The Neural Bases of the Cognitive Control of Emotion

描述(申请人提供)：在过去的十年里，描述和治疗临床和行为障碍的一个重要方法是应用认知神经科学技术，如脑成像，以了解功能障碍的机制。这种方法还没有被应用于理解人类使用更高的认知能力来调节情绪的潜在机制。了解这些机制很重要，因为认知疗法对于治疗与许多心理和身体健康疾病相关的情绪失调非常有效，从创伤后应激和抑郁到心血管疾病。在过去的五年里，我们和其他人完成了关于这个问题的第一波研究，发现了前额叶控制系统和情绪处理系统(如杏仁核)之间的相互作用，这些系统是负面情绪有效认知下调的基础。这项提议的目标是超越这些最初的步骤，更准确地描述情绪认知控制的神经基础的标准模型。为此，我们提出了一系列fMRI实验，旨在解决两种形式的认知情绪调节的神经基础的具体问题，并证明了临床和实验室效果：分心和重新评估。重点是检查负面情绪的下调，因为它与许多临床疾病有关。实验1-4解决了我们的第一个具体目标，即确定分心和重新评估的神经基础如何依赖于引发刺激的情绪的类型。这些实验考察了对预期焦虑的调节，由对图像与身体疼痛的认知评估驱动的情绪，积极与消极情绪，以及调节对情绪反应的长期影响。实验5和实验6解决了我们的第二个具体目标，即确定特定类型的分心和重新评估的神经基础。这些实验考察了使用不同类型的思想来分散自己对令人厌恶的刺激的注意力，或者使用不同类型的重新评估来改变刺激的意义。一般而言，我们假设，可以根据与特定前额叶系统控制系统相关的功能及其对大脑系统的影响来理解给定策略的调节效应，这些系统编码刺激特征(例如，颞叶或躯体感觉皮质)或产生情绪反应(例如，杏仁核)。我们方法的长期目标是提供一个健康成年人对情绪进行有效认知控制的神经基础的模型，在未来的工作中可以用来解释临床人群中功能失调的情绪反应的机制。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Over the past decade an important approach to describing and treating clinical and behavioral disorders has been the application of cognitive neuroscience techniques, like brain imaging, to understanding mechanisms of dysfunction. This approach has not yet been applied to understanding the mechanisms underlying the human ability to use higher cognitive abilities to regulate emotion. Understanding these mechanisms is important because cognitive therapies are highly effective for treating the emotion dysregulation associated with numerous mental and physical health disorders, ranging from post-traumatic stress and depression to cardiovascular disease. In the past five years, we and others have completed an initial wave of research on this issue that has identified interactions between prefrontal control systems and emotion processing systems (such as the amygdala) that underlie the effective cognitive down-regulation of negative emotion. The goal of this proposal is to move beyond these initial steps to more precisely characterize a normative model of the neural bases of the cognitive control of emotion. Towards that end, we propose a series of fMRI experiments is designed to address specific questions about the neural bases of two forms of cognitive emotion regulation with demonstrated clinical and laboratory efficacy: distraction and reappraisal. An emphasis is placed on examining the down-regulation of negative emotion, because of its relevance to numerous clinical disorders. Experiments 1-4 address our first specific aim, which is to determine how the neural bases of distraction and reappraisal depend upon the type of emotion eliciting stimulus. These Experiments examine the regulation of anticipatory anxiety, emotions driven by cognitive appraisals of images vs. physical pain, positive vs. negative emotion, and the long-term effects of regulation on emotional responses. Experiments 5 and 6 address our second specific aim, which is to identify the neural bases of specific subtypes of distraction and reappraisal. These Experiments examine the use of different kinds of thoughts to distract oneself from an aversive stimulus, or the use of different kinds of reappraisal to transform the meaning of that stimulus. In general, we hypothesize that the regulatory effects of a given strategy can be understood in terms of the functions associated with particular prefrontal systems control systems and their effects upon brain systems that encode stimulus features (e.g. temporal or somatosensory cortex) or generate emotional responses (e.g. amygdala). The long term goal of our approach is to provide a model of the neural bases of effective cognitive control over emotion in healthy adults that could - in future work - be used to explain the mechanisms underlying dysfunctional emotional responses in clinical populations.