Publication Date

3-2018

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Positive emotions, Stress recovery, Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), Change-point analysis, Emotion regulation

Abstract

Despite accruing evidence showing that positive emotions facilitate stress recovery, the neural basis for this effect remains unclear. To identify the underlying mechanism, we compared stress recovery for people reflecting on a stressor while in a positive emotional context with that for people in a neutral context. While blood–oxygen-level dependent data were being collected, participants (N = 43) performed a stressful anagram task, which was followed by a recovery period during which they reflected on the stressor while watching a positive or neutral video. Participants also reported positive and negative emotions throughout the task as well as retrospective thoughts about the task. Although there was no effect of experimental context on emotional recovery, we found that ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) activation during the stressor predicted more positive emotions during recovery, which in turn predicted less negative emotions during recovery. In addition, the relationship between vmPFC activation and positive emotions during recovery was mediated by decentering—the meta-cognitive detachment of oneself from one’s feelings. In sum, successful recovery from a stressor seems to be due to activation of positive emotion-related regions during the stressor itself as well as to their downstream effects on certain cognitive forms of emotion regulation.

Copyright Date

2-16-2018

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Rights Holder

Xi Yang, Katelyn M. Garcia, Youngkyoo Jung, Christopher T. Whitlow, Kateri McRae, and Christian E. Waugh

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

13 pgs

File Size

558 KB

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the authors. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Yang, X., Garcia, K. M., Jung, Y., Whitlow, C. T., McRae, K., & Waugh, C. E. (2018). VmPFC activation during a stressor predicts positive emotions during stress recovery. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 13(3), 256-268. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsy012

Publication Title

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

Volume

13

Issue

3

First Page

256

Last Page

268

ISSN

1749-5024

PubMed ID

29462404

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