Activity Status in Prefrontal Brain Regions Associated with Cognitive Reappraisal and Response Inhibition

Abstract

Cognitive reappraisal and response inhibition are the two most important strategies for emotion regulation, but the related neural mechanisms are poorly understood. In this study, Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to investigate the activation in regions of the prefrontal cortex of 33 undergraduate students while they were performing cognitive reappraisal and response inhibition tasks. We measured the changes of haemoglobin in six brain regions of the prefrontal cortex for the two emotional regulation tasks. We found that the activation levels of the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (oxyhemoglobin level, HbO) and frontopolar area (deoxyhemoglobin level, HbR) were significantly different during cognitive reappraisal and response inhibition tasks. More generally, we found that the left ventrolateral prefrontal and frontal pole regions may play key roles in cognitive reappraisal and response inhibition, but the specific physiological mechanisms involved need to be further investigated.