Search

Reappraisal of negative events is known to be useful in decreasing their emotional impact. However, existent evidence for this conclusion mostly relies on conscious, deliberate reappraisal that comes with the cost of cognitive efforts. The aim of the present study was to compare emotion regulation effects of conscious and unconscious reappraisal, which has been shown to be less costly in previous studies. Subjects randomly assigned to an unconscious reappraisal, conscious reappraisal, and control condition performed a frustrating arithmetic task. Subjective emotional experience and heart-rate reactivity were recorded. Participants primed with unconscious reappraisal showed the same decrease in heart-rate reactivity as those explicitly instructed to reappraise. In addition, the unconscious reappraisal group did not show reductions in subjective negative emotion, whereas this was significantly decreased in the conscious reappraisal group. Heart-rate reactivity was positively correlated with negative emotion ratings and negatively correlated with the positive emotion ratings. These results suggest that unconscious reappraisal is only effective in decreasing physiological consequences of frustrating emotion, but not in reducing subjective experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Studies from European-American cultures consistently reported that expressive suppression was associated with worse emotional consequence (e.g. depression) in comparison with acceptance. However, this conclusion may not apply to Chinese, as suppressing emotional displays to maintain relational harmony is culturally valued in East Asian countries. Thus, the present study examined the effects of suppression and acceptance on the depressive mood induced by a frustrating task in a Chinese sample. Method: Sixty-four subjects were randomly assigned to one of three instructions: suppression, acceptance or no-regulation during a frustrating arithmetic task. The experience of depressive emotion and skin conductance response (SCR) were recorded during pre-frustration baseline, frustration induction and post-frustration recovery phases, respectively. Results: Compared with the control and acceptance instructions, suppression instruction was associated with decreased depressive experiences and smaller SCR activity during frustration. There were no significant differences between acceptance and control groups in both subjective depression and SCR activity during frustration. Moreover, the suppression group showed a better emotional recovery after the frustrating task, in comparison with the acceptance and control groups. Correlation analyses verified that SCR reactivity was a reliable index of experienced depression during the frustration. Conclusions: Expressive suppression is effective in reducing depressive experiences and depression-related physiological activity (SCR) when Chinese people are involved. By contrast, the acceptance of depressive emotion in Chinese people does not produce a similar regulation effect. These findings suggest that cultural context should be considered in understanding the emotional consequences of suppression and acceptance strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Various affective disorders are linked with enhanced processing of unpleasant stimuli. However, this link is likely a result of the dominant negative mood derived from the disorder, rather than a result of the disorder itself. Additionally, little is currently known about the influence of mood on the susceptibility to emotional events in healthy populations. Method: Event-Related Potentials (ERP) were recorded for pleasant, neutral and unpleasant pictures while subjects performed an emotional/neutral picture classification task during positive, neutral, or negative mood induced by instrumental Chinese music. Results: Late Positive Potential (LPP) amplitudes were positively related to the affective arousal of pictures. The emotional responding to unpleasant pictures, indicated by the unpleasant-neutral differences in LPPs, was enhanced during negative compared to neutral and positive moods in the entire LPP time window (600–1000 ms). The magnitude of this enhancement was larger with increasing self-reported negative mood. In contrast, this responding was reduced during positive compared to neutral mood in the 800–1000 ms interval. Additionally, LPP reactions to pleasant stimuli were similar across positive, neutral and negative moods except those in the 800–900 ms interval. Implications: Negative mood intensifies the humans' susceptibility to unpleasant events in healthy individuals. In contrast, music-induced happy mood is effective in reducing the susceptibility to these events. Practical implications of these findings were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Whether conceptual and emotional incongruities can be differentiated was examined. [•] Both emotional and conceptual incongruities related to N400 effect. [•] Conceptual incongruity induced theta power increase. [•] Emotional incongruity induced gamma power increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Expectation decreased the susceptibility to fearful stimuli in prior studies using distracting tasks. The present study tests whether expectation remains effective in decreasing this susceptibility, when subjects focus attention on emotional properties. Event-related potentials were recorded for fearful and neutral faces, while subjects performed a modified emotion evaluation task during unpredictable and predictable conditions. Behavioral data showed faster response latencies during predictable versus unpredictable conditions. ERP data showed prolonged peak latencies in N1 (80–130ms) and larger amplitudes in P2 (130–180ms) and N200-300 components, for unpredictable fearful versus neutral faces. Conversely, all these components showed similar responses to predictable fearful and neutral faces. Source analysis suggested that medial temporal lobe mediated ERPs elicited by unpredictable fearful faces, while ventromedial prefrontal cortex mediated those elicited by predictable fearful faces, in the 130–180ms interval. Thus, we propose emotional expectation as a cognitive regulation strategy that reliably dampens human susceptibility to fearful stimuli. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The present study investigated the neural mechanisms that underlie the higher levels of subjective well-being in extraverts. The impact of extraversion on the human sensitivity to pleasant and unpleasant pictures of diverse emotional intensities was examined. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) for highly positive (HP), moderately positive (MP), and neutral stimuli in the pleasant session, and for highly negative (HN), moderately negative (MN), and neutral stimuli in the unpleasant session, while subjects (16 extraverts and 16 ambiverts) performed a standard/deviant categorization task, irrespective of the emotionality of the deviant stimuli. The results showed significant emotion effects for HP and MP stimuli at the P2 and P3 components in extraverts, but not in ambiverts. Despite a pronounced emotion effect for HN stimuli across the P2, N2, and P3 components in both samples, ambiverts displayed a significant emotion effect for MN stimuli at the N2 and P3 components that was absent in extraverts. The posterior cingulate cortices, which connect multiple neural regions that are important in interactions of emotion and extraversion, may mediate the extravert-specific emotion effect for pleasant stimuli. Thus, extraverts are less susceptible to unpleasant stimuli of mild intensity than are ambiverts, while extraverts have an additional enhanced sensitivity to pleasant stimuli, regardless of emotion intensity. Consequently, the decreased threshold for pleasant emotion and the increased threshold for unpleasant emotion might be essential neural mechanisms that underlie the higher levels of subjective well-being in extraverts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: As an ability critical for adaptive social living, behavioral inhibitory control (BIC) is known to be influenced substantially by unpleasant emotion. Nevertheless, how unpleasant emotion of diverse strength influences this control, and the spatiotemporal dynamics underlying this influence, remain undetermined. For this purpose, Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for standard stimulus which required no BIC, and for deviant stimuli that required controlling habitual responses, during highly unpleasant (HU), mildly unpleasant (MU) and Neutral blocks. The results showed delayed response latencies for deviant compared to standard stimuli, irrespective of emotionality. Moreover, there were significant main effects of stimulus type, and significant stimulus type and block interaction effects on the averaged amplitudes of the 230–310ms and 330–430ms intervals. In the deviant-standard difference waves which directly index BIC-relevant processing, these interactions were manifested by increased negative potentials as a function of the strength of unpleasant emotion across N2 and P3 components. In addition, these influences are specific to unpleasant emotion, as pleasant emotion of diverse strength produced a similar impact in the control experiment. Therefore, unpleasant emotion of diverse strength is different in impact on brain processing of behavioral inhibitory control. This impact is evident not only in early monitoring of response conflicts, but also in late processing of response inhibition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Though the humans are more susceptible to unpleasant stimuli of higher intensity, how the valence intensity of unpleasant stimuli impacts subsequent cognitive processing, and whether this impact increases with the unpleasantness, require clarification. For this purpose, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for highly negative (HN), mildly negative (MN) and neutral cueing pictures, and subsequently for the non-emotional target picture while subjects were required to discriminate the location of the target. Cue-induced ERPs showed more negative deflections for the HN than for the neutral pictures in the 450–650ms time interval. The emotion effect for the MN cueing stimuli, however, was non-significant in this interval. In contrast, target-induced P3 amplitudes were significantly more negative following MN versus neutral cueing pictures, while the P3 amplitudes were not significantly different between HN and neutral conditions, irrespective of cueing validity. Thus, despite weak immediate impact, MN stimuli influenced subsequent target processing more heavily than HN stimuli. This suggests that the impact of unpleasant events on cognition doesn''t necessarily increase with the unpleasantness. Mild unpleasant stimulus, which is weak in immediate emotion arousal, should not be neglected due to the likelihood of producing a sustained impact. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The present study investigated the influence of attention on the human sensitivity to valence differences in emotionally negative stimuli. Event-related potentials were recorded for unattended highly negative (EN), moderately negative (MN) and neutral pictures in Experiment 1 which engaged subjects in an auditory discrimination task; and for EN, MN and neutral pictures in Experiment 2 that required visual classification of pictures. Results of both experiments displayed increased negative deflections during EN than during MN and neutral conditions at 150–250, 250–350, and 350–450ms intervals post-stimulus. Moreover, MN stimuli elicited larger negativity than did neutral stimuli during 250–350ms interval in either experiment. This developed our understanding of the human sensitivity to valence differences in negative stimuli, by revealing that the brain sensitivity to the valence strength of negative stimuli exists stably, unaffected by attention access to some extent. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Social exclusion can induce negative emotions and aggression. While previous studies have investigated the effect of trait acceptance on emotional experience and aggression during social exclusion, it is still unclear how different forms of acceptance strategy can downregulate negative emotions and whether this potential reduction of negative emotions should mediate the effect of acceptance on aggression. To address these questions, 100 participants were recruited and randomly divided into three groups: control group (CG, N = 33), conscious acceptance group (CAG, N = 33) and unconscious acceptance group (UAG, N = 34). Negative emotions were induced by the cyberball game and measured by the modified PANAS. Aggressive behavior was assessed by the hot sauce allocation task. Results showed that anger, rather than other negative emotions, mediated the effect of acceptance on aggressive behavior. Conscious and unconscious acceptance both effectively regulated anger, hurt feelings and aggressive behavior during social exclusion. Compared to conscious acceptance, unconscious acceptance was associated with less reduction of positive emotion and had a better effect on reducing sadness. These findings highlight the advantage of applying unconscious acceptance strategy to regulating social exclusion-induced emotions for the purpose of reducing aggressive behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Emotion is known to interact with behavioral inhibitory control (BIC), an ability critical for adaptive living. Nevertheless, how emotion valence influences this control, and the spatiotemporal dynamics underlying this influence, remain undetermined. For this purpose, the present study recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) for a standard stimulus which required no BIC, and for deviant stimuli that required controlling habitual responses during pleasant, neutral and unpleasant blocks. Behavioral results showed prolonged reaction times (RTs) and diminished accuracy rates for deviant than for standard stimuli, irrespective of the emotionality of deviants. Moreover, there were significant main effects of stimulus type, and significant stimulus and emotion interaction effects on the averaged amplitudes of the 200–300ms and 300–500ms intervals. Through analyzing the deviant–standard difference ERPs that index BIC directly, we found larger N2 and smaller P3 amplitudes during the unpleasant block than during the neutral block. The pleasant block, in contrast, showed a trend of more pronounced P3 amplitudes than the neutral block. Thus, by synchronizing BIC with emotion induction, we found distinct impact of pleasant and unpleasant emotions on behavioral inhibitory processing, not only in early monitoring of response conflicts but also in the late stage of response inhibition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Automatic emotion regulation (AER) plays a vital role in the neuropathology underlying both suicide and self-harm via modifying emotional impact effortlessly. However, both the effortless account and the neural mechanisms of AER are undetermined. To investigate the neural changes at AER, we collected functional MRI (fMRI) in 31 participants who attended to neutral and disgust pictures in three conditions: watching, goal intention (GI), and reappraisal by implementation intention (RII). Results showed that RII (but not GI) decreased negative feelings and bilateral amygdala activity without increasing cognitive efforts, evidenced by the reduced effort rating and less prefrontal engagement during RII compared with during watching and GI. These emotion-regulatory effects of RII cannot be explained by emotional habituation, as the supplementary experiment (N = 31) showed no emotional habituation effects when the same disgust pictures were presented repeatedly three times for each watching and GI condition. Task-based network analysis showed both RII and GI relative to watching increased functional connectivities (FCs) of the ventral anterior cingulate cortex to the left insula and right precuneus during conditions, two FCs subserving goal setup. However, RII relative to GI exhibited weaker FCs in brain networks subserving effortful control, memory retrieval, aversive anticipation, and motor planning. In these FCs, the FC intensity of putamen-operculum/lingual and paracentral-superior temporal gyri positively predicted regulatory difficulty ratings. These findings suggest that the setup of implementation intention automatizes emotion regulation by reducing the online mobilization of emotion-coping neural systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the effects of emotion of different emotional intensity on memory have been investigated, it remain unclear whether the influence of emotional intensity on memory varies depending on the stimulus valence polarity (i.e., positive or negative). To address this, event-related potentials were recorded when subjects performed a continuous old/new discrimination task, for highly negative (HN), mildly negative (MN) and neutral pictures in the negative session; and for highly positive (HP), mildly positive (MP) and neutral pictures in the positive session. The results showed that relative to neutral stimuli, both HN and MN stimuli showed increased memory discrimination scores, and enhanced old/new effect in early FN400 (Frontal Negativity), but not late positive component (LPC) amplitudes. By contrast, relative to MP stimuli, HP and neutral stimuli showed increased memory discrimination scores and enhanced old/new effect in LPC but not FN400 amplitudes. Additionally, we observed a significant positive correlation between the memory discrimination score and the old/new effect in the amplitudes of the FN400 and LPC, respectively. These results indicate that both HN and MN stimuli were remembered better than neutral stimuli; whereas the recognition was worse for MP stimuli than Neutral and HP stimuli. In conclusion, in the present study, we observed that the