Self-related awareness and emotion regulation

Abstract

The regulation of emotions is an ongoing internal process and often a challenge. Current related neural models concern the intended control of reactions towards external events, mediated by prefrontal cortex regions upon basal emotion processing as in the amygdala. Cognitive strategies to regulate emotions in the context of affective disorders or stress reduction, increasingly applied in clinical practice, are also related to mindfulness techniques. We questioned their effects on neural emotion processing and investigated brain activity during purely internal mental self-referential processes of making current emotions and self-related cognitions aware. Thirty healthy subjects performed a task comprising periods of cognitive self-reflection, of introspection for actual own emotions and feelings, and of a neutral condition, while they were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Brain activations of twenty-seven subjects during emotion-introspection and self-reflection, and also a conjunction of both, were compared with the neutral condition. The conditions of self-reflection and emotion-introspection showed distinguishable activations in medial and ventrolateral prefrontal areas, in parietal regions and in the amygdala. Notably, amygdala activity decreased during emotion-introspection and increased compared to 'neutral' during self-reflection. The results indicate that already the self-referential mental state of making the actual emotional state aware is capable of attenuating emotional arousal. This extends current theories of emotion regulation and has implications for the application of mindfulness techniques as a component of psychotherapeutic strategies in affective disorders and also for possible everyday emotion regulation. AbstractThe regulation of emotions is an ongoing internal process and often a challenge. Current related neural models concern the intended control of reactions towards external events, mediated by prefrontal cortex regions upon basal emotion processing as in the amygdala. Cognitive strategies to regulate emotions in the context of affective disorders or stress reduction, increasingly applied in clinical practice, are also related to mindfulness techniques. We questioned their effects on neural emotion processing and investigated brain activity during purely internal mental selfreferential processes of making current emotions and self-related cognitions aware. Thirty healthy subjects performed a task comprising periods of cognitive self-reflection, of introspection for actual own emotions and feelings, and of a neutral condition, while they were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Brain activations of twenty-seven subjects during emotion-introspection and self-reflection, and also a conjunction of both, were compared with the neutral condition. The conditions of self-reflection and emotion-introspection showed distinguishable activations in medial and ventrolateral prefrontal areas, in parietal regions and in the amygdala. Notably, amygdala activ...

Mindfulness and emotion regulation—an fMRI study

“…During the perception of the negative stimuli, mindfulness attenuated activations in brain regions associated with emotion processing. These results are reminiscent of findings of cognitive control instructions (Ochsner et al, 2002), of mindfulness without emotional stimulation (Herwig et al, 2010) and of attention and emotion regulation network activations in meditators (Chiesa and Serretti, 2009). It seems that at least some components of mindful states that may have an attenuating effect on emotional arousal can be elicited without intensive training and their neural correlates become visible.…”

“…Further, the DMPFC was activated in self-experiential states such as affect labeling (Taylor et al, 2003;Creswell et al, 2007;Lieberman et al, 2007) and mindful self-awareness without any external stimulation (Herwig et al, 2010). Further, this cortical structure has been found to be thicker in meditators (Lazar et al, 2005) and to be active during meditation (Hölzel et al, 2007;Brewer et al, 2011;Ott et al, 2011).…”

“…Differential activation of the DLPFC between groups in the expectation phase was identified in the ROI and whole-brain analyses. The DLPFC is a core structure for executive functions (Smith and Jonides, 1999) that has been associated with reappraisal of negative stimuli (Ochsner et al, 2002;Herwig et al, 2010) and with state-mindfulness in meditation-naïve subjects (Creswell et al, 2007;Farb et al, 2007). Further, a meta-analysis identified less (left) DLPFC activation in depression (Fitzgerald et al, 2008).…”

“…Resulting summary images were subjected to second-level group analyses within predefined cubic ROIs: in our main ROI, the amygdala (Figure 2), and additionally in the DMPFC, DLPFC and anterior insula. ROIs were defined according to activation coordinates in fMRI studies on emotion regulation (amygdala; Ochsner et al, 2002;Ochsner et al, 2004;Goldin et al, 2008;Herwig et al, 2010) and studies on mindfulness (anterior insula, DMPFC, DLPFC; Creswell et al, 2007;Herwig et al, 2010) and anatomically validated using the Talairach client (Lancaster et al, 2000). MNI coordinates were non-linearly transformed into TAL space with Matlab's mni2tal-function (Brett, 2009).…”

“…The effects of a 'pure' mindfulness intervention during emotional stimulation have not been investigated so far. In a previous study, we investigated the mere direction of attention towards the current experience of emotions and bodily sensations without explicit behavioral control in comparison with cognitive self-reflection (Herwig et al, 2010). The experiential focus reduced amygdala activity and increased activation in frontal areas such as DMPFC and ACC and in brain regions related to somato-and viscerosensation (right insula).…”