Does psychosocial stress impact cognitive reappraisal? Behavioral and neural evidence

Cognitive reappraisal (CR) is regarded as an effective emotion regulation strategy. Acute stress, however, is believed to impair the functioning of prefrontal-based neural systems, which could result in lessened effectiveness of CR under stress. This study tested the behavioral and neurobiological impact of acute stress on CR. While undergoing fMRI, adult participants (n = 54) passively viewed or used CR to regulate their response to negative and neutral pictures and provided ratings of their negative affect in response to each picture. Half of the participants experienced an fMRI-adapted acute psychosocial stress manipulation similar to the Trier Social Stress Test, and a contr ol group received parallel manipulations without the stressful components. Relative to the control group, the stress group exhibited heightened stress as indexed by self-report, heart rate, and salivary cortisol throughout the scan. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that reappraisal success was equivalent in the control and stress groups, as was electrodermal response to the pictures. Heart rate deceleration, a physiological response typically evoked by aversive pictures, was blunted in response to negative pictures and heightened in response to neutral pictures in the stress group. In the brain, we found weak evidence of stress-induced increases of reappraisalrelated activity in parts of the PFC and left amygdala, but these relationships were statistically fragile. Together, these findings suggest that both the self-reported and neural effects of CR may be robust to at least moderate levels of stress, informing theoretical models of stress effects on cognition and emotion

Using temporal distancing to regulate emotion in adolescence:modulation by reactive aggression

Adopting a temporally distant perspective on stressors reduces distress in adults. Here we investigate whether the extent to which individuals project themselves into the future influences distancing efficacy. We also examined modulating effects of age across adolescence and reactive aggression: factors associated with reduced future-thinking and poor emotion regulation. Participants (N = 83, aged 12–22) read scenarios and rated negative affect when adopting a distant-future perspective, near-future perspective, or when reacting naturally. Self-report data revealed significant downregulation of negative affect during the distant-future condition, with a similar though non-significant skin conductance pattern. Importantly, participants who projected further ahead showed the greatest distress reductions. While temporal distancing efficacy did not vary with age, participants reporting greater reactive aggression showed reduced distancing efficacy, and projected themselves less far into the future. Findings demonstrate the importance of temporal extent in effective temporal distancing; shedding light on a potential mechanism for poor emotional control associated with reactive aggression

Estrés laboral y regulación emocional en profesionales de salud mental

La investigación tiene como objetivo analizar la relación entre el estrés laboral y las estrategias de regulación emocional en profesionales de salud mental de un hospital psiquiátrico. Además, se investigaron las diferencias en el uso de estrategias de regulación emocional y estrés de acuerdo edad, sexo y profesión. La muestra fue constituida por 25 médicos, 40 enfermeros y 45 técnicos en enfermería, quienes respondieron al Inventario de Estrés para Profesionales de la Salud de Wolfgang (1988), adaptado al español por Palacios, Morán y Paz (2014); y, al Cuestionario de Regulación Emocional (ERQP) de Gross y John (2003) adaptado al Perú por Gargurevich y Matos (2010). Se encontró que el estrés ocupacional está relacionado al uso de la estrategia reevaluación, además, se encontraron diferencias en el uso de esta estrategia entre hombres y mujeres. En el grupo de mujeres, se encontró correlación entre el estrés y la estrategia de supresión, mientras que en los hombres se correlacionaron estrés y reevaluación. Se examinan las diferencias en cuanto a la profesión. No hubo resultados significativos con respecto a edad. Se presume que los hallazgos responden a las funciones de cada profesión.This study aims to determine the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and occupational stress in mental health professionals of a psychiatric hospital. Moreover, this study examined the differences in the use of these strategies and stress according to age, sex and profession. The participants were 110 mental health professionals, 25 physicians, 40 nurses and 45 nursing technicians, who answered two instruments; Health Professions Stress Inventory by Wolfgang (1988), adapted to Spanish by Palacios, Morán and Paz (2014); and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire by Gross and John (2003), adapted to Peru by Gargurevich and Matos (2010). Results showed correlation between occupational stress and reappraisal, also it shows differences regarding sex in the use of reappraisal. In women, stress and suppression correlated, but in men stress correlated with reappraisal. The differences regarding professions are examined. There were no significant results regarding to age. It is presumed that findings respond to the functions of each profession.Tesi

Amygdala Neurofeedback Training in Borderline Personality Disorder: Capturing Improvements in Emotion Regulation

The way we regulate emotions is a powerful determinant of behavior and directly impacts affect and physiology. Many mental disorders, such as borderline personality disorder, are in large part disorders of emotion dysregulation. Because of its important role in mental health, research has endeavored to understand the mechanisms and biological underpinnings of emotion regulation and to create trainings and specific clinical programs that aim to augment the ability to regulate emotions. The assessment of psychophysiological responses represents an important complementary method to quantify emotion regulation in both studies on healthy individuals and studies assessing clinical emotion regulation trainings. However, psychophysiological effects have been inconsistent across literature, which impedes informed decisions about suitable psychophysiological variables of emotion regulation experiments and clinical trainings. A new technique assumed to improve emotion regulation is amygdala neurofeedback training. Because patients with borderline personality disorder show hyperreactivity of the amygdala likely underlying the severe emotion regulation problems they suffer from, amygdala neurofeedback training may be a candidate training to improve emotion regulation in these patients. Until now, it has been unclear which aspects of psychopathology and emotion regulation may change with neurofeedback-aided amygdala downregulation in borderline personality disorder, which is urgently needed to determine a primary outcome measure for future randomized controlled trails. To fill these gaps, the present doctoral thesis identified the effects of psychophysiological responses of emotion regulation as well as important moderators and identified primary outcome measures of emotion dysregulation after neurofeedback training in patients with borderline personality disorder. In total, three studies were conducted. In Study I, a total of 1353 studies on psychophysiological responses of emotion regulation were screened through a systematic search of articles and meta-analyses were used to evaluate effect sizes of instructed downregulation strategies on common autonomic and electromyographic measures. Following this, Study II systematically tested effects of the startle probe timing on startle responses during emotion regulation in 47 healthy individuals. Study II aimed at optimizing emotion regulation assessment with the emotion-modulated startle that was then used in Study III. In Study III, a four-session amygdala neurofeedback training was tested in 24 female patients with borderline personality disorder. Before and after the neurofeedback training, as well as at a 6-week follow-up assessment, measures of emotion dysregulation and borderline personality disorder psychopathology were tested at diverse levels of analysis. Results from Study I demonstrate that effects of emotion regulation on autonomic measures, even if significant, were small and heterogeneous across studies, while electromyographic measures were more homogeneous and revealed medium effect sizes. Important study characteristics such as the study design, control instruction and trial duration moderated some autonomic effects of suppression and reappraisal. Study II demonstrated a significant inhibition of the startle response with emotion downregulation. Startle probes delivered at >7 seconds into the regulation phase were useful to quantify reappraisal effects, although earlier probes did not yield significantly smaller effects. Finally, Study III demonstrated that the inhibition of the startle with emotion downregulation increased after the training, suggesting improved emotion regulation abilities. In addition, we could demonstrate that general BPD psychopathology as well as affective instability and negative affect in daily life improved after training. However, after correction for multiple comparisons, observed effect sizes did not surpass the significance level and some effects (e.g., startle) faded to the 6-week follow-up assessment. In sum, the present thesis provides the groundwork for future randomized controlled trials of amygdala neurofeedback training and enables future laboratory and clinical studies to gain more stable effects in psychophysiological measurements of emotion regulation. In particular, the findings implicate that with regard to emotion regulation research, autonomic measures appear to be highly variable and thus should be selected carefully. In addition, we need more comparable psychophysiological set-ups in the empirical study of emotion regulation. The emotion-modulated startle not only proved to be a robust measure to quantify emotion regulation effects in general, but also appeared to be suitable to track improvements in emotion regulation in the context of a neurofeedback training targeting emotion dysregulation. With respect to emotion regulation outcome measures for future amygdala neurofeedback studies, further improvement of the specific paradigms is needed. In addition, the neurofeedback training itself should be optimized in terms of e.g. training time and booster sessions. Future placebo-controlled trials must then confirm that the treatment is effective in improving emotion regulation in those with borderline personality disorder

Valence-specific Enhancements in Visual Processing Regions Support Negative Memories:

Thesis advisor: Elizabeth A. KensingerResearch in four parts examines the effects of valence on the neural processes that support emotional memory formation and retrieval. Results show a consistent valence-specific enhancement of visuocortical engagement along the ventral visual stream and occipital cortex that supports negative memories to a greater extent than positive memories. Part I investigated the effects of valence on the interactions between trial-level physiological responses to emotional stimuli (i.e., heart rate deceleration) during encoding and subsequent memory vividness. Results showed that negative memory vividness, but not positive or neutral memory vividness, is tied to arousal-related enhancements of amygdala coupling with early visual cortex during encoding. These results suggest that co-occurring parasympathetic arousal responses and amygdala connectivity with early visual cortex during encoding influence subsequent memory vividness for negative stimuli, perhaps reflecting enhanced memory-relevant perceptual enhancements during encoding of negative stimuli. Part II examined links between individual differences in post-encoding increases is amygdala functional connectivity at rest and the degree and direction of emotional memory biases at retrieval. Results demonstrated that post-encoding increases in amygdala resting state functional connectivity with visuocortical and frontal regions predicted the degree of negative memory bias (i.e., better memory for unpleasant compared to pleasant stimuli) and positive memory bias, respectively. Further, the effect of amygdala-visuocortical post-encoding coupling on behavioral negative memory bias was completely mediated by greater retrieval-related activity for negative stimuli in visuocortical areas. These findings suggest that those individuals with a negative memory bias tend to engage visual processing regions across multiple phases of memory more than individuals with a positive memory bias. While Parts I-II examined encoding-related memory processes, Part III examined the effects of valence on true and false subjective memory vividness at the time of retrieval. The findings showed valence-specific enhancements in regions of the ventral visual stream (e.g., inferior temporal gyrus and parahippocampal cortex) support negative memory vividness to a greater extent than positive memory vividness. However, activation of the parahippocampal cortex also drove a false sense of negative memory vividness. Together, these findings suggest spatial overlap in regions that support negative true and false memory vividness. Lastly, Part IV utilized inhibitory repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to test if a portion of occipito-temporal cortex that showed consistent valence-specific effects of negative memory in Parts I-III was necessary for negative memory retrieval. Although some participants showed the hypothesized effect, there was no group-level evidence of a neuromodulatory effect of occipito-temporal cortex rTMS on negative memory retrieval. Together, the results of the current dissertation work highlight the importance of valence-based models of emotional memory and consistently implicated enhanced visuosensory engagement across multiple phases of memory. By identifying valence-specific effects of trial-level physiological arousal during encoding, post-encoding amygdala coupling during early consolidation, and similarities and differences between true and false negative memories, the present set of work has important implications for how negative and positive memories are created and remembered differently.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Psychology