Amygdala-prefrontal coupling underlies individual differences in emotion regulation

Lee, H., Heller, A. S., Van Reekum, C. M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1516-1101, Nelson, B. and Davidson, R. J. (2012) Amygdala-prefrontal coupling underlies individual differences in emotion regulation. NeuroImage, 62 (3). pp. 1575-1581. ISSN 1053-8119 doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.05.044

Abstract/Summary

Despite growing evidence on the neural bases of emotion regulation, little is known about the mechanisms underlying individual differences in cognitive regulation of negative emotion, and few studies have used objective measures to quantify regulatory success. Using a trait-like psychophysiological measure of emotion regulation, corrugator electromyography, we obtained an objective index of the ability to cognitively reappraise negative emotion in 56 healthy men (session 1), who returned 1.3 years later to perform the same regulation task using fMRI (session 2). Results indicated that the corrugator measure of regulatory skill predicted amygdala-prefrontal functional connectivity. Individuals with greater ability to down-regulate negative emotion as indexed by corrugator at session 1 showed not only greater amygdala attenuation but also greater inverse connectivity between the amygdala and several sectors of the prefrontal cortex while down-regulating negative emotion at session 2. Our results demonstrate that individual differences in emotion regulation are stable over time and underscore the important role of amygdala-prefrontal coupling for successful regulation of negative emotion.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/28166
Identification Number/DOI	10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.05.044
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Psychopathology and Affective Neuroscience
Publisher	Elsevier
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