Tune in to the right frequency: Theta changes when distancing from emotions elicited by unpleasant images and words

Reduced frontocingulate theta connectivity during emotion regulation in major depressive disorder

BACKGROUND

Cognitive reappraisal is an essential emotion regulation skill for social life and psychological health. However, individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) cannot use this skill effectively. Successful cognitive reappraisal in healthy controls (HC) has been shown to be associated with theta activity in a frontal and subcortical network. In the present study, we investigated whether MDD patients are characterized by altered theta power and connectivity pattern during cognitive reappraisal compared to HC.

METHODS

Using EEG and eLORETA, we examined both theta activity and connectivity when 25 controls and 24 patients with MDD were asked to complete the emotion cognitive reappraisal task of viewing neutral and negative pictures and reappraise negative pictures. Habitual use of emotion regulation skills was collected using the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ).

RESULTS

The results showed that MDD patients had (1) reduced theta activity in the left dorsolateral (dlPFC), dorsomedial prefrontal (dmPFC), and rostral-ventral cingulate cortices (rvACC), as well as (2) reduced dlPFC-rvACC theta connectivity than HC during reappraisal. In addition, left dlPFC-rvACC theta connectivity was positively correlated with self-reported cognitive reappraisal in HC. This relation was not observed in MDD. In contrast, CERQ revealed significantly greater use of inadequate regulations skills and significantly lower use of adaptive skills in MDD.

LIMITATION

Sample size, limited solution space to cortical grey matter excluding regions such as the amygdala.

CONCLUSION

This study may indicate a putative frontocingulate dysfunction leading either to an increased use of inadequate emotion regulation or a decreased use of skills that serve to boost positive emotion.

Frontal theta oscillations during emotion regulation in people with borderline personality disorder

BACKGROUND

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe psychiatric disorder conceptualised as a disorder of emotion regulation. Emotion regulation has been linked to a frontolimbic network comprising the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, which apparently synchronises its activity via oscillatory coupling in the theta frequency range.

AIMS

To analyse whether there are distinct differences in theta oscillatory coupling in frontal brain regions between individuals with BPD and matched controls during emotion regulation by cognitive reappraisal.

METHOD

Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were performed in 25 women diagnosed with BPD and 25 matched controls during a cognitive reappraisal task in which participants were instructed to downregulate negative emotions evoked by aversive visual stimuli. Between- and within-group time-frequency analyses were conducted to analyse regulation-associated theta activity (3.5-8.5 Hz).

RESULTS

Oscillatory theta activity differed between the participants with BPD and matched controls during cognitive reappraisal. Regulation-associated theta increases were lower in frontal regions in the BPD cohort compared with matched controls. Functional connectivity analysis for regulation-associated changes in the theta frequency band revealed a lower multivariate interaction measure (MIM) increase in frontal brain regions in persons with BPD compared with matched controls.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings support the notion of alterations in a frontal theta network in BPD, which may be underlying core symptoms of the disorder such as deficits in emotion regulation. The results add to the growing body of evidence for altered oscillatory brain dynamics in psychiatric populations, which might be investigated as individualised treatment targets using non-invasive stimulation methods.

The role of engagement and arousal in emotion regulation: an EEG study

Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression are well-studied strategies of emotion regulation (ER). However, the results on their physiological basis are controversial. While in some studies, ER was accompanied by the inhibition of the nervous system, others suggested that ER even might increase arousal and engagement. We calculated the inter-subject correlation (ISC) and indices of engagement, valence and arousal of EEG during suppression, reappraisal, or natural watching of neutral and negative videos. First, both suppression and reappraisal provoked a higher ISC in comparison with watching negative or neutral videos. We consider this as a marker of engagement to the task and feedback processing required for ER. Second, the engagement index was lower during ER compared to watching negative videos in central electrodes, whereas both strategies provoked a higher engagement in frontal electrodes. Third, the arousal index of EEG was higher during all negative conditions; therefore, regulation required a certain level of arousal. In summary, different EEG measures seem to be sensitive to different aspects of ER.

Alpha and theta oscillations during the cognitive reappraisal of aversive pictures: A spatio-temporal qEEG investigation

CONTEXT

Emotion regulation is a set of processes responsible for controlling, evaluating and adjusting reactions to achieve a goal. Results derived from magnetic resonance imaging agreed on the involvement of frontal and limbic structures in this process. Findings using cognition and physiology interactions are still scarce but suggest a role of alpha rhythm in emotional induction and for theta in regulation.

OBJECTIVES AND HYPOTHESES

Our goal was to investigate alpha and theta rhythm during the reappraisal of aversive stimuli. We hypothesized that an implication of alpha rhythm in emotional induction only and an increase in prefrontal theta rhythm positively correlated with successful regulation.

METHOD

Twenty-four healthy participants were recorded with 64 EEG electrodes while asked to watch or reappraise negative pictures passively. Theta and alpha rhythms were compared across maintain, decrease and increase regulation conditions, and a source localization estimated the generators.

