We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
vmPFC activation during a stressor predicts positive emotions during stress recovery.
- Authors
Yang, Xi; Garcia, Katelyn M; Jung, Youngkyoo; Whitlow, Christopher T; McRae, Kateri; Waugh, Christian E
- 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.
- Subjects
PSYCHOLOGICAL stress; EMOTIONS; POSITIVITY effect (Psychology); COGNITION; ANAGRAMS
- Publication
Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, 2018, Vol 13, Issue 3, p256
- ISSN
1749-5016
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/scan/nsy012