Individual differences in emotion differentiation modulate electrocortical dynamics of cognitive reappraisal

The neural correlates of emotion processing and reappraisal as reflected in EEG

Successful reappraisal modulates the impact of emotion-inducing stimuli through reinterpretation of their meaning and decreases subjective emotional experience. Here the question is addressed how the altered emotional experience is related to altered electro-cortical responses, and about the neural mechanisms underlying regulation itself. To this end, we recorded EEG during a cued emotion-regulation paradigm including negative and neutral pictures. Firstly, based on hypothesis-driven analysis of the Late Positive Potential (LPP), we found that the early fronto-centro-parietal LPP (400-1000 ms) increased when passively viewing negative versus neutral pictures. Reappraisal did not decrease this LPP. Instead, only during reappraisal, the emotion effect on the parietal LPP was sustained until the picture offset. Secondly, we applied a localizer approach to uncover reappraisal effects with other spatiotemporal characteristics than the traditional LPP but did not observe such effects. Despite indications of theta oscillations being associated with cognitive and/or affective control, no significant effects were found on theta activity for emotion processing or reappraisal. Our findings suggest that emotion regulation may affect the LPP in several ways, depending on the task design and including affective as well as more cognitive influences. A potential role for theta in emotion regulation remains to be elucidated.

Negative Emotion Differentiation Promotes Cognitive Reappraisal: Evidence From Electroencephalogram Oscillations and Phase-Amplitude Coupling

Cognitive reappraisal, an effective emotion regulation strategy, is influenced by various individual factors. Although previous studies have established a link between negative emotion differentiation (NED) and cognitive reappraisal, the underlying neural mechanisms remain largely unknown. Using electroencephalography, this study investigates the influence and neural basis of NED in cognitive reappraisal by integrating aspects of event-related potentials, neural oscillation rhythms, and cross-frequency coupling. The findings revealed that individuals with high NED demonstrated a significant decrease in parietal late positive potential amplitudes during cognitive reappraisal, suggesting enhanced cognitive reappraisal abilities. Moreover, high NED individuals displayed increased γ synchronization, parietal α-γ coupling, and frontal θ-γ coupling when reappraising negative emotions than those with low emotion differentiation ability. Machine learning analysis of these neural indicators highlighted the superior classification and predictive accuracy of multimodal indicators for NED as opposed to unimodal indicators. Overall, this multimodal evidence provides a comprehensive interpretation of the neurophysiological mechanisms through which NED influences cognitive reappraisal and provides preliminary empirical support for personalized cognitive reappraisal interventions to alleviate emotional problems.

Higher emotional granularity relates to greater inferior frontal cortex cortical thickness in healthy, older adults

Individuals with high emotional granularity make fine-grained distinctions between their emotional experiences. To have greater emotional granularity, one must acquire rich conceptual knowledge of emotions and use this knowledge in a controlled and nuanced way. In the brain, the neural correlates of emotional granularity are not well understood. While the anterior temporal lobes, angular gyri, and connected systems represent conceptual knowledge of emotions, inhibitory networks with hubs in the inferior frontal cortex (i.e., posterior inferior frontal gyrus, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and dorsal anterior insula) guide the selection of this knowledge during emotions. We investigated the structural neuroanatomical correlates of emotional granularity in 58 healthy, older adults (ages 62-84 years), who have had a lifetime to accrue and deploy their conceptual knowledge of emotions. Participants reported on their daily experience of 13 emotions for 8 weeks and underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging. We computed intraclass correlation coefficients across daily emotional experience surveys (45 surveys on average per participant) to quantify each participant's overall emotional granularity. Surface-based morphometry analyses revealed higher overall emotional granularity related to greater cortical thickness in inferior frontal cortex (pFWE < 0.05) in bilateral clusters in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex and extending into the left dorsal anterior insula. Overall emotional granularity was not associated with cortical thickness in the anterior temporal lobes or angular gyri. These findings suggest individual differences in emotional granularity relate to variability in the structural neuroanatomy of the inferior frontal cortex, an area that supports the controlled selection of conceptual knowledge during emotional experiences.

Examining the Role of Emotion Differentiation on Emotion and Cardiovascular Physiological Activity During Acute Stress

Emotion differentiation (ED) - the tendency to experience one's emotions with specificity - is a well-established predictor of adaptive responses to daily life stress. Yet, there is little research testing the role of ED in self-reported and physiological responses to an acute stressor. In the current study, we investigate the effects of negative emotion differentiation (NED) and positive emotion differentiation (PED) on participants' self-reported emotions and cardiac-mediated sympathetic nervous system reactivity (i.e., pre-ejection period) in response to a stressful task. Healthy young adults enrolled in a two-session study. At an initial session, participants completed a modified experience sampling procedure (i.e., the Day Reconstruction Method). At session 2, 195 completed the Trier Social Stress Test while cardiac impedance was acquired throughout. Linear regressions demonstrated that higher NED, but not PED, was associated with experiencing less intense self-reported negative, high arousal emotions (e.g., irritated, panicky) during the stressor (β =  - .15, p < .05) although people with higher NED also exhibited greater sympathetic reactivity (β = .16, p < .05). In exploratory analyses, we tested whether the effect of NED on self-reported stress was mediated by the tendency to make internally focus (or self-focused) attributions about performance on the task but did not find a significant indirect effect (p = .085). These results both complement prior work and provide a more complex picture of the role of NED in adaptive responses to stressful life events, suggesting that people with higher NED may experience their emotions as more manageable regardless of their level of physiological arousal.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00189-y.

The causal role of the bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortices on emotion regulation of social feedback

The ventrolateral prefrontal cortices (VLPFC) are crucial regions involved in voluntary emotion regulation. However, the lateralization of the VLPFC in downregulating negative emotions remains unclear; and whether the causal role of the VLPFC is generalizable to upregulating positive emotions is unexplored. This study used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to examine the causal relationship between the left/right VLPFC and social emotion reappraisal. One hundred and twenty participants were randomly assigned to either active (left and right VLPFC groups, n = 40/40) or sham (vertex, n = 40) TMS groups. Participants were instructed to passively receive social feedback or use reappraisal strategies to positively regulate their emotions. While the subjective emotional rating showed that the bilateral VLPFC facilitated the reappraisal success, the electrophysiological measure of the late positive potential (LPP) demonstrated a more critical role of the right VLPFC on social pain relief (decreased LPP amplitudes) and social reward magnification (enhanced LPP amplitudes). In addition, the influence of emotion regulation on social evaluation was found to be mediated by the memory of social feedback, indicating the importance of memory in social behavioral shaping. These findings suggest clinical protocols for the rehabilitation of emotion-regulatory function in patients with affective and social disorders.

Similar brains blend emotion in similar ways: Neural representations of individual difference in emotion profiles

Our daily emotional experience is a complex construct that usually involves multiple emotions blended in a context-dependent manner. However, the co-occurring and context-dependent nature of human emotions was understated in previous studies when addressing the individual difference in emotional experiences. The present study proposed a situated and blended 'profile' perspective to characterize individualized emotional experiences. Eighty participants watched a series of emotional videos with their EEG recorded, and the individual differences in their emotion profiles were measured as the vector distances between their multidimensional emotion ratings for these video stimuli. This measure was found to be a reliable descriptor of individualized emotional experiences and could efficiently predict classical emotional complexity indices. More importantly, inter-subject representational analyses revealed that similar emotion profiles were associated with similar delta-band activities over the prefrontal and temporo-parietal regions and similar theta-band activities over the frontal regions. Furthermore, left- and right-lateralized temporo-parietal representations were observed for positive and negative emotion profiles, respectively. Our findings demonstrate the potential of taking a 'profile' perspective for understanding individual differences in human emotions.

Emotion Differentiation and Youth Mental Health: Current Understanding and Open Questions

A growing body of research identifies emotion differentiation-the ability to specifically identify one's emotions-as a key skill for well-being. High emotion differentiation is associated with healthier and more effective regulation of one's emotions, and low emotion differentiation has been documented in several forms of psychopathology. However, the lion's share of this research has focused on adult samples, even though approximately 50% of mental disorders onset before age 18. This review curates what we know about the development of emotion differentiation and its implications for youth mental health. I first review published studies investigating how emotion differentiation develops across childhood and adolescence, as well as studies testing relations between emotion differentiation and mental health in youth samples. Emerging evidence suggests that emotion differentiation actually falls across childhood and adolescence, a counterintuitive pattern that merits further investigation. Additionally, several studies find relations between emotion differentiation and youth mental health, but some instability in results emerged. I then identify open questions that limit our current understanding of emotion differentiation, including (i) lack of clarity as to the valid measurement of emotion differentiation, (ii) potential third variables that could explain relations between emotion differentiation and mental-health (e.g., mean negative affect, IQ, personality, and circularity with outcomes), and (iii) lack of clear mechanistic models regarding the development of emotion differentiation and how it facilitates well-being. I conclude with a discussion of future directions that can address open questions and work toward interventions that treat (or even prevent) psychopathology.

Investigating the relationship between emotional granularity and cardiorespiratory physiological activity in daily life

Emotional granularity describes the ability to create emotional experiences that are precise and context-specific. Despite growing evidence of a link between emotional granularity and mental health, the physiological correlates of granularity have been under-investigated. This study explored the relationship between granularity and cardiorespiratory physiological activity in everyday life, with particular reference to the role of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), an estimate of vagal influence on the heart often associated with positive mental and physical health outcomes. Participants completed a physiologically triggered experience-sampling protocol including ambulatory recording of electrocardiogram, impedance cardiogram, movement, and posture. At each prompt, participants generated emotion labels to describe their current experience. In an end-of-day survey, participants elaborated on each prompt by rating the intensity of their experience on a standard set of emotion adjectives. Consistent with our hypotheses, individuals with higher granularity exhibited a larger number of distinct patterns of physiological activity during seated rest, and more situationally precise patterns of activity during emotional events: granularity was positively correlated with the number of clusters of cardiorespiratory physiological activity discovered in seated rest data, as well as with the performance of classifiers trained on event-related changes in physiological activity. Granularity was also positively associated with RSA during seated rest periods, although this relationship did not reach significance in this sample. These findings are consistent with constructionist accounts of emotion that propose concepts as a key mechanism underlying individual differences in emotional experience, physiological regulation, and physical health.