The distinction between processes used to perceive and understand the self and others has received considerable attention in psychology and neuroscience. Brain findings highlight a role for various regions, in particular the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), in supporting judgments about both the self and others. We performed a meta-analysis of 107 neuroimaging studies of self- and other-related judgments using Multilevel Kernel Density Analysis (MKDA; Kober & Wager, 2010). We sought to determine what brain regions are reliably involved in each judgment type, and in particular, what the spatial and functional organization of mPFC is with respect to them. Relative to non-mentalizing judgments, both self and other judgments were associated with activity in mPFC, ranging from ventral to dorsal extents, as well as common activation of the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and posterior cingulate. A direct comparison between self and other judgments revealed that ventral mPFC (vmPFC), as well as left ventrolateral PFC and left insula, were more frequently activated by self-related judgments, whereas dorsal mPFC (dmPFC), in addition to bilateral TPJ and cuneus, were more frequently activated by other-related judgments. Logistic regression analyses revealed that ventral and dorsal mPFC lay at opposite ends of a functional gradient: the z-coordinates reported in individual studies predicted whether the study involved self- or other-related judgments, which were associated with increasingly ventral or dorsal portions of mPFC, respectively. These results argue for a distributed rather than localizationist account of mPFC organization and support an emerging view on the functional heterogeneity of mPFC.

While recent emotion regulation research has identified effective regulatory strategies that participants can employ during single experimental sessions, a critical but unresolved question is whether one can increase the efficacy with which one can deploy these strategies through repeated practice. To address this issue we focused on one strategy, reappraisal, which involves cognitively reframing affective events in ways that modulate one's emotional response to them. With a commonly used reappraisal task, we assessed the behavioral correlates of four laboratory sessions of guided practice in down-regulating responses to aversive photos. Two groups received practice in one of two different types of reappraisal tactics: psychological distancing and reinterpretation. A third no-regulation control group viewed images in each session without instructions to regulate. Three key findings were observed. First, both distancing and reinterpretation training resulted in reductions over time in self-reported negative affect. Second, distancing participants also showed a reduction over time in negative affect on baseline trials where they responded naturally. Only distancing group participants showed such a reduction over and above the reduction observed in the no-regulation control group, indicating that it was not attributable to habituation. Third, only participants who distanced reported less perceived stress in their daily lives. The present results provide the first evidence for the longitudinal trainability of reappraisal in healthy adults using short courses of reappraisal practice, particularly using psychological distancing.

A key question in psychology and neuroscience is the extent to which the neural representation of others is incorporated with, or is distinct from, our concept of self. Recent neuroimaging research has emphasized the importance of a region in the medial prefrontal cortex [MPFC; Brodmann's area (BA) 10] when performing self-referent tasks. Specifically, previous studies have reported selective MPFC recruitment when making judgments about the self relative to a familiar but personally unknown other. The present event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study extends these findings to judgments about personally known others. Subjects were imaged while making trait adjective judgments in one of the three conditions: (i) whether the adjective described the self; (ii) whether the adjective described an intimate other (i.e., a best friend); or (iii) whether the adjective was presented in uppercase letters. Making judgments about the self relative to an intimate other selectively activated the MPFC region previously implicated in the self-processing literature. These results suggest that while we may incorporate intimate others into our self-concept, the neural correlates of the self remain distinct from intimate and non-intimate others.

Objective Extreme emotional reactivity is a defining feature of borderline personality disorder, yet the neural-behavioral mechanisms underlying this affective instability are poorly understood. One possible contributor would be diminished ability to engage the mechanism of emotional habituation. We tested this hypothesis by examining behavioral and neural correlates of habituation in borderline patients, healthy controls, and a psychopathological control group of avoidant personality disorder patients. Method During fMRI scan acquisition, borderline patients, healthy controls and avoidant personality disorder patients viewed novel and repeated pictures, providing valence ratings at each presentation. Statistical parametric maps of the contrasts of activation during repeat versus novel negative picture viewing were compared between groups. Psychophysiological interaction analysis was employed to examine functional connectivity differences between groups. Results Unlike healthy controls, neither borderline nor avoidant personality disorder participants showed increased activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex when viewing repeat versus novel pictures. This failure to increase dorsal anterior cingulate activity was associated with greater affective instability in borderline participants. In addition, borderline and avoidant participants showed smaller insula-amygdala connectivity increases than healthy participants and did not show habituation in ratings of the emotional intensity of the images as did healthy participants. Borderline patients differed from avoidant patients in insula-ventral anterior cingulate connectivity during habituation. Conclusions Borderline patients fail to habituate to negative pictures as do healthy participants and differ from both healthy controls and avoidant patients in neural activity during habituation. A failure to effectively engage emotional habituation processes may contribute to affective instability in borderline patients.

Expectations about an upcoming emotional event have the power to shape one's subsequent affective response for better or worse. Here, we used mediation analyses to examine the relationship between brain activity when anticipating the need to cognitively reappraise aversive images, amygdala responses to those images and subsequent success in diminishing negative affect. We found that anticipatory activity in right rostrolateral prefrontal cortex was associated with greater subsequent left amygdala responses to aversive images and decreased regulation success. In contrast, anticipatory ventral anterior insula activity was associated with reduced amygdala responses and greater reappraisal success. In both cases, left amygdala responses mediated the relationship between anticipatory activity and reappraisal success. These results suggest that anticipation facilitates successful reappraisal via reduced anticipatory prefrontal 'cognitive' elaboration and better integration of affective information in paralimbic and subcortical systems.

Psychological distancing, a form of cognitive reappraisal, involves construal of emotionally valenced stimuli in an objective manner, or with perceived spatial and temporal distance. Prior work suggests that in appropriate contexts, reappraisal broadly, and distancing specifically, is related to adaptive mental and physical health outcomes. Additionally, recent research suggests that shifting language to be more distant (i.e., linguistic distancing [LD]) can have adaptive emotion regulatory effects. The present study addressed whether LD is also associated with adaptive health indicators. Participants transcribed their thoughts while viewing negative or neutral stimuli in one of three ways: (a) by implementing objective language, (b) by implementing spatially and/or temporally far away language, or (c) by responding naturally. Across psychological distancing groups, LD was associated with lower negative affectivity (lower perceived stress and depression symptoms), better general well‐being (better emotional well‐being and energy and vitality), and better emotion regulation (ER; greater reappraisal frequency and fewer difficulties in implementing ER). Participants who used more LD in the objective group had lower negative affectivity, better general well‐being, and better ER, and those in the far group had better ER. The results reveal linguistic mechanisms underlying ER and its relationship to health indicators, suggesting future examination of LD interventions.

Little is known about whether emotion regulation can have lasting effects on the ability of a stimulus to continue eliciting affective responses in the future. To address this issue, participants cognitively reappraised negative images once or four times. One week later they passively viewed old and new images to identify lasting effects of prior reappraisal. As in prior work, active reappraisal increased prefrontal responses while decreasing amygdala responses and self-reported emotion. At one week, amygdala responses remained attenuated for images that had been repeatedly reappraised compared to images reappraised once, new control images, and control images seen as many times but were never reappraised. Prefrontal activation was not selectively elevated for repeatedly reappraised images and was not related to long-term amygdala attenuation. These results suggest that reappraisal can exert long-lasting “dose-dependent” effects on amygdala response that may cause lasting changes in the neural representation of an unpleasant event's emotional value.

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