Elsevier

Neuroscience Letters

Volume 693, 6 February 2019, Pages 35-39
Neuroscience Letters

Review article
Capacity and tendency: A neuroscientific framework for the study of emotion regulation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2017.09.017Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The capacity to regulate emotion and the tendency to are complementary aspects of effective emotion regulation.

  • Regulatory capacity is supported primarily by interactions between lateral prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.

  • Preliminary results suggest that regulatory tendency and regulatory capacity share partially overlapping neural bases.

  • Links between regulatory capacity and tendency may differ in accordance with developmental stage and psychopathology.

Abstract

It is widely accepted that the ability to effectively regulate one’s emotions is a cornerstone of physical and mental health. As such, it should come as no surprise that the number of neuroimaging studies focused on emotion regulation and associated processes has increased exponentially in the past decade. To date, neuroimaging research on this topic has examined two distinct but complementary features of emotion regulation – the capacity to effectively utilize a strategy to regulate emotion and to a lesser extent, the tendency to choose to regulate. However, theoretical accounts of emotion regulation have only recently begun to distinguish capacity from tendency. In the present review, we provide a novel framework for conceptualizing these two intertwined, yet distinct, facets of emotion regulation. First we characterize brain regions that support emotion generation and are thus targeted by emotion regulation. Next, we synthesize findings from the dozens of neuroimaging studies that have examined emotion regulation capacity, focusing in particular on the most commonly studied emotion regulation strategy – reappraisal. Finally, we discuss emerging neuroimaging research examining state and trait regulatory tendencies. We conclude by integrating findings from neuroimaging research on emotion regulation capacity and tendency and suggest ways that this integrated model can inform basic and translational neuroscientific research on emotion regulation.

Introduction

Though emotions are generally adaptive, they can lead to mental and physical health problems if left unchecked [9], [38], [44], [51], [53], [99]. Emotion regulation – the use of conscious or unconscious processes that change the nature, intensity or duration of one’s emotions – is central to wellbeing [41], [78].

Emotion regulation is driven jointly by one’s tendency to choose a specific regulatory strategy and one’s capacity to implement said strategy effectively [10], [25], [42], [79]. Initial evidence suggests that regulatory tendency and capacity co-develop during childhood [71] and are related but not synonymous in adulthood [69]. While recent reviews have begun to characterize “different flavors” of emotion regulation by distinguishing between model-based and model-free or implicit and explicit forms of emotion regulation [11], [32], prevailing models have not yet taken into account the complementary significance of regulatory capacity and tendency [25], [78], [82], [93]. Here, we review existing neuroimaging findings related to the generation and regulation of emotion and then outline future directions for how regulatory capacity and tendency might be integrated in basic, developmental, and translational research.

Section snippets

Emotion generation

Before considering how emotions are regulated, it is useful to consider how emotional responses are generated. For the purposes of this review, we define emotions as reasonably coherent combinations of affective experience, behavior and physiological activity that arise in response to motivationally-relevant stimuli [50], [58], [60], [67]. Appraisal models suggest that emotions unfold in a series of steps that involve perceiving, attending to, interpreting and responding to an internal or

Mutual reinforcement of regulation capacity and tendency in lateral prefrontal and parietal systems

The extant literature demonstrates that reappraisal capacity is supported by interactions between dlPFC, vlPFC, dmPFC, PPC and the amygdala [12], [82]. Critically, neural responses to affective stimuli in these same brain regions predicts the tendency to reappraise [26], [29]. This raises the question of how closely linked individual differences associated with capacity and tendency are. One unexplored possibility is that the strength of association between capacity and tendency changes during

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