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Neural Correlates of Self-distraction from Anxiety and a Process Model of Cognitive Emotion Regulation

¹ Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, UK, ² Department of Psychology, University of Regensburg, Germany

Reprint requests should be sent to Raffael Kalisch, Functional Imaging Laboratory, Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, UK, or via e-mail: rkalisch{at}fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk.

Cognitive strategies used in volitional emotion regulation include self-distraction and reappraisal (reinterpretation). There is debate as to what the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms underlying these strategies are. For example, it is unclear whether self-distraction and reappraisal, although distinct at a phenomenological level, are also mediated by distinct neural processes. This is partly because imaging studies on reappraisal and self-distraction have been performed in different emotional contexts and are difficult to compare. We have therefore investigated the neural correlates of self-distraction, as indexed by a thought suppression task, in an anticipatory anxiety paradigm previously employed by us to study reappraisal. Brain activity was measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. We show that self-distraction recruits the left lateral prefrontal cortex. Based on a review of the existing data, we develop a process model of cognitive emotion regulation. The model posits that both self-distraction and reappraisal attenuate emotional reactions through replacement of emotional by neutral mental contents but achieve replacement in different ways. This is associated with a dependence of self-distraction on a left prefrontal production function, whereas reappraisal depends on a right prefrontal higher order monitoring process.

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