When confronted with stressful or emotionally arousing situations, regulatory abilities should allow us to adaptively cope. However, depressed individuals often have a low sense of perceived control and are characterized by a negative expectation bias regarding their ability to deal with future stressful events. Low expectancy concerning the ability to deal with future stressful events may result in less initiation of proactive control, a crucial mechanism of cognitive control reflecting sustained and anticipatory maintenance of goal-relevant information in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to optimize cognitive performance. In this theoretical review we integrate a diverse body of literature. We argue that the expectancy of an individual's regulatory abilities prior to the presentation of an arousing event or stressful task will be related to anticipation and proactive up-or down regulation of specific neurocircuits before the actual encounter with the stressful event occurs, in a manner that can be either adaptive or maladaptive. Moreover, we discuss the important role of self-esteem as well as the ability to accept the situation when coping is not possible. Our approach has implications for a broad range of disorders and conditions in which stress regulation plays a role, and can be used to guide the use of recently developed clinical interventions, as well as to fine-tune interventions to facilitate proactive control. Cortex, stress regulation, anticipation, depression, proactive control, coping, self-esteem, When we are confronted with situations or thoughts perceived as unpleasant, aversive or threatening, a series of biological and psychological processes is activated, generating a coordinated response. This so-called stress response is triggered when an individual's well-being or health is threatened. Relational or financial problems, unpredictability, an acute threat, or a challenging situation such as a job interview are examples of stressful situations or stressors that can initiate a stress response. Regulatory abilities, which we call stress regulation, generally allow us to cope with these situations in an adaptive way. However, there are large individual differences in how well people handle life stressors. Indeed, problems with stress regulation are thought to play a central role in the development and clinical course of depression (Hooley, Orley & Teasdale, 1986;Hankin, 2008;Morris, Ciesla & Garber, 2010). It has also been suggested that, over time, depressive episodes can be triggered by progressively milder and milder stressors (Monroe & Harkness, 2005; but see also Anderson et al., 2016).
Keywords: Dorsolateral PrefrontalResearch shows the important role of stress regulation in the development of different forms of psychopathology, such as depression, where psychosocial stressors are strongly implicated in the triggering of new episodes (Kendler et al., 2000).Understanding the role of stressors in depression requires consideration of the interaction between biological, cognitive ...