Abstract:

Cognitive reappraisal is one of the important strategies for emotional regulation. However, not every implementation of the strategy will succeed. The research on the physiological mechanism behind this phenomenon is still lacking. By analyzing the neural activity of a group who has successfully completed the cognitive reappraisal task and another group failing to complete the task, this study tries to explore the related electrophysiological mechanism. In conducting the research, 29 healthy subjects have been recruited, and they have been asked to complete the task of cognitive reappraisal, watching negative emotional images and neutral images, while their scalp electroencephalogram (EEG)s are collected simultaneously. According to the ratings of valence and arousal to the reappraisal of negative stimuli, the participants have been divided into two groups with cognitive reappraisal of success (15 subjects) and failure (14 subjects) respectively. The event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) analysis shows that, under the condition of cognitive reappraisal, the low Theta (4.0~6.5 Hz) activity of the successful group is significantly higher than the failure group within 300 to 1 200 ms after the stimulus onset. Within 1 200 to 2 700 ms after the stimulus onset, the frontal lateralization is found only in the successful group, showing that the left frontal ERSP is significantly higher than the right frontal ERSP. Moreover, the left frontal ERSP in the successful group is significantly higher than in the failure group. In addition, in the task of cognitive reappraisal; the left frontal ERSP is significantly higher than the right frontal in both groups within 300 to 1 200 ms after the stimulus onset. In summary, whether or not cognitive reappraisal can be successfully completed is distinguishable in the EEG spectrum. To some extent, the activity of frontal low Theta can reflect the level of a person's cognitive reappraisal ability, which provides a potential objective indicator for evaluating individual's emotion regulation ability.

Key words: emotion regulation, cognitive reappraisal, low Theta, lateralization