The electrocortical modulation effects of different emotion regulation strategies

Abstract

The current event-related potential study investigated the modulation effects of different emotion regulation strategies on electrocortical responses. When watching negative or neutral pictures, participants were instructed to perform three tasks: cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression and passive viewing. We found that negative pictures elicited a larger late positive potential (LPP) than neutral pictures. Moreover, processes involved in strategy also had an effect on LPP amplitude, which was indicated by a larger LPP in reappraisal compared with suppression and viewing tasks when neutral pictures were presented. After the influence of processes on LPP was excluded, results showed that reappraisal effectively decreased the emotion-enhanced LPP than suppression and viewing. The difference in regulatory effect may be determined by the underlying processing mechanism. A larger frontal-central component, N2, was observed in suppression than reappraisal and viewing, which suggested that it involved the processes focusing on behavioral response. While the larger LPP found in reappraisal implicated that it recruited cognitive processes focusing on the picture meaning.

Seeing emotions, reading emotions: Behavioral and ERPs evidence of the regulation of pictures and words

“…Thus, when comparing the impact of the emotional content on the stimuli in the distancing vs. attend condition, one may immediately note the drastic LPP reduction (left-posterior region, first time window [250–400 ms]: effect of emotional content (negative—neutral) in the REGULATE condition: 0.79 μV vs. effect of emotional content (negative—neutral) in the Attend condition: 1.74 μV; second time window [400 600 ms]: effect of emotional content (negative—neutral) in the REGULATE condition: 0.21 μV vs. effect of emotional content (negative—neutral) in the Attend condition: 1.36 μV). Previous studies using ERPs reported that the LPP amplitude is affected by instructions to down-regulate the emotional responses due to negative stimuli [12,20,21,55,56,60]. These studies involved participants using cognitive strategies such as reappraisal, suppression and distraction, and showed regulation of both subjective ratings and LPP.…”

“…Paul et al [20] showed a reduction of LPP when participants used distraction and reappraisal-based strategies. Gan and colleagues [21] replicated the effect of reduction of emotion enhanced LPP when participants applied reappraisal and observed an increase of N2 for the suppression strategy, possibly related to the control of facial expression. More recently, Qi et al [22] used detached reappraisal (similar to what we indicate with the term distancing) to regulate unpleasant pictures and reported a modulation of LPP.…”

Seeing emotions, reading emotions: behavioral and ERPs evidence of the effect of strategy and of regulation for pictures and words.

“…Our study confirms this modulation of LPP as an effect of down-regulating the content of emotional pictures (significant difference in the central line electrodes), especially in the first stages of the component (i.e., between 250 ms and 600 ms after target presentation), that showed the maximal LPP reduction at multiple sites. Thus, when comparing the impact of the emotional content on the stimuli in the distancing vs. attend condition, one may immediately note ERPs reported that the LPP amplitude is affected by instructions to down-regulate the emotional responses due to negative stimuli [12,20,21,55,56,60]. These studies involved participants using cognitive strategies such as reappraisal, suppression and distraction, and showed regulation of both subjective ratings and LPP.…”

“…Paul et al, [20] showed a reduction of LPP when participants used distraction and reappraisal-based strategies. Gan and colleagues [21] replicated the effect of reduction of emotion Emotion regulation and ERP enhanced LPP when participants applied reappraisal and observed an increase of N2 for the suppression strategy, possibly related to the control of facial expression. More recently, Qi et al, [22], used detached reappraisal (similar to what we indicate with the term distancing) to regulate unpleasant pictures and reported a modulation of LPP.…”

Subjective craving and event-related brain response to olfactory and visual chocolate cues in binge-eating and healthy individuals

“…In passive picture viewing paradigms, the N2 has been associated to stimulus discrimination, the automatic evaluation of affective valence, and arousal 27 28 . Another recent study found that N2 amplitudes were associated with the suppression of the emotional response while viewing neutral and negative pictures, which the authors interpreted as an indicator of conflict 29 . However, with regard to the processing of food stimuli, anterior negative deflections in the N2 time-range in two studies showed that higher amplitudes were related to an increased reactivity to food stimuli 30 31 .…”