TY - JOUR
T1 - The Impact of Focused Attention on Emotional Experience
T2 - A Functional MRI Investigation
AU - Dolcos, Florin
AU - Katsumi, Yuta
AU - Shen, Chen
AU - Bogdan, Paul C.
AU - Jun, Suhnyoung
AU - Larsen, Ryan
AU - Heller, Wendy
AU - Bost, Kelly Freeman
AU - Dolcos, Sanda
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was conducted in part at the Biomedical Imaging Center of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC-BI-BIC) and was supported by the UIUC Center for Social and Behavioral Science (to K.F.B., S.D., F.D., & W.H). Participants were recruited from a larger study investigating mother-child dyads during early child development, which was supported in part by grants from the National Dairy Council (to Sharon Donovan and Barbara H. Fiese (Co-PIs), the Gerber Foundation (to Sharon Donovan), the Christopher Family Foundation (to Sharon Donovan and K.F.B), the US Department of Agriculture (Hatch ILLU 793-330, to Barbara H. Fiese, K.F.B., and Margarita Teran-Garcia), and the National Institutes of Health (DK107561, to Sharon Donovan). The authors wish to thank JulieAnn Scherer, Michael Budianto, and other Dolcos Lab members for help with the creation of stimuli, and Samantha Iwinski, Jaclyn Theisen, and Jaclyn Saltzman for help with participant recruitment.
Funding Information:
This work was conducted in part at the Biomedical Imaging Center of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC-BI-BIC) and was supported by the UIUC Center for Social and Behavioral Science (to K.F.B., S.D., F.D., & W.H). Participants were recruited from a larger study investigating mother-child dyads during early child development, which was supported in part by grants from the National Dairy Council (to Sharon Donovan and Barbara H. Fiese (Co-PIs), the Gerber Foundation (to Sharon Donovan), the Christopher Family Foundation (to Sharon Donovan and K.F.B), the US Department of Agriculture (Hatch ILLU 793-330, to Barbara H. Fiese, K.F.B., and Margarita Teran-Garcia), and the National Institutes of Health (DK107561, to Sharon Donovan). The authors wish to thank JulieAnn Scherer, Michael Budianto, and other Dolcos Lab members for help with the creation of stimuli, and Samantha Iwinski, Jaclyn Theisen, and Jaclyn Saltzman for help with participant recruitment.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Psychonomic Society, Inc.
PY - 2020/10/1
Y1 - 2020/10/1
N2 - Emotional well-being depends on the ability to adaptively cope with various emotional challenges. Most studies have investigated the neural mechanisms of emotion regulation strategies deployed relatively later in the timing of processing that leads to full emotional experiences. However, less is known about strategies that are engaged in earlier stages of emotion processing, such as those involving attentional deployment. We investigated the neural mechanisms associated with self-guided Focused Attention (FA) in mitigating subjective negative emotional experiences. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were recorded while participants viewed a series of composite negative and neutral images with distinguishable foreground (FG) and background (BG) areas. Participants were instructed to focus either on the FG or BG components of the images, and then rated their emotional experiences. Behavioral results showed that FA was successful in decreasing emotional ratings for negative images viewed in BG Focus condition. At the neural level, the BG Focus was associated with increased activity in regions typically implicated in top-down executive control (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and lateral parietal cortex) and decreased activity in regions linked to affective processing (amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex). Dissociable brain activity linked to FA also was identified in visual cortices, including between the parahippocampal and fusiform gyri, showing increased versus decreased activity, respectively, during the BG Focus. These findings complement the evidence from prior FA studies with recollected emotional memories as internal stimuli and further demonstrate the effectiveness of self-guided FA in mitigating negative emotional experiences associated with processing of external unpleasant stimuli.
AB - Emotional well-being depends on the ability to adaptively cope with various emotional challenges. Most studies have investigated the neural mechanisms of emotion regulation strategies deployed relatively later in the timing of processing that leads to full emotional experiences. However, less is known about strategies that are engaged in earlier stages of emotion processing, such as those involving attentional deployment. We investigated the neural mechanisms associated with self-guided Focused Attention (FA) in mitigating subjective negative emotional experiences. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were recorded while participants viewed a series of composite negative and neutral images with distinguishable foreground (FG) and background (BG) areas. Participants were instructed to focus either on the FG or BG components of the images, and then rated their emotional experiences. Behavioral results showed that FA was successful in decreasing emotional ratings for negative images viewed in BG Focus condition. At the neural level, the BG Focus was associated with increased activity in regions typically implicated in top-down executive control (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and lateral parietal cortex) and decreased activity in regions linked to affective processing (amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex). Dissociable brain activity linked to FA also was identified in visual cortices, including between the parahippocampal and fusiform gyri, showing increased versus decreased activity, respectively, during the BG Focus. These findings complement the evidence from prior FA studies with recollected emotional memories as internal stimuli and further demonstrate the effectiveness of self-guided FA in mitigating negative emotional experiences associated with processing of external unpleasant stimuli.
KW - Affect
KW - Amygdala
KW - Emotion control
KW - Emotion-cognition interactions
KW - Prefrontal cortex
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U2 - 10.3758/s13415-020-00816-2
DO - 10.3758/s13415-020-00816-2
M3 - Article
C2 - 32770316
AN - SCOPUS:85089182290
SN - 1530-7026
VL - 20
SP - 1011
EP - 1026
JO - Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience
JF - Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience
IS - 5
ER -