The Neural Bases of Distraction and Reappraisal

By Kateri McRae, Brent L. Hughes, Sita Chopra, John D. E. Gabrieli, James J. Gross, Kevin N. Ochsner. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2010

626 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Distraction and reappraisal are two commonly used forms of cognitive emotion regulation. Functional neuroimaging studies have shown that each one depends upon interactions between pFC, interpreted as implementing cognitive control, and limbic regions, interpreted as mediating emotional responses. However, no study has directly compared distraction with reappraisal, and it remains unclear whether they draw upon different neural mechanisms and have different emotional consequences. The present fMRI study compared distraction and reappraisal and found both similarities and differences between the two forms of emotion regulation. Both resulted in decreased negative affect, decreased activation in the amygdala, and increased activation in prefrontal and cingulate regions. Relative to distraction, reappraisal led to greater decreases in negative affect and to greater increases in a network of regions associated with processing affective meaning (medial prefrontal and anterior temporal cortices). Relative to reappraisal, distraction led to greater decreases in amygdala activation and to greater increases in activation in prefrontal and parietal regions. Taken together, these data suggest that distraction and reappraisal differentially engage neural systems involved in attentional deployment and cognitive reframing and have different emotional consequences.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7a897d8c134562954e300f1d83d7af2423c13a4e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

The development of emotion regulation: an fMRI study of cognitive reappraisal in children, adolescents and young adults. (2012, methodology): “In particular, we were interested in voxels that showed relationships with age in the specific condition of interest (usually the first term in the contrast), and not in the comparison condition (the second term in the contrast; for previous use of a similar technique, see McRae et al., 2010).”
Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects (2015, background): “have shown that distraction effectively down-regulates subcortical emotion-generative structures such as the amygdala (Ferri, Schmidt, Hajcak, & Canli, 2013; McRae et al., 2010).”
Interpersonal emotion regulation. (2013, background): “Researchers have catalogued several emotion regulation strategies—such as reappraisal, distraction, expressive suppression, and distancing—through which people modulate their affect (Ayduk & Kross, 2010; Gross, 1998; McRae et al., 2010; Ochsner, Silvers, & Buhle, in press).”
Defensive reactions to health-promoting information: an overview and implications for future research (2013, background): “Studies investigating the neural, affective and behavioural correlates of denial and cognitive reappraisal are needed to show whether they are primarily distinct or similar processes (cf. McRae et al., 2010).”
Emotion-Regulation Choice (2011, background): “…with affective meaning, results in weaker modulation of the amygdala’s response to high-intensity negative emotional stimuli than does distraction, which recruits a neural network associated with attentional control (Kanske, Heissler, Schonfelder, Bongers, & Wessa, 2011; McRae et al., 2010).”
Determinants of Emotion Duration and Underlying Psychological and Neural Mechanisms (2015, background): “, 2002), reappraisal and distraction reduce amygdala activity while engaging prefrontal regions important for working memory, selective attention, and cognitive control more generally (McRae et al., 2010).”
Common and differential neural networks of emotion regulation by Detachment, Reinterpretation, Distraction, and Expressive Suppression: A comparative fMRI investigation (2014, methodology): “…cortex (VLPFC), the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are discussed as common brain regions supporting emotion control in general (Buhle et al., 2013; Diekhof et al., 2011; Dolcos et al., 2011; McRae et al., 2010; Ochsner et al., 2012; Phillips et al., 2008).”
Coping, Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology in Childhood and Adolescence: A Meta-Analysis and Narrative Review (2017, background): “, working memory, attentional control) may provide a foundation for the use of coping and emotion regulation, as these processes often require the use of complex cognitive skills (Campbell et al., 2009; Eisenberg & Zhou, 2016; McRae et al., 2010).”
Functional imaging studies of emotion regulation: A synthetic review and evolving model of the cognitive control of emotion (2012, neutral): “HYA Dec Neg Reint Photos Early Yes McRae et al.(61) HYA Dec Neg Reint Photos Early Yes McRae et al.”
Cognitive emotion regulation: a review of theory and scientific findings (2016, positive): “Neurally, externally-directed distraction reduces amygdala activation to a greater extent than reappraisal [33], but there may be specific contextual differences that dictate when distraction versus reappraisal is most effective.”