Journal of cognitive neuroscience
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Distraction and reappraisal are two commonly used forms of cognitive emotion regulation. Functional neuroimaging studies have shown that each one depends upon interactions between pFC, interpreted as implementing cognitive control, and limbic regions, interpreted as mediating emotional responses. However, no study has directly compared distraction with reappraisal, and it remains unclear whether they draw upon different neural mechanisms and have different emotional consequences. ⋯ Relative to distraction, reappraisal led to greater decreases in negative affect and to greater increases in a network of regions associated with processing affective meaning (medial prefrontal and anterior temporal cortices). Relative to reappraisal, distraction led to greater decreases in amygdala activation and to greater increases in activation in prefrontal and parietal regions. Taken together, these data suggest that distraction and reappraisal differentially engage neural systems involved in attentional deployment and cognitive reframing and have different emotional consequences.
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In everyday life, the allocation of spatial attention typically entails the interplay between voluntary (endogenous) and stimulus-driven (exogenous) attention. Furthermore, stimuli in different sensory modalities can jointly influence the direction of spatial attention, due to the existence of cross-sensory links in attentional control. Using fMRI, we examined the physiological basis of these interactions. ⋯ Consistent with previous unisensory visual studies, activation of the ventral fronto-parietal attentional network was observed when the visual targets were presented at the uncued side (endogenous invalid trials, requiring visuospatial reorienting), as compared with validly cued targets. Critically, we found that the side of the task-irrelevant auditory stimulus modulated these activations, reducing spatial reorienting effects when the auditory stimulus was presented on the same side as the upcoming (invalid) visual target. These results demonstrate that multisensory mechanisms of attentional control can integrate endogenous and exogenous spatial information, jointly determining attentional orienting toward the most relevant spatial location.
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During working memory retrieval, proactive interference (PI) can be induced by semantic similarity and episodic familiarity. Here, we used fMRI to test hypotheses about the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and the medial temporal lobe (MTL) regions in successful resolution of PI. Participants studied six-word lists and responded to a recognition probe after a short distracter period. ⋯ We also measured PI induced by recent study, which should increase episodic familiarity, by comparing recent negative probes (lures studied in previous trial) to distant negative probes (lures that had not been presented within a block). Resolving both types of PI resulted in enhanced activation in LIFG and MTL regions. We propose that the LIFG and the MTL support successful resolution of interference via controlled retrieval processes that serve to recover detailed episodic (e.g., list-specific or source) information: Specifically, the data suggest that BOLD activation in the LIFG reflects the deployment of controlled retrieval operations, regardless of whether the retrieval attempt succeeds in recovering the target information, whereas MTL activation specifically reflects access to relevant episodic information that serves to successfully resolve PI.
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In this fMRI study, we investigated the development between adolescence and adulthood of the neural processing of social emotions. Unlike basic emotions (such as disgust and fear), social emotions (such as guilt and embarrassment) require the representation of another's mental states. Nineteen adolescents (10-18 years) and 10 adults (22-32 years) were scanned while thinking about scenarios featuring either social or basic emotions. ⋯ However, adolescents activated a lateral part of the MPFC for social versus basic emotions, whereas adults did not. Relative to adolescents, adults showed higher activity in the left temporal pole for social versus basic emotions. These results show that, although the MPFC is activated during social emotion in both adults and adolescents, adolescents recruit anterior (MPFC) regions more than do adults, and adults recruit posterior (temporal) regions more than do adolescents.
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The spatial rule of multisensory integration holds that cross-modal stimuli presented from the same spatial location result in enhanced multisensory integration. The present study investigated whether processing within the somatosensory cortex reflects the strength of cross-modal visuotactile interactions depending on the spatial relationship between visual and tactile stimuli. Visual stimuli were task-irrelevant and were presented simultaneously with touch in peripersonal and extrapersonal space, in the same or opposite hemispace with respect to the tactile stimuli. ⋯ Importantly, these early cross-modal spatial effects occurred regardless of the locus of attention. In addition, and in line with previous research, we found attentional modulations