Written By Kevin Weiner

BIO + MED

Brain imaging study provides insight into regulating negative emotion When watching shock drama television shows such as Nip/Tuck and Law & Order: SVU, people often turn away in disgust at the excessive blood, open flesh, and story lines that sometimes hit too close to home. For surgeons and profilers, however, who are used to staying composed in highly stressful situations, watching these shows can be easy. Recent research by Philippe Goldin, Ph.D., Kateri McRae, Ph.D., Wiveka Ramel, Ph.D., and James Gross, Ph.D. of the Psychology Department at Stanford University explores how two different emotion regulation strategies influence a network of brain areas, which subsequently control emotional responses to stimuli that would typically turn stomachs.

Reappraisal vs. Suppression

According to emotion research, each of us can regulate our emotions using methods that can be applied before or after we experience an emotion: cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Cognitive reappraisal occurs before we feel our anticipated emotion and allows us to redefine the meaning of a situation. Expressive suppression, in contrast, refers to our ability to inhibit behaviors associated with an emotional response. “Cognitive reappraisal is more linguistic and logic-based and involves changing how you view a situation based on how you are thinking about it,” explains Dr. Philippe Goldin, a post-doctoral fellow in Gross’ Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory and first-author on their recent article in Biological Psychiatry. “Expressive suppression is a different strategy that involves changing how you display an emotion, not suppressing or changing the emotion you are experiencing.”

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written by KEVIN WEINER

Boiling Pot

Emotion Generative and Emotion Regulatory Brain Regions The Stanford study was the first to compare cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression using emotional stimuli and neuroimaging methods. Goldin and colleagues focused on three main areas of the brain: the amygdala, insula, and pre-frontal cortex. The amygdala and insula are critical for processing and generating emotion, while sub-regions of the pre-frontal cortex (PFC) are involved in regulating the emotions we feel.

Since reappraisal and suppression involve different areas within a given network of brain regions, Goldin suspected that emotion generative areas and emotion regulatory regions would be activated differently depending on which regulation method participants used. “Current theories elaborate that suppression can paradoxically sometimes lead to enhanced physiological reactivity, through skin conductance, heart rate, even how another person in the room feels when someone is suppressing. We were curious to see if this also involved brain activity,” Goldin explains.

researchers trained participants to inhibit their face muscles and practice different types of thinking to modulate emotions when exposed to these disturbing videos. “We gave them training on what it means to suppress facial expressions and to reappraise; then we actually had them speak out loud and practice implementing thinking or reinterpretation strategies,” Goldin elaborates. Prior to each clip in the scanner, a cue appeared on the monitor to instruct participants to just watch, to think objectively and reinterpret the meaning of what they were viewing (reappraisal), or to suppress their facial expression but not their emotions (suppression). Following each clip, participants were cued to rate their negative emotion intensity.

Hot on the Inside, Cool on the Outside

Results revealed that suppression – or keeping the face still while watching disgusting clips – actually induced an increase in neural activity within the amygdala and insula, while reappraisal induced a decrease in each of these areas.

Goldin and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine neural activity as each of their participants watched different 15-second video clips. Some clips displayed neutral images such as nature scenes, while others displayed disturbing imagery such as amputations, surgical procedures, vomiting, and animal slaughter.

“One of the key things we found is that with suppression, the PFC areas attempting to suppress the facial muscles seem to come online later in these film clips and in terms of the emotion neural architecture actually lead to increases in amygdala and insula,” Goldin explains. “In contrast, reappraisal is a strategy that requires PFC activation early on to get it going and then dwindles, which then seems to trigger a reduction in amygdala and insula activation.”

While participants were in the scanner, a small video camera was positioned about 6 inches in front of their faces, capturing everything from a face twitch to a grimace. Prior to the fMRI scanning sessions, the

Comparing the two strategies, there is little cost to using reappraisal because viewers have already changed their mindset in the beginning and have a strategy prepared to deal with the

It’s Showtime

of Emotion

Blow Off Some Steam or Let It Sit?

Goldin and colleagues hope to apply their research to clinical populations such as patients with social anxiety disorder. This is critical because long-term use of reappraisal improves emotional control and interpersonal functioning. In contrast, long-term use of suppression can decrease emotional control and increase depressive symptoms. However, Goldin stresses that reappraisal is not always the best strategy and that it can overlap with suppression even for those not employed in jobs reminiscent of shock drama television shows. “The skillfulness is in knowing when it is most beneficial to apply different strategies,” Goldin explains. “For example, suppression is okay for the short-term and necessary sometimes, but if it is the only strategy used in the long-term, the constant activation of emotion-generative

brain regions is like increasing the flame on the stove. Pretty soon the water is going to boil and the lid will pop.” Regulating emotions is not always easy, and it can sometimes be difficult to know whether to simply express frustration with a difficult situation, attempt to hide the irritation and appear calm, or try to re-frame the situation altogether. The researchers involved in the recent Stanford study believe that learning which of these coping strategies to use in various situations is crucial to maintaining health and peace of mind.

A Proposed Neural Model of Emotion Regulation. Goldin and colleagues hypothesized that activity within subregions of the prefrontal cortex would rise initially when using reappraisal strategies, but drop over the duration of the film clip, while the reverse would occur for suppression strategies.

KEVIN WEINER is a second year graduate student in Psychology, focusing in Neuroscience. When not writing about science, taking classes, or doing research, you can find Kevin surfing and writing poetry.

To Learn More

Goldin, P., McRae, K., Ramel, W., & Gross, J. (2008). The Neural Basis of Emotion Regulation: Reappraisal and Suppression of Negative Emotion. Biological Psychiatry 63: 577-586. For more information, visit the departmental website of Professor James Gross and his lab: http://www.psych.stanford.edu/~psyphy/.

Credit: Kevin Weiner edited from Dr. Philippe Goldin

Humans control their face muscles like this every day to conceal feelings – in the office, during interviews, even with loved ones in order to avoid emotionally overwhelming situations. Although this is often beneficial and necessary, it can also be harmfully straining.

“Suppression can paradoxically sometimes lead to enhanced physiological reactivity.” – Philippe Goldin

Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/pho

associated emotions. This subsequently leaves less work for the emotion generating amygdala and insula. On the other hand, suppression can become physiologically detrimental because though viewers are cool on the outside, they are boiling on the inside. As emotional responses rise in the amygdala and insula at seeing a face transplant on Nip/Tuck, for example, a viewer may want to impress his girlfriend by not moving a face muscle despite his disgust. The PFC works to combat how his body wants to respond and his brain activity shows this battle.