RESULTS

Theta activity was consistently higher in the upregulation than in the maintenance condition (p = .04) for the entire control period, but mainly at the beginning of regulation (1-3 s) for low-theta and later (5-7 s) for high-theta. Moreover, our results confirm that a low-theta generator correlated with mainly the middle frontal gyrus and the anterior dorsal cingulate cortex during upregulation. Theta was sensitive to emotion upregulation, whereas the alpha oscillation was non-sensitive to emotion induction and regulation.

CONCLUSION

Theta rhythm was involved explicitly in emotion upregulation processes that occur at a definite time during reappraisal, whereas the alpha rhythm was not altered by emotion induction and regulation.

Early threat perception is independent of later cognitive and behavioral control. A virtual reality-EEG-ECG study

Research on social threat has shown influences of various factors, such as agent characteristics, proximity, and social interaction on social threat perception. An important, yet understudied aspect of threat exposure concerns the ability to exert control over the threat and its implications for threat perception. In this study, we used a virtual reality (VR) environment showing an approaching avatar that was either angry (threatening body expression) or neutral (neutral body expression) and informed participants to stop avatars from coming closer under five levels of control success (0, 25, 50, 75, or 100%) when they felt uncomfortable. Behavioral results revealed that social threat triggered faster reactions at a greater virtual distance from the participant than the neutral avatar. Event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed that the angry avatar elicited a larger N170/vertex positive potential (VPP) and a smaller N3 than the neutral avatar. The 100% control condition elicited a larger late positive potential (LPP) than the 75% control condition. In addition, we observed enhanced theta power and accelerated heart rate for the angry avatar vs. neutral avatar, suggesting that these measures index threat perception. Our results indicate that perception of social threat takes place in early to middle cortical processing stages, and control ability is associated with cognitive evaluation in middle to late stages.

Perspective taking in the human brain: complementary evidence from neuroimaging studies with media-based naturalistic stimuli and artificial controlled paradigms

Perception and interpretation of various types of events and information in life crucially depend on one's perspective. A specific perspective can be explicitly adopted, for example, via instructing an experimental subject, implicitly via a priori information given to subjects, and by subjects' personality traits or cultural background. The neural basis of perspective taking has been addressed in a number of recent neuroimaging studies, some of which have used movies and narratives as media-based stimuli to pursue a holistic understanding of the phenomenon under ecologically valid conditions. Results across these studies suggest that the human brain flexibly adapts to support the information-processing needs of different perspectives, however, also that inferior temporal-occipital areas and posterior-medial parietal areas are engaged across different perspectives. These findings are complemented by studies that have investigated specific aspects of perspective taking with highly controlled experimental designs. They have disclosed involvement of the temporoparietal junction in visual perspective taking and the importance of the affective component of the pain matrix when empathizing with others' pain. Identification with the protagonists also seems to matter, as dorsomedial vs. ventromedial prefrontal areas are recruited when the protagonist is dissimilar vs. similar to self. Finally, as a translational aspect, perspective taking can, under certain conditions, serve as an effective emotion regulation technique, wherein lateral and medial regions of the prefrontal cortex seem to support reappraisal processes. Together, findings from studies with media-based stimuli and more traditional paradigms complement each other to gain a comprehensive understanding of the neural basis of perspective taking.

Abnormal brain oscillations and activation of patients with heroin use disorder during emotion regulation: The role of delta- and theta-band power

BACKGROUND

Emotion dysregulation is a crucial component of substance use disorders in predisposition, maintenance, and relapse. Emotional regulation strategies are an important factor in emotion dysregulation. However, studies on heroin use disorder (HUD) patients' ability to use emotion regulation strategies are scarce.

METHODS

Time-frequency-based analyses were used to compare the power of 33 patients with HUD and 28 healthy controls to elucidate whether patients with HUD have abnormal neural oscillations during passive viewing and emotion regulation strategies. Using the standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography algorithm (sLORETA), we estimated the possible sources of the anomalous band power.

RESULTS

Compared to patients with HUD, healthy controls showed a stronger decrease in the power of the delta/theta band across all task conditions. The effect peaked at approximately 1300-1900 ms after stimulus onset and varied by task condition. The estimation of sLORETA suggested the frontal, parietal, and limbic lobes as possible generators.

LIMITATIONS

We cannot exclude the potential influence of additional factors, such as sex, depression and anxiety levels, and polysubstance use, on the results.

CONCLUSIONS

Patients with HUD have blunted arousal and impaired ability to use emotion regulation strategies. The abnormal patterns described above may be the underlying neurophysiological basis for this dysfunction. Future studies could combine different approaches to improve emotion dysregulation in patients with HUD to promote treatment outcomes.

Self- and Situation-Focused Reappraisal are not homogeneous: Evidence from behavioral and brain networks

Reappraisal is an effective emotion regulation strategy which can be divided into self- and situation-focused subtypes. Previous studies have produced inconsistent findings on the moderating effects and neural mechanisms of reappraisal; thus, further research is necessary to clarify these inconsistencies. In this study, a total of 44 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to two groups. 23 participants were assigned to the self-focused group, while 21 participants were assigned to the situation-focused group. The participants' resting EEG data were collected for 6 minutes before the experiment began, followed by an emotional regulation task. During this task, participants were asked to view emotion-provoking images under four emotion regulation conditions (View, Watch, Increase, and Decrease). Late positive potential (LPP) was obtained when these emotional images were observed. LPP is an effective physiological indicator of emotion regulation, enabling this study to explore emotion regulation under different reappraisal strategies, as well as the functional connectivity and node efficiency within the brain. It was found that, in terms of the effect on emotion regulation, situation-focused reappraisal was significantly better than self-focused reappraisal at enhancing the valence of negative emotion, while self-focused reappraisal was significantly better than situation-focused reappraisal at increasing the arousal of negative emotion. In terms of neural mechanisms, multiple brain regions such as the anterior cingulate cortex, the frontal lobe, the parahippocampal gyrus, parts of the temporal lobe, and parts of the parietal lobe were involved in both reappraisal processes. In addition, there were some differences in brain regions associated with different forms of cognitive reappraisal. Self-focused reappraisal was associated with the posterior cingulate gyrus, fusiform gyrus, and lingual gyrus, and situation-focused reappraisal was associated with the parietal lobule, anterior central gyrus, and angular gyrus. In conclusion, this research demonstrates that self- and situation-focused reappraisal are not homogenous in terms of their effects and neural mechanisms and clarifies the uncertainties over their regulatory effects. Different types of reappraisal activate different brain regions when used, and the functional connectivity or node efficiency of these brain regions seems to be a suitable indicator for assessing the effects of different types of reappraisal.

Attention and regulation during emotional word comprehension in older adults: Evidence from event-related potentials and brain oscillations

Older adults often show a positivity bias effect during picture processing, focusing more on positive than negative information. It is unclear whether this positivity bias effect generalizes to language and whether arousal matters. The present study investigated how age affects emotional word comprehension with varied valence (positive, negative) and arousal (high, low). We recorded older and younger participants' brainwaves (EEG) while they read positive/negative and high/low-arousing words and pseudowords, and made word/non-word judgments. Older adults showed increased N400s and left frontal alpha decreases (300-450 ms) for low-arousing positive as compared to low-arousing negative words, suggesting an arousal-dependent positivity bias during lexical retrieval. Both age groups showed similar LPPs to negative words. Older adults further showed a larger mid-frontal theta increase (500-700 ms) than younger adults for low-arousing negative words, possibly indicating down-regulation of negative meanings of low-arousing words. Altogether, our data supported the strength and vulnerability integration model of aging.

The impact of emotional content on pseudoword recognition

The present study investigates the influence of emotional information on language processing. To this aim, we measured behavioral responses and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during four Italian lexical decision experiments in which we used emotionally intense and neutral pseudowords—i.e., pseudowords derived from changing one letter in a word (e.g., cammelto, derived from cammello ‘camel’ vs. copezzolo, from capezzolo ‘nipple’)—as stimuli. In Experiment 1 and 2, half of the pseudowords were emotionally intense and half were neutral, and were mixed with neutral words. In Experiment 3, the list composition was manipulated, with ¼ of the pseudowords being derived from emotionally intense words and ¾ derived from neutral words. Experiment 4 was identical to Experiment 1, but ERPs were recorded. Emotionally intense pseudowords were categorized more slowly than neutral pseudowords, with the difference emerging both in the mean and at the leading edge of the response times distribution. Moreover, emotionally intense pseudowords elicited smaller N170 and N400 than neutral pseudowords. These results speak in favor of a fast and multi-level infiltration of the emotional information into the linguistic process of word recognition.

Anxiety Regulation: From Affective Neuroscience to Clinical Practice

According to psychoanalysis, anxiety signals a threat whenever a forbidden feeling emerges. Anxiety triggers defenses and maladaptive behaviors, thus leading to clinical problems. For these reasons, anxiety regulation is a core aspect of psychodynamic-oriented treatments to help clients. In the present theoretical paper, we review and discuss anxiety generation and dysregulation, first from a neural point of view, presenting findings from neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies. The aim is to trace parallels with psychodynamic theories of anxiety. Then, we discuss the psychological mechanisms and neural bases of emotion regulation in the laboratory, and possible neurobiological mechanisms of anxiety regulation in psychotherapy. We describe two different approaches to emotion/anxiety regulation, one based on the standard cognitive model of emotion regulation, the other based on psychodynamic principles and affective neuroscience. We then illustrate in detail a dynamic experiential approach to regulation. This model claims that emotions arise before cognition and are not inherently dysregulated. Dysregulation emerges from co-occurrences of emotions and associated anxiety. Technical consequences of this model are discussed and include strategies to regulate anxiety.