Black Dog Institute, Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, New South Wales, Australia Mayne Clinical Research Imaging Centre, Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, Randwick, New South Wales, Australia
*
Dr Melissa J. Green, School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, and Mood Disorders Unit, Black Dog Institute, Hospital Road, Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, New South Wales 2031, Australia. Tel: 0061 (2) 9382 8382; Fax: 0061 (2) 9382 8151; E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Keywords

affective disordersaffect generationcognitive controlemotion perceptionemotion regulationneuroimaging
Type
Review Article
Information
Acta Neuropsychiatrica , Volume 18 , Issue 3-4 , June 2006 , pp. 144 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 Blackwell Munksgaard

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Gross, JJ. Emotion regulation: affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology 2002;18:281–291. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garnefski, N, Kraaij, V, Spinhoven, P. Negative life events, cognitive emotion regulation and emotional problems. Pers Individ Dif 2001;30:1311–1327. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochsner, KN, Gross, JJ. The cognitive control of emotion. Trends Cogn Sci 2005;9:242–249. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gross, JJ, John, OP. Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. J Pers Soc Psychol 2003;85:348–362. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beauregard, M, Levesque, J, Bourgouin, P. Neural correlates of conscious self-regulation of emotion. J Neurosci 2001;21:1–6. Google ScholarPubMed
Harenski, CL, Hamann, S. Neural correlates of regulating negative emotions related to moral violations. Neuroimage 2006;30:313–324. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kalisch, R, Wiech, K, Critchley, HDet al. Anxiety reduction through detachment: subjective, physiological, and neural effects. J Cogn Neurosci 2005;17:874–883. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levesque, J, Eugene, F, Joanette, Yet al. Neural circuitry underlying voluntary suppression of sadness. Biol Psychiatry 2003;53:502–510. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levesque, J, Joanette, Y, Mensour, Bet al. Neural basis of emotional self-regulation in childhood. Neuroscience 2004;129:361–369. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ochsner, KN, Bunge, SA, Gross, JJ, Gabrieli, JD. Rethinking feelings: an fMRI study of the cognitive regulation of emotion. J Cogn Neurosci 2002;14:1215–1229. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ochsner, KN, Ray, RD, Cooper, JCet al. For better or for worse: neural systems supporting the cognitive down- and up-regulation of negative emotion. Neuroimage 2004;23:483–499. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ohira, H, Nomura, M, Ichikawa, Net al. Association of neural and physiological responses during voluntary emotion suppression. Neuroimage 2006;29:721–733. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Phan, KL, Fitzgerald, DA, Nathan, PJ, Moore, GJ, Uhde, TW, Tancer, ME. Neural substrates for voluntary suppression of negative affect: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Biol Psychiatry 2005;57:210–219. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schaefer, SM, Jackson, DC, Davidson, RJ, Aguirre, GK, Kimberg, DY, Thompson-Schill, SL. Modulation of amygdalar activity by the conscious regulation of negative emotion. J Cogn Neurosci 2002;14:913–921. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Urry, HL, Van Reekum, CM, Johnstone, Tet al. Amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex are inversely coupled during regulation of negative affect and predict the diurnal pattern of cortisol secretion among older adults. J Neurosci 2006;26:4415–4425. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Keightley, ML, Winocur, G, Graham, SJ, Mayberg, HS, Hevenor, SJ, Grady, CL. An fMRI study investigating cognitive modulation of brain regions associated with emotional processing of visual stimuli. Neuropsychologia 2003;41:585–596. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mathews, A, Yiend, J, Lawrence, AD. Individual differences in the modulation of fear-related brain activation by attentional control. J Cogn Neurosci 2004;16:1683–1694. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
LeDoux, JE. Emotion circuits in the brain. Annu Rev Neurosci 2000;23:155–184. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barcelo, F, Suwazono, S, Knight, RT. Prefrontal modulation of visual processing in humans. Nat Neurosci 2000;3:399–403. Google ScholarPubMed