effect of emotion intensity on memory depends on the stimulus valence polarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitric oxide (NO) is an important retrograde neuronal intracellular messenger which plays an important role in synaptic plasticity and is involved in learning and memory. However, evidence that NO is particularly important for the acquisition of contextual fear conditioning is mixed. Also, little is known about at which stages of the contextual fear conditioning does NO make its contribution. In the present study, we used 7-nitroindazole to temporarily inhibit neural nitric oxide synthase at either the pre-exposure stage or conditioning stage in a two-process paradigm and examined the potential contribution that NO makes to the contextually conditioned fear. Results showed that the expression of contextual fear memory was significantly impaired in rats treated with 7-nitroindazole (30 mg/kg, i.p.) prior to the pairing of context-shock ( p = 0.034, n = 8), but not after the conditioning phase ( p = 0.846, n = 8). In addition, the expression of contextual fear memory and reconsolidation was not significantly impaired by 7-nitroindazole administered prior to the context pre-exposure stage or prior to another context-shock learning. These findings suggest that NO is specifically involved in the acquisition but not the consolidation, retrieval or reconsolidation of contextual fear memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explored whether neuroticism modulates the impact of extraversion on attention orienting to pleasant and unpleasant pictures of diverse emotional intensities. We measured event-related potentials for highly emotional, mildly emotional, and neutral stimuli in both pleasant and unpleasant blocks, while subjects (16 stable ambiverts, 15 stable extraverts, 17 neurotic ambiverts, and 17 neurotic extraverts) were asked to perform a standard/deviant categorization task, irrespective of the emotionality of the deviants. The results revealed a modulation effect of neuroticism in the impact of extraversion on emotional attention. On the one hand, irrespective of extraversion, emotionally stable samples showed increased N200 amplitudes for highly unpleasant (HN) stimuli relative to mildly unpleasant (MN) and neutral stimuli, while these samples exhibited no significant emotion magnitude effect in the pleasant block. On the other hand, although neurotic samples, both extraverts and ambiverts, showed enhanced N2 amplitudes for HN stimuli than neutral stimuli, neurotic extraverts displayed increased N2 amplitudes for highly pleasant (HP) and mildly pleasant (MP) stimuli than neutral stimuli, which was absent in neurotic ambiverts. These results extend our understanding of the relationship between extraversion and emotion by showing that neuroticism amplifies the positive emotional bias of extraverts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The present study investigates the human brains′ sensitivity to the valence strength of emotionally positive and negative chinese words. Event-Related Potentials were recorded, in two different experimental sessions, for Highly Positive (HP), Mildly Positive (MP) and neutral (NP) words and for Highly Negative (HN), Mildly Negative (MN) and neutral (NN) words, while subjects were required to count the number of words, irrespective of word meanings. The results showed a significant emotion effect in brain potentials for both HP and MP words, and the emotion effect occurred faster for HP words than MP words: HP words elicited more negative deflections than NP words in N2 (250–350ms) and P3 (350–500ms) amplitudes, while MP words elicited a significant emotion effect in P3, but not in N2, amplitudes. By contrast, HN words elicited larger amplitudes than NN words in N2 but not in P3 amplitudes, whereas MN words produced no significant emotion effect across N2 and P3 components. Moreover, the size of emotion-neutral differences in P3 amplitudes was significantly larger for MP compared to MN words. Thus, the human brain is reactive to both highly and mildly positive words, and this reactivity increased with the positive valence strength of the words. Conversely, the brain is less reactive to the valence of negative relative to positive words. These results suggest that human brains are equipped with increased sensitivity to the valence strength of positive compared to negative words, a type of emotional stimuli that are well known for reduced arousal. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Implementation intentions (II), which specify how to respond in a given situation based on the goal, is known for its automaticity of regulating emotion to the specified situation. However, it is unknown whether such regulatory effects can be generalized to unspecified situations. For this purpose, we performed four experiments, each consisting of specified (bloody) and unspecified (non-bloody) stimuli with the goal of disgust (Exp.1–2) or unpleasant (Exp.3) regulation. Results showed that II reduced negative feelings for both bloody and non-bloody situations (Exp.1). This generalization effect was absent for goal-unrelated, frightening situations (Exp.2). However, broadening the goal extended the generalization effect to the frightening situation, an effect further amplified when a flexible response was used (Exp.3). Moreover, the II buildup did not disrupt feelings for pleasant situations (Exp.4). These results provide the first evidence that II-based emotion regulation is generalizable to unspecified, goal-related situations and that increasing goal coverage expands the generalization. • The emotion regulation effects of reappraisal-based Implementation intention (RII) can be generalized to goal-related, unspecified situations. • Increasing the goal coverage and using flexible response amplify the generalization effect of emotion regulation during RII. • The RII buildup does not disrupt positive feelings for pleasant situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]