The Effectiveness Of ‘Experiential Emotion Regulation’ Versus ‘Cognitive Defusion’: An fMRI Study
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1
Ghent University, Belgium
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2
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
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3
University Hospital Brussels, Belgium
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4
General Hospital Jan Portaels, Belgium
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5
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China
Introduction: Adaptive emotion regulation (ER) is conducive to physical and mental health, whereas dysfunctional ER is central to psychopathology [1]. Over recent years, the interest in ER research has grown, with a special interest in cognitive ER, such as cognitive defusion. Cognitive defusion attempts to alter the undesirable functions of thoughts and other private events by observing thoughts using a self-distanced perspective [2]. Emotion can also be regulated with 'experiential ER', which refers to the affectively attending, acknowledging and getting awareness of the bodily felt feeling in an accepting and welcoming way [3]. Experiencing is the manner of processing experiential ER, which also be termed as experiential acceptance. Although abundant research has focused on top-down cognitive ER, research is needed to validate the effectiveness of bottom-up experiential ER. Therefore, our research seeks out to compare the effects of experiential ER in the processing of bottom-up generated emotions compared to cognitive defusion on both the behavior and the brain imaging level.
Methods: 19 right-handed healthy, Dutch speaking female participants between the ages of 18-45 years were recruited to receive the task fMRI scanning with a 3.0 T General Electric (GE) scanner. Experimental stimuli consist of 81 aversive and 27 neutral pictures from the International Affective Picture System. A mixed boxcar design with two sessions was applied. Each session consisted of 4 runs: watch neutral (pure baseline), watch negative, experiential ER and cognitive defusion. The paradigm is a modified version of a previously validated paradigm for ER [4].
SPM12 was used to conduct the pre-processing of the task fMRI data which including slice timing, head motion correction, spatial normalization and smoothing. For the first-level analysis, preprocessed task fMRI images were entered into a General Linear Model, to estimate blood oxygen level dependent signal changes for each experimental run. Onsets of emotion induction (i.e., the 8.5s picture presentation phase) were entered as the regressors-of-interest, while repressors-of-no-interest were created by the 6 movement parameters. All regressors were convolved with the hemodynamic response function. Individual contrast images of the first-level analysis were fed into a second-level random-effects group analysis, using one-way anova model with the F contrast images representing the experimental condition differences. Afterwards, the individual parameter estimates for those significant activation clusters in the correlation of BOLD signal were extracted using MarsBaR. Finally, we correlated the signal change of those significant brain areas with subjective rating on the group level.
Results and Discussions: Results indicated people felt the least negative with watch negative and the most negative with experiential ER. On the level of subjective reports, neither experiential ER nor cognitive defusion leaded a less negative feeling relative to watch baseline, which was not in consistent with our research hypothesis. According to the research literature [5], normally the control watch baseline involves complex automatic emotion regulation derived from participants’ daily life. Therefore, the fail of validating the hypothesis does not mean that experiential ER and cognitive defusion are not effective strategies.
Brain imaging results showed left lingual cortex, right angular cortex, left superior frontal cortex (BA9), left inferior parietal lobule and right caudate were recruited to account the experimental condition differences (p<0.05, FDR corrected). Furthermore, the signal changes of these brain areas were extracted and further correlated with participants´ behavioral ratings. Both the signal change of left BA9 (r = 0.64) and left lingual (r= 0.49) were positively correlated with participants´ arousal rating under experiential ER. In addition, a negative correlation was found between the signal change of right angular and participants´ arousal rating both under the watch neutral (r=-0.56) and cognitive defusion (r=-0.49). Left BA 9 was found on the left hemisphere is at least partially responsible for empathy, idioms, processing pleasant and unpleasant emotional scenes and attention to negative emotions. Also, the left lingual areas are involved in visual processing. We found that the more activation of BA9 and left lingual areas with experiential ER, the more people feel aroused, suggesting the role of BA9 and left lingual areas in attending to the negative emotions in an experiential approaching way induced in the current experiment. More importantly, these correlations suggesting participants’ engagement in the task, so they are feeling the negativity of the pictures and experiencing the negative emotions, this could explain why they are reporting feeling more intensive/aroused with experiential ER. Also, people recruited BA9 under experiential ER relative to cognitive defusion, suggesting people are putting more efforts to regulate their emotions with experiential ER, which is in accordance with the subjective reports after the ER training in the experiment. In addition, the activation of right angular gyrus was found to be negatively correlated with arousal rating with both watch neutral and cognitive defusion condition. Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain such consistent deactivations in the AG. One influential hypothesis suggests that the AG is involved in task-free semantic and conceptual processes that result from the manipulation of acquired knowledge about the world during rest that is interrupted during effortful tasks.
Conclusion: In sum, our results suggested the activation of BA9 and the left lingual cortex can be explained as the extend of efforts people putting into experiential ER and the deactivation of right angular is responsible for the cognitive efforts devoted to cognitive defusion, which similar to the mind state of watching the neutral photos. The cognitive defusion is not effective compared to watch negative baseline. People do set a distance from the emotional picture, but this way did not regulate the emotions.
References
1 Gross, J.J. (2015), ‘Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects’, Psychological Inquiry, vol. 26, pp: 1–26.
2 Koenigsberg, H.W. (2010), ‘Neural correlates of usingdistancing to regulate emotional responses to social cues’, Neuropsychologia, vol. 48, pp: 1813–1822.
3 Vandekerckhove, M. (2012), ‘Experiential versus analytical emotion regulation and sleep: breaking the link between negative events and sleep disturbance’, Emotion, vol. 12, pp: 1415–1421.
4 Ochsner, K.N. (2002), ‘Rethinking feelings: an FMRI study of the cognitive regulation of emotion’. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol.14, pp: 1215–1229.
5 Augustine, A. A., & Hemenover, S. H. (2009). On the relative effectiveness of affect regulation strategies: A meta-analysis. Cognition and Emotion, vol. 23, 1181-1220.
Keywords:
Experiential approach,
Cognitive defusion,
Emotion Regulation,
emotion,
signal change
Conference:
Belgian Brain Congress 2018 — Belgian Brain Council, LIEGE, Belgium, 19 Oct - 19 Oct, 2018.
Presentation Type:
e-posters
Topic:
NOVEL STRATEGIES FOR NEUROLOGICAL AND MENTAL DISORDERS: SCIENTIFIC BASIS AND VALUE FOR PATIENT-CENTERED CARE
Citation:
Wang
Y,
Vantieghem
I,
Dong
D,
Marinazzo
D and
Vandekerckhove
M
(2019). The Effectiveness Of ‘Experiential Emotion Regulation’ Versus ‘Cognitive Defusion’: An fMRI Study.
Front. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
Belgian Brain Congress 2018 — Belgian Brain Council.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2018.95.00067
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Received:
28 Aug 2018;
Published Online:
17 Jan 2019.
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Correspondence:
Ms. Yulin Wang, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, yulin.wang90.swu@gmail.com