Increasing involvement of cognitive resources during sustained emotion suppression
Binder, J.1, Friese, M.1, de Quervain, D.2, Papassotiropoulos, A.1, and Rasch, B.1,2
1Division of Molecular Psychology, University of Basel; 2Division of Psychiatry Research, University of Zürich
Regulating ones emotions adaptively is important to cope with emotional events. Brain imaging studies have consistently implicated prefrontal regions in down regulation of amygdala responsivity to emotional stimuli. However, the time course of sustained voluntary suppression of emotions has not been investigated. In our study, 31 healthy young women viewed negative and neutral pictures and either suppressed or allowed emotions in a between-subject design. Pictures were presented in blocks of 28 seconds containing four pictures of the same emotional valence. Brain activity in response to negative as compared to neutral pictures was analyzed separately for each of the four pictures within one block. Subjects suppressing their emotions showed equally reduced amygdala activity during all four pictures. In contrast, activity in the bilateral dorsolateral-prefrontal cortex increased over the course of the four pictures. Our results suggest that sustained suppression of emotions requires increasingly more cognitive resources over time.