The cognitive control of emotion

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.03.010Get rights and content

The capacity to control emotion is important for human adaptation. Questions about the neural bases of emotion regulation have recently taken on new importance, as functional imaging studies in humans have permitted direct investigation of control strategies that draw upon higher cognitive processes difficult to study in nonhumans. Such studies have examined (1) controlling attention to, and (2) cognitively changing the meaning of, emotionally evocative stimuli. These two forms of emotion regulation depend upon interactions between prefrontal and cingulate control systems and cortical and subcortical emotion-generative systems. Taken together, the results suggest a functional architecture for the cognitive control of emotion that dovetails with findings from other human and nonhuman research on emotion.

Introduction

Conflicts, failures, and losses at times seem to conspire to ruin us. Yet, as Marcus Aurelius observed nearly two millennia ago, we humans have an extraordinary capacity to regulate the emotions occasioned by such travails. Importantly, these regulatory efforts largely determine the impact such difficulties will have on our mental and physical well-being 1, 2, 3. Given its importance to adaptive functioning, it is not surprising that research on emotion regulation has a long history (Box 1). Past work has investigated the cellular responses to stress, the behavioral consequences of adopting specific regulatory strategies, and the neural systems involved in simple forms of affective learning and social behavior in rodents and nonhuman primates 1, 4, 5, 6, 7. In recent years, research on emotion regulation has entered a new phase as functional imaging studies of regulatory phenomena in humans have developed rapidly. This growth has facilitated investigation of human analogs to affective behaviors studied in animals, but, perhaps more importantly, has allowed study of the emotion regulatory power of higher cognitive control processes that are difficult to study in animal models. In so doing, current work on the ā€˜hotā€™ control of emotion draws on rapidly developing cognitive neuroscience models of the ā€˜coldā€™ control of attention and memory (e.g. 8, 9). The aim of this review is to evaluate recent imaging studies that, in the context of evidence from allied human and animal work, help to elucidate the functional architecture underlying the cognitive control of emotion.

Section snippets

Emotion and emotion regulation

An essential part of understanding emotion regulatory mechanisms is characterizing the processes that generate emotions. Current models posit that emotions are valenced responses to external stimuli and/or internal mental representations that (i) involve changes across multiple response systems (e.g. experiential, behavioral, peripheral physiological [10]), (ii) are distinct from moods, in that they often have identifiable objects or triggers, (iii) can be either unlearned responses to stimuli

Attentional control

Attention is often referred to as the selective aspect of information processing, enabling us to focus on goal-relevant (e.g. our writing) and ignore goal-irrelevant (e.g. loud music next door) information. In general, studies have indicated that behavioral and neural responses to attended as compared with unattended stimuli (or stimulus features) are either facilitated or inhibited, respectively (e.g. [19]). When responses to attended and unattended inputs do not differ, processing is

Cognitive change

The use of higher cognitive abilities such as working memory, long-term memory and mental imagery to support learning, judgment and reasoning has been a primary focus of research in cognitive neuroscience. In general, these abilities have been shown to depend upon interactions between prefrontal systems that support control processes and posterior cortical and subcortical systems that represent different types of modality specific (e.g. visual, spatial, auditory) information 8, 36. In the

Towards a functional architecture of cognitive control of emotion

The goal of this review was to evaluate recent imaging studies whose results can help to elucidate the functional architecture underlying the cognitive control of emotion.

Work using animal models of affective learning and imaging studies of either cognitive control or emotional responding in both healthy and psychiatric populations have implicated regions of PFC, OFC and ACC in specific types of control processes and subcortical regions, such as the amygdala, in different types of emotional

Future directions

Although current research provides converging evidence for a functional architecture for emotion control, it is important to note that for each type of control examined here, limited data and/or variability in activations across studies make it difficult to draw firm and highly specific inferences concerning which control computations are carried out by specific systems, and how they configure for different strategies in different contexts. To address these issues, future work will need to: (1)

Acknowledgements

The writing of this review was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BCS-93679 and National Institute of Health Grant MH58147.

References (80)

  • J.C. Hsieh

    PET study on central processing of pain in trigeminal neuropathy

    Eur. J. Pain

    (1999)
  • J. Jensen

    Direct activation of the ventral striatum in anticipation of aversive stimuli

    Neuron

    (2003)
  • J.P. O'Doherty

    Neural responses during anticipation of a primary taste reward

    Neuron

    (2002)
  • K.L. Phan

    Neural substrates for voluntary suppression of negative affect: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

    Biol. Psychiatry

    (2005)
  • K.N. Ochsner

    For better or for worse: neural systems supporting the cognitive down- and up-regulation of negative emotion

    Neuroimage

    (2004)
  • J. Levesque

    Neural circuitry underlying voluntary suppression of sadness

    Biol. Psychiatry

    (2003)
  • M.D. Lieberman

    The neural correlates of placebo effects: a disruption account

    Neuroimage

    (2004)
  • E.A. Phelps

    Extinction learning in humans: role of the amygdala and vmPFC

    Neuron

    (2004)
  • M.L. Kringelbach et al.

    Neural correlates of rapid reversal learning in a simple model of human social interaction

    Neuroimage

    (2003)
  • J.S. Morris et al.

    Dissociable amygdala and orbitofrontal responses during reversal fear conditioning

    Neuroimage

    (2004)
  • J. Rilling

    A neural basis for social cooperation

    Neuron

    (2002)
  • D.L. Paulhus

    Psychological defense: contemporary theory and research

  • S. Hamann et al.

    Individual differences in emotion processing

    Curr. Opin. Neurobiol.

    (2004)
  • J. Levesque

    Neural basis of emotional self-regulation in childhood

    Neuroscience

    (2004)
  • J.J. Gross

    The emerging field of emotion regulation: an integrative review

    Rev. Gen. Psychol.

    (1998)
  • J.J. Gross et al.

    Emotion regulation and mental health

    Clin. Psychol. Sci. Pract.

    (1995)
  • R.J. Davidson

    Affective style, psychopathology, and resilience: brain mechanisms and plasticity

    Am. Psychol.

    (2000)
  • D.S. Charney

    Psychobiological mechanisms of resilience and vulnerability: implications for successful adaptation to extreme stress

    Am. J. Psychiatry

    (2004)
  • N.H. Kalin et al.

    Nonhuman primate models to study anxiety, emotion regulation, and psychopathology

    Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci.

    (2003)
  • G.J. Quirk et al.

    Inhibition of the amygdala: key to pathological states?

  • M. D'Esposito

    Prefrontal cortical contributions to working memory: evidence from event-related fMRI studies

    Exp. Brain Res.

    (2000)
  • J.T. Cacioppo

    The psychophysiology of emotion

  • Scherer, K.R. et al., eds (2001) Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research, Oxford University...
  • K.N. Ochsner

    A multiprocess perspective on the neuroscience of emotion

  • B. Parkinson et al.

    Classifying affect-regulation strategies

    Cogn. Emot.

    (1999)
  • J.J. Gross

    Emotion regulation: affective, cognitive, and social consequences

    Psychophysiology

    (2002)
  • D.C. Jackson

    Suppression and enhancement of emotional responses to unpleasant pictures

    Psychophysiology

    (2000)
  • K.N. Ochsner et al.

    Thinking makes it so: a social cognitive neuroscience approach to emotion regulation

  • Ochsner, K.N. Characterizing the functional architecture of affect regulation: emerging answers and outstanding...
  • A.K. Anderson

    Neural correlates of the automatic processing of threat facial signals

    J. Neurosci.

    (2003)
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text