TY - JOUR
T1 - Prefrontal-Subcortical Pathways Mediating Successful Emotion Regulation
AU - Wager, Tor D.
AU - Davidson, Matthew L.
AU - Hughes, Brent L.
AU - Lindquist, Martin A.
AU - Ochsner, Kevin N.
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Niall Bolger for helpful discussion on path analysis and the authors of SPM software for making it freely available. This paper was made possible with the support of NIH Grant MH076137 (K.O.), NIH Grant MH076136 (T.W.), and NSF 0631637 (T.W.) Author contributions are as follows: design, T.W. and K.O.; data collection, B.H.; data analysis, T.W., B.H., M.D., and M.L.; and writing, T.W., K.O., and B.H. Matlab code implementing mediation analyses is freely available at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/tor/ .
PY - 2008/9/25
Y1 - 2008/9/25
N2 - Although prefrontal cortex has been implicated in the cognitive regulation of emotion, the cortical-subcortical interactions that mediate this ability remain poorly understood. To address this issue, we identified a right ventrolateral prefrontal region (vlPFC) whose activity correlated with reduced negative emotional experience during cognitive reappraisal of aversive images. We then applied a pathway-mapping analysis on subcortical regions to locate mediators of the association between vlPFC activity and reappraisal success (i.e., reductions in reported emotion). Results identified two separable pathways that together explained ∼50% of the reported variance in self-reported emotion: (1) a path through nucleus accumbens that predicted greater reappraisal success, and (2) a path through ventral amygdala that predicted reduced reappraisal success (i.e., more negative emotion). These results provide direct evidence that vlPFC is involved in both the generation and regulation of emotion through different subcortical pathways, suggesting a general role for this region in appraisal processes.
AB - Although prefrontal cortex has been implicated in the cognitive regulation of emotion, the cortical-subcortical interactions that mediate this ability remain poorly understood. To address this issue, we identified a right ventrolateral prefrontal region (vlPFC) whose activity correlated with reduced negative emotional experience during cognitive reappraisal of aversive images. We then applied a pathway-mapping analysis on subcortical regions to locate mediators of the association between vlPFC activity and reappraisal success (i.e., reductions in reported emotion). Results identified two separable pathways that together explained ∼50% of the reported variance in self-reported emotion: (1) a path through nucleus accumbens that predicted greater reappraisal success, and (2) a path through ventral amygdala that predicted reduced reappraisal success (i.e., more negative emotion). These results provide direct evidence that vlPFC is involved in both the generation and regulation of emotion through different subcortical pathways, suggesting a general role for this region in appraisal processes.
KW - SYSNEURO
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=52049106624&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.09.006
DO - 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.09.006
M3 - Article
C2 - 18817740
AN - SCOPUS:52049106624
SN - 0896-6273
VL - 59
SP - 1037
EP - 1050
JO - Neuron
JF - Neuron
IS - 6
ER -