The regulation of positive and negative emotions through instructed causal attributions in lifetime depression – A functional magnetic resonance imaging study
Adequate emotional control is essential for mental health. Deficiencies in emotion regulation are evident in many psychiatric disorders, including depression. Patients with depression show, for instance, disrupted neural emotion regulation in cognitive regulation regions such as lateral and medial p...
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| Format: | Article |
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Elsevier
2018-01-01
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| Series: | NeuroImage: Clinical |
| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158218303371 |
| _version_ | 1828366943385550848 |
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| author | Leonie A.K. Loeffler Sina Radke Ute Habel Rastko Ciric Theodore D. Satterthwaite Frank Schneider Birgit Derntl |
| author_facet | Leonie A.K. Loeffler Sina Radke Ute Habel Rastko Ciric Theodore D. Satterthwaite Frank Schneider Birgit Derntl |
| author_sort | Leonie A.K. Loeffler |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Adequate emotional control is essential for mental health. Deficiencies in emotion regulation are evident in many psychiatric disorders, including depression. Patients with depression show, for instance, disrupted neural emotion regulation in cognitive regulation regions such as lateral and medial prefrontal cortices. Since depressed individuals tend to attribute positive events to external circumstances and negative events to themselves, modifying this non-self-serving attributional style may represent a promising regulation strategy. Spontaneous causal attributions are generally processed in medial brain structures, particularly the precuneus. However, so far no study has investigated neural correlates of instructed causal attributions (e.g. instructing a person to intentionally relate positive events to the self) and their potential to regulate emotions. The current study therefore aimed to examine how instructed causal attributions of positive and negative events affect the emotional experience of depressed individuals as well as its neural bases. For this purpose pictures of sad and happy faces were presented to 26 patients with a lifetime major depression (MDD) and 26 healthy controls (HC) during fMRI. Participants should respond naturally (“view”) or imagine that the person on the picture was sad/happy because of them (“internal attribution”) or because something else happened (“external attribution”). Trait attributional style and depressive symptoms were assessed with questionnaires to examine potential influential factors on emotion regulation ability.Results revealed that patients compared to controls show a non-self-serving trait attributional style (i.e. more external attributions of positive events and more internal attributions of negative events). Intriguingly, when instructed to apply specific causal attributions during the emotion regulation task, patients and controls were similarly able to regulate positive and negative emotions. Regulating emotions through instructed attributions (internal/external attribution>view) generally engaged the precuneus, which was correlated with patients' trait attributional style (i.e. more precuneus activation during external>view was linked to a general tendency to relate positive events to external sources). Up-regulating happiness through internal (compared to external) attributions recruited the parahippocampal gyrus only in controls. The down-regulation of sadness (external>internal attribution), in contrast, engaged the superior frontal gyrus only in patients. Superior frontal gyrus activation thereby correlated with depression severity, which implies a greater need of cognitive resources for a successful regulation in more severely depressed. Patients and controls did not differ in activation in brain regions related to cognitive emotion regulation or attribution. However, results point to a disturbed processing of positive emotions in depression. Interestingly, increased precuneus resting-state connectivity with emotion regulation brain regions (inferior parietal lobule, middle frontal gyrus) was linked to healthier attributions (i.e. external attributions of negative events) in patients and controls. Adequate neural communication between these regions therefore seem to facilitate an adaptive trait attributional style. Findings of this study emphasize that despite patients' dysfunctional trait attributional style, explicitly applying causal attributions effectively regulates emotions. Future research should examine the efficacy of instructed attributions in reducing negative affect and anhedonia in depressed patients, for instance by means of attribution trainings during psychotherapy. Keywords: Emotion regulation, Depression, Attribution, Positive emotions, Precuneus, fMRI, Resting-state connectivity |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-14T05:52:42Z |
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| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2213-1582 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-14T05:52:42Z |
| publishDate | 2018-01-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | NeuroImage: Clinical |
