Correlation coefficients between psychological assessments and subjective ratings (“risky” and “anxiety”) about the actions in video clips.

<p><b>Bold type</b>*: <i>p</i><0.05.</p

Neural activity for Suppress-negative (A) and Observe-negative (B) contrasted with Look-negative (<i>p</i> < .001 uncorrected).

<p>Regions with significantly greater activation in Suppress-negative compared to Look-negative condition included the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG; BA47). During Observe-negative compared to Look-negative, there was greater activation in the precentral gyrus (BA6), IFG (BA44), superior frontal gyrus (SFG; BA6/8), middle temporal gyrus (MTG; BA21/22), inferior parietal lobule (IPL; BA40), putamen, and anterior insula (AI; BA13).</p

Coordinates of the brain areas whose connectivity with the amygdala was positively correlated with regional amygdala activity during Suppress-negative vs. Look-negative.

<p>Height threshold: <i>p</i> < .001 uncorrected, Extent threshold: <i>k</i> = 5 voxels. The x, y, and z coordinates by which a voxel is determined referring to medial–lateral (x: positive = right), anterior–posterior (y: positive = anterior), and superior–inferior (z: positive = superior) positions denote the peak location on the MNI template. T-scores denote the difference between the two sample means compared with the dispersion and sample sizes of the two samples. Z-scores are the numbers from the unit normal distribution that give the same p value as the t statistic. Abbreviations: BA = Brodmann area; MNI = Montreal Neurological Institute template.</p><p>Coordinates of the brain areas whose connectivity with the amygdala was positively correlated with regional amygdala activity during Suppress-negative vs. Look-negative.</p

Neural Networks for Mindfulness and Emotion Suppression

<div><p>Mindfulness, an attentive non-judgmental focus on “here and now” experiences, has been incorporated into various cognitive behavioral therapy approaches and beneficial effects have been demonstrated. Recently, mindfulness has also been identified as a potentially effective emotion regulation strategy. On the other hand, emotion suppression, which refers to trying to avoid or escape from experiencing and being aware of one’s own emotions, has been identified as a potentially maladaptive strategy. Previous studies suggest that both strategies can decrease affective responses to emotional stimuli. They would, however, be expected to provide regulation through different top-down modulation systems. The present study was aimed at elucidating the different neural systems underlying emotion regulation via mindfulness and emotion suppression approaches. Twenty-one healthy participants used the two types of strategy in response to emotional visual stimuli while functional magnetic resonance imaging was conducted. Both strategies attenuated amygdala responses to emotional triggers, but the pathways to regulation differed across the two. A mindful approach appears to regulate amygdala functioning via functional connectivity from the medial prefrontal cortex, while suppression uses connectivity with other regions, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Thus, the two types of emotion regulation recruit different top-down modulation processes localized at prefrontal areas. These different pathways are discussed.</p></div

Experimental conditions and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) score (100-0) for each condition.

<p>Data are presented as mean ± standard deviation.</p

Coordinates for the brain areas activated in Suppress-negative vs. Look-negative.

<p>Height threshold: <i>p</i> < .001 uncorrected, Extent threshold: <i>k</i> = 5 voxels. The x, y, and z coordinates by which a voxel is determined referring to medial–lateral (x: positive = right), anterior–posterior (y: positive = anterior), and superior–inferior (z: positive = superior) positions denote the peak location on the MNI template. T-scores denote the difference between the two sample means compared with the dispersion and sample sizes of the two samples.Z-scores are the numbers from the unit normal distribution that give the same p value as the t statistic. Abbreviations: BA = Brodmann area; MNI = Montreal Neurological Institute template.</p><p>Coordinates for the brain areas activated in Suppress-negative vs. Look-negative.</p

Examples of movies (risk-taking and safe).

<p>Examples of movies (risk-taking and safe).</p

VAS scores for negative affect after each coping strategy (bars represent standard errors).

<p>Significant differences were found for the comparisons of Look-neutral vs. other conditions and Look-negative vs. Suppress-negative, and Observe-negative. The two types of emotion regulation strategies were effective for regulation of subjective emotion.</p

Brain images of neural activity in response to the observation of the object-related hand movement task for risk-taking actions vs. safe actions.

<p>Statistical threshold for illustrating the clusters was <i>p</i><0.001 uncorrected. The bar on the right shows the range of <i>t</i> scores for statistical parametric mapping. Calc. S, calcarine sulcus; FG, fusiform gyrus; FP, frontal pole; MFG, middle frontal gyrus; MTG, middle temporal gyrus; Occ, occipital cortex; SMA, supplementary motor area; SMG, supramarginal gyrus; SPG, superior parietal gyrus.</p

Correlation between regional AMG activity and functional connectivity to the AMG.

<p>The figures show brain regions that have more negative functional connectivity with the AMG when AMG responses were reduced during Suppress-negative (A) and Observe-negative (B) contrasted with Look-negative (<i>p</i> < .001 uncorrected).</p