Researchers have identified a network of structures in the brain that may help us to regulate negative emotions when we see something upsetting.
Patterns of brain activity may show when a person is actively working to overcome negative emotions. With further research, this could help to identify those most at risk of developing certain mental health conditions or assess how people with such conditions are responding to treatment.
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| A reduced ability to regulate emotional responses has been linked to certain mental health conditions Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images |
A reduced ability to control emotional responses, known as emotional dysregulation, has been linked with substance misuse and suicidal thoughts and attempts, as well as conditions such as anxiety and depression. Earlier studies have identified a number of brain structures that are activated when people try to modify their emotional response after seeing something that usually provokes negative feelings.
Having previously studied emotional dysregulation in people with substance use disorder, Jared Rieck at the University of Colorado, Denver, and his colleagues wanted to look into the response in people without this condition. To do so they scanned the brains of 82 such volunteers as they looked at 15 neutral images, such as a photograph of an umbrella, and 30 emotionally negative images, such as a picture of someone ill in hospital.
They then asked the participants to try to think less negatively about half of the emotionally negative images while they looked at them, for example by thinking about how the person in hospital is receiving the medical care they need. Next, the team used machine learning algorithms to identify the brain regions that were activated only when the participants tried to reduce their emotional responses to the images.
From this, the researchers identified a network of structures implicated in emotional regulation, distributed throughout the brain. Some of these had already been linked with emotional regulation, such as the insular cortex and regions of the prefrontal cortex, while others hadn’t, such as parts of the visual cortex in the occipital lobe.
Next, the team scanned the brains of an additional 40 people as they viewed the same images and found that the earlier algorithms could detect whether the participants were merely viewing a negative or neutral image, or when they were told to try and reduce their response to the negative image, with 82.5 per cent accuracy.
This could help to identify people who are more at risk of mental health conditions and “could serve as a simple marker of success during treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy”, says Joshua Gowin, who was also involved in the research. He acknowledges, however, that it was a small study made up of young adults with an average age of 21.
The researchers are now planning to compare the effects of mindfulness-based therapies and cognitive behavioural therapy on the emotional regulation network they identified, says Gowin.
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