| spelling | doaj.art-c9272f463a674bfeaeea7d4b670764ba2022-12-22T02:09:04ZengElsevierNeuroImage: Clinical2213-15822018-01-012012331245The regulation of positive and negative emotions through instructed causal attributions in lifetime depression – A functional magnetic resonance imaging studyLeonie A.K. Loeffler0Sina Radke1Ute Habel2Rastko Ciric3Theodore D. Satterthwaite4Frank Schneider5Birgit Derntl6Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52074, Germany; Corresponding author at: RWTH Aachen University, Medical Faculty, Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany.Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52074, Germany; JARA-Institute Brain Structure Function Relationship, Research Center Jülich, RWTH Aachen, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52074, GermanyDepartment of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52074, Germany; JARA-Institute Brain Structure Function Relationship, Research Center Jülich, RWTH Aachen, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52074, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine 10, Research Center Jülich, 52425 Jülich, GermanyNeuropsychiatry Division, Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, USANeuropsychiatry Division, Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, USADepartment of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52074, Germany; JARA-Institute Brain Structure Function Relationship, Research Center Jülich, RWTH Aachen, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52074, GermanyDepartment of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Tübingen, Calwerstrasse 14, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Otfried-Müller-Strasse 25, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; LEAD Graduate School and Research Network, University of Tübingen, Gartenstrasse 29, 72074 Tübingen, GermanyAdequate emotional control is essential for mental health. Deficiencies in emotion regulation are evident in many psychiatric disorders, including depression. Patients with depression show, for instance, disrupted neural emotion regulation in cognitive regulation regions such as lateral and medial prefrontal cortices. Since depressed individuals tend to attribute positive events to external circumstances and negative events to themselves, modifying this non-self-serving attributional style may represent a promising regulation strategy. Spontaneous causal attributions are generally processed in medial brain structures, particularly the precuneus. However, so far no study has investigated neural correlates of instructed causal attributions (e.g. instructing a person to intentionally relate positive events to the self) and their potential to regulate emotions. The current study therefore aimed to examine how instructed causal attributions of positive and negative events affect the emotional experience of depressed individuals as well as its neural bases. For this purpose pictures of sad and happy faces were presented to 26 patients with a lifetime major depression (MDD) and 26 healthy controls (HC) during fMRI. Participants should respond naturally (“view”) or imagine that the person on the picture was sad/happy because of them (“internal attribution”) or because something else happened (“external attribution”). Trait attributional style and depressive symptoms were assessed with questionnaires to examine potential influential factors on emotion regulation ability.Results revealed that patients compared to controls show a non-self-serving trait attributional style (i.e. more external attributions of positive events and more internal attributions of negative events). Intriguingly, when instructed to apply specific causal attributions during the emotion regulation task, patients and controls were similarly able to regulate positive and negative emotions. Regulating emotions through instructed attributions (internal/external attribution>view) generally engaged the precuneus, which was correlated with patients' trait attributional style (i.e. more precuneus activation during external>view was linked to a general tendency to relate positive events to external sources). Up-regulating happiness through internal (compared to external) attributions recruited the parahippocampal gyrus only in controls. The down-regulation of sadness (external>internal attribution), in contrast, engaged the superior frontal gyrus only in patients. Superior frontal gyrus activation thereby correlated with depression severity, which implies a greater need of cognitive resources for a successful regulation in more severely depressed. Patients and controls did not differ in activation in brain regions related to cognitive emotion regulation or attribution. However, results point to a disturbed processing of positive emotions in depression. Interestingly, increased precuneus resting-state connectivity with emotion regulation brain regions (inferior parietal lobule, middle frontal gyrus) was linked to healthier attributions (i.e. external attributions of negative events) in patients and controls. Adequate neural communication between these regions therefore seem to facilitate an adaptive trait attributional style. Findings of this study emphasize that despite patients' dysfunctional trait attributional style, explicitly applying causal attributions effectively regulates emotions. Future research should examine the efficacy of instructed attributions in reducing negative affect and anhedonia in depressed patients, for instance by means of attribution trainings during psychotherapy. Keywords: Emotion regulation, Depression, Attribution, Positive emotions, Precuneus, fMRI, Resting-state connectivityhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158218303371 |
| spellingShingle | Leonie A.K. Loeffler Sina Radke Ute Habel Rastko Ciric Theodore D. Satterthwaite Frank Schneider Birgit Derntl The regulation of positive and negative emotions through instructed causal attributions in lifetime depression – A functional magnetic resonance imaging study NeuroImage: Clinical |
| title | The regulation of positive and negative emotions through instructed causal attributions in lifetime depression – A functional magnetic resonance imaging study |
| title_full | The regulation of positive and negative emotions through instructed causal attributions in lifetime depression – A functional magnetic resonance imaging study |
| title_fullStr | The regulation of positive and negative emotions through instructed causal attributions in lifetime depression – A functional magnetic resonance imaging study |
| title_full_unstemmed | The regulation of positive and negative emotions through instructed causal attributions in lifetime depression – A functional magnetic resonance imaging study |
| title_short | The regulation of positive and negative emotions through instructed causal attributions in lifetime depression – A functional magnetic resonance imaging study |
| title_sort | regulation of positive and negative emotions through instructed causal attributions in lifetime depression a functional magnetic resonance imaging study |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158218303371 |
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