Knight, RT, Staines, WR, Swick, D, Chao, LL. Prefrontal cortex regulates inhibition and excitation in distributed neural networks. Acta Psychol 1999;101:159–178. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, EK, Cohen, JD. An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annu Rev Neurosci 2001;24:167–202. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stuss, DT, Levine, B. Adult clinical neuropsychology: lessons from studies of the frontal lobes. Annu Rev Psychol 2002;53:401–433. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gusnard, DA, Akbudak, E, Shulman, GL, Raichle, ME. Medial prefrontal cortex and self-referential mental activity: relation to a default mode of brain function. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2001;98:4259–4264. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ochsner, KN, Knierim, K, Ludlow, DHet al. Reflecting upon feelings: An fMRI study of neural systems supporting the attribution of emotion to self and other. J Cogn Neurosci 2004;16:1746–1772. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lane, RD, Fink, GR, Chau, PM, Dolan, RJ. Neural activation during selective attention to subjective emotional responses. Neuroreport 1997;8:3969–3972. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Price, JL. Free will versus survival: brain systems that underlie intrinsic constraints on behavior. J Comp Neurol 2005;493:132–139. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Botvinick, MM, Braver, TS, Barch, DM, Carter, CS, Cohen, JD. Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. Psychol Rev 2001;108:624–652. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
LeDoux, J. The emotional brain. London: Phoenix, 1998. Google ScholarPubMed
Damasio, AR. The somatic marker hypothesis and the possible functions of the prefrontal cortex. Phil Trans R Soc London B Biol Sci 1996;351:1413. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cunningham, WA, Johnson, MK, Gatenby, JC, Gore, JC, Banaji, MR. Neural components of social evaluation. J Pers Soc Psychol 2003;85:639–649. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Winston, JS, Strange, BA, O’Doherty, J, Dolan, RJ. Automatic and intentional brain responses during evaluation of trustworthiness of faces (Comment). Nat Neurosci 2002;5:277–283. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adolphs, R. Processing of emotional and social information by the human amygdala. In: Gazzaniga, MS, ed. The cognitive neurosciences. 3rd edn. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2004:1017–1030. Google Scholar
Ploghaus, A, Tracey, I, Gati, JSet al. Dissociating pain from its anticipation in the human brain. Science 1999;284:1979–1981. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jensen, J, McIntosh, AR, Crawley, AP, Mikulis, DJ, Remington, G, Kapur, S. Direct activation of the ventral striatum in anticipation of aversive stimuli. Neuron 2003;40:1251–1257. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Knutson, B, Fong, GW, Adams, CM, Varner, JL, Hommer, D. Dissociation of reward anticipation and outcome with event-related fMRI. Neuroreport 2001;12:3683–3687. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O’Doherty, JP, Deichmann, R, Critchley, HD, Dolan, RJ. Neural responses during anticipation of a primary taste reward. Neuron 2002;33:815–826. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Davidson, RJ, Irwin, W. The functional neuroanatomy of emotion and affective style. Trends Cogn Sci 1999;3:11–21. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
D’Esposito, M, Postle, BR, Rypma, B. Prefrontal cortical contributions to working memory: evidence from event-related fMRI studies. Exp Brain Res 2000;133:3–11. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
De Kloet, ER. Hormones and the stressed brain. Ann N Y Acad Sci 2004;1018:1–15. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hubert, W, De Jong-Meyer, R. Autonomic, neuroendocrine, and subjective responses to emotion-inducing film stimuli. Int J Psychophysiol 1991;11:131–140. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ottowitz, WE, Dougherty, DD, Sirota, A, Niaura, R, Rauch, SL, Brown, WA. Neural and endocrine correlates of sadness in women: implications for neural network regulation of HPA activity. J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci 2004;16:446–455. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McLean, PD. The triune brain in evolution: role in paleocerebral functions. New York: Plenum Press, 1990. Google Scholar
Dewberry, D, Tucker, DM. Neural mechanisms of emotion. J Consult Clin Psychol 1992;60:329–338. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, ML, Drevets, WC, Rauch, SL, Lane, R. Neurobiology of emotion perception I: The neural basis of normal emotion perception. Biol Psychiatry 2003;54:504–514. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Malhi, GS, Lagopoulos, J, Ward, PBet al. Cognitive generation of affect in bipolar depression: An fMRI study. Eur J Neurosci 2004;19:741–754. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malhi, GS, Lagopoulos, J, Sachdev, P, Mitchell, PB, Ivanovski, B, Parker, GB. Cognitive generation of affect in hypomania: an fMRI study. Bipolar Disord 2004;6:271–285. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S, Cross, P. Reading the eyes: evidence for the role of perception in the development of a theory of mind. Mind Lang 1992;7:172–186. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, MJ, Williams, LM, Davidson, D. In the face of danger: specific viewing strategies for facial expressions of threat? Cogn Emotion 2003;17:779–786. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, MJ, Phillips, ML. Social threat perception and the evolution of paranoia. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2004;28:333–342. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Premack, D, Woodruff, G. Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behav Brain Sci 1978;1:515–526. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blair, JR. Moral reasoning and the child with psychopathic tendencies. Pers Individ Dif 1997;22:731–739. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haxby, JV, Hoffman, EA, Gobbini, M. Human neural systems for face recognition and social communication. Biol Psychiatry 2002;51:59–67. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haxby, JV, Gobbini, M, Montgomery, K. Spatial and temporal distribution of face and object representations in the human brain. In: Gazzaniga, MS, ed. The cognitive neurosciences. 3rd edn. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2004:889–904. Google Scholar
Hooker, CI, Paller, KA, Gitelman, DR, Parrish, TB, Mesulam, MM, Reber, PJ. Brain networks for analyzing eye gaze. Cogn Brain Res 2003;17:406–418. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Puce, A, Allison, T, Bentin, S, Gore, JC, Mccarthy, G. Temporal cortex activation in humans viewing eye and mouth movements. J Neurosci 1998;18:2188–2199. Google ScholarPubMed
Adolphs, R, Tranel, D. Amygdala damage impairs emotion recognition from scenes only when they contain facial expressions. Neuropsychologia 2003;41:1281–1289. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morris, JS, Frith, CD, Perrett, DIet al. A differential neural response in the human amygdala to fearful and happy facial expressions. Nature 1996;383:812–815. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Adolphs, R. Cognitive neuroscience of human social behaviour. Nat Rev Neurosci 2003;4:165–178. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Phillips, ML, Young, AW, Scott, SKet al. Neural responses to facial and vocal expressions of fear and disgust. Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 1998;265:1809–1817. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Phillips, ML, Young, AW, Senior, Cet al. A specific neural substrate for perceiving facial expressions of disgust. Nature 1997;389:495. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blair, RJR, Morris, JS, Frith, CC, Perrett, DI, Dolan, RJ. Dissociable neural responses to facial expressions of sadness and anger. Brain 1999;122:883–893. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frith, U, Frith, C. Development and neurophysiology of mentalising. Phil Trans R Soc London B Biol Sci 2003;358:459–473. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, HL, Jack, AI, Roepstorff, A, Frith, CD. Imaging the intentional stance in a competitive game. Neuroimage 2002;16:814–821. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, JP, Heatherton, TF, Macrae, CN. Distinct neural systems subserve person and object knowledge. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2002;99:15238–15243. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bozikas, VP, Tonia, T, Fokas, K, Karavatos, A, Kosmidis, MH. Impaired emotion processing in remitted patients with bipolar disorder. J Affect Disord 2006;91:53–56. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lembke, A, Ketter, TA. Impaired recognition of facial emotion in mania. Am J Psychiatry 2002;159:302–304. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lennox, B, Jacob, R, Calder, A, Lupson, V, Bullmore, E. Behavioural and neurocognitive responses to sad facial affect are attenuated in patients with mania. Psychol Med 2004;34:795–802. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McClure, EB, Pope, K, Hoberman, AJ, Pine, DS, Leibenluft, E. Facial expression recognition in adolescents with mood and anxiety disorders. Am J Psychiatry 2003;160:1172–1174. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Green, MJ, Uhlhaas, PJ, Coltheart, M. Context processing and social cognition in schizophrenia. Curr Psychiatry Rev 2005;1:11–21. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weniger, G, Lange, C, Ruther, E, Irle, E. Differential impairments of facial affect recognition in schizophrenia subtypes and major depression. Psychiatry Res 2004;128:135–146. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elliott, R, Rubinsztein, JS, Sahakian, BJ, Dolan, RJ. The neural basis of mood-congruent processing biases in depression. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2002;59:597–604. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chen, CH, Lennox, B, Jacob, Ret al. Explicit and implicit facial affect recognition in manic and depressed states of bipolar disorder: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Biol Psychiatry 2006;59:31–39. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Russell, TA, Green, MJ. The neuropsychology of social cognition: implications for psychiatric disorders. In: Wood, SJ, Allen, NB, Pantelis, C, eds. The neuropsychology of mental illness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, in press. Google Scholar
Phillips, ML, Drevets, WC, Rauch, SL, Lane, R. Neurobiology of emotion perception II: implications for major psychiatric disorders. Biol Psychiatry 2003;54:515–528. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Garnefski, N, Kraaij, V. Relationships between cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptoms: a comparative study of five specific samples. Pers Individ Dif 2006;40:1659–1669. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garnefski, N, Kraaij, V, Van Etten, M. Specificity of relations between adolescents’ cognitive emotion regulation strategies and internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. J Adolesc 2005;28:619–631. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Garnefski, N, Legerstee, J, Kraaij, V, Van den Kommer, T, Teerds, J. Cognitive coping strategies and symptoms of depression and anxiety: a comparison between adolescents and adults. J Adolesc 2002;25:603–611. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Garnefski, N, Van den Kommer, T, Kraaij, V, Teerds, J, Legerstee, J, Onstein, E. The relationship between cognitive emotion regulation strategies and emotional problems: comparison between a clinical and a non-clinical sample. Eur J Pers 2002;16:403–420. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malhi, GS, Parker, GB, Gladstone, G, Wilhelm, K, Mitchell, PB. Recognizing the anxious face of depression. J Nerv Ment Dis 2002;190:366–373. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ray, RD, Ochsner, KN, Cooper, JC, Robertson, ER, Gabrieli, JD, Gross, JJ. Individual differences in trait rumination and the neural systems supporting cognitive reappraisal. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 2005;5:156–168. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kring, AM, Werner, KH. Emotion regulation and psychopathology. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 2004. Google Scholar
Phillips, ML. The neural basis of mood dysregulation in bipolar disorder. Cogn Neuropsychiatry 2006;11:233–249. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Murphy, FC, Sahakian, BJ, Rubinsztein, JSet al. Emotional bias and inhibitory control processes in mania and depression. Psychol Med 1999;29:1307–1321. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
George, MS, Huggins, T, McDermut, W, Parekh, PI, Rubinow, D, Post, RM. Abnormal facial emotion recognition in depression: serial testing in an ultra-rapid-cycling patient. Behav Modif 1998;22:192–204. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Getz, GE, Shear, PK, Strakowski, SM. Facial affect recognition deficits in bipolar disorder. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 2003;9:623–632. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rottenberg, J, Gross, JJ, Gotlib, IH. Emotion context insensitivity in major depressive disorder. J Abnorm Psychol 2005;114:627–639. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kerr, N, Dunbar, RI, Bentall, RP. Theory of mind deficits in bipolar affective disorder. J Affect Disord 2003;73:253–259. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bora, E, Vahip, S, Gonul, Aet al. Evidence for theory of mind deficits in euthymic patients with bipolar disorder. Acta Psychiatr Scand 2005;112:110–116. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Inoue, Y, Tonooka, Y, Yamada, K, Kanba, S. Deficiency of theory of mind in patients with remitted mood disorder. J Affect Disord 2004;82:403–409. Google ScholarPubMed
Olley, AL, Malhi, GS, Bachelor, J, Cahill, CM, Mitchell, PB, Berk, M. Executive functioning and theory of mind in euthymic bipolar disorder. Bipolar Disord 2005;7(Suppl. 5):43–52. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, L, Iversen, SD, Goodwin, GM. Sustained attention deficit in bipolar disorder. Br J Psychiatry 2002;180:313–319. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Larson, ER, Shear, PK, Krikorian, R, Welge, J, Strakowski, SM. Working memory and inhibitory control among manic and euthymic patients with bipolar disorder. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 2005;11:163–172. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Malhi, GS, Ivanovski, B, Szekeres, V, Olley, A. Bipolar disorder: it’s all in your mind? The neuropsychological profile of a biological disorder. Can J Psychiatry 2004;49:813–819. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pavuluri, MN, Schenkel, LS, Aryal, Set al. Neurocognitive function in unmedicated manic and medicated euthymic pediatric bipolar patients. Am J Psychiatry 2006;163:286–293. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zubieta, J-K, Huguelet, P, O’Neil, RL, Giordani, BJ. Cognitive function in euthymic bipolar I disorder. Psychiatry Res 2001;102:9–20. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Altshuler, LL, Ventura, J, Van Gorp, WG, Green, MF, Theberge, DC, Mintz, J. Neurocognitive function in clinically stable men with bipolar I disorder or schizophrenia and normal control subjects. Biol Psychiatry 2004;56:560–569. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kring, AM, Neale, JM. Do schizophrenic patients show a disjunctive relationship among expressive, experiential, and psychophysiological components of emotion? J Abnorm Psychol 1996;105:249–257. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed