Previous emotion regulation research has been successful in altering aversive emotional reactions. It is unclear, however, whether such strategies can also efficiently regulate expectations of reward arising from conditioned stimuli, which can at times be maladaptive (for example, drug cravings). Using a monetary reward-conditioning procedure with cognitive strategies, we observed attenuation in both the physiological (skin conductance) and neural correlates (striatum) of reward expectation as participants engaged in emotion regulation. The expectation of a potential reward elicits positive feelings and aids in the learning of environmental cues that predict future rewards. Central to this process is the role of the striatum, a multifaceted structure that is involved in affective learning and general reward processing across species 1-3 , which is particularly engaged when potential rewards are predicted or anticipated 4-6 . However, this striatum signal can also be maladaptive and correlates with drug specific cravings 7 , potentially increasing urges to partake in risk-seeking behavior 8 . Given this, it is important to understand how to regulate or control the positive feelings associated with reward expectation. One promising method for examining this is the utilization of cognitive strategies commonly used in both social 9 and clinical 8 disciplines. Emotion regulation strategies, for example, have been successful in attenuating aversive emotional reactions that are elicited by various types of negative stimuli 10 , a pattern that is also reflected in neural regions involved in emotion, such as the amygdala, with both behavioral and subcortical neural modulations possibly mediated by prefrontal cortical regions Fifteen participants who gave written consent were presented with an adapted version of a classical conditioning procedure that has been previously used to study aversive learning 13 . Specifically, participants were presented for 4 s with two conditioned stimuli, a blue and a yellow square, that either predicted (CS+) or did not predict (CS-) a potential monetary reward ($4.00; We obtained written informed consent from 15 participants before the experiment. A repeated-measures ANOVA with the SCRs revealed a main effect of type of conditioned stimuli (CS+, CS-; F 1,14 ¼ 15.48, P o 0.001), a main effect of type of instruction (attend, regulate; F 1,14 ¼ 14.75, P o 0.002) and an interaction between the two factors (F 1,14 ¼ 23.51, P o 0.0001; The second contrast (regulate versus attend trials) yielded a variety of cortical regions that have been previously implicated in emotion regulation Our finding that emotion regulation strategies can successfully modulate physiological and neural correlates underlying the expectation of reward in a conditioning procedure is a first step to understanding how top-down modulation may effectively control positive emotions and eventual urges that may arise (for example, drug craving). This is consistent with recent neuroimaging studies suggesting that cognitive strategies modulate subcortical regions involved in aversive emotional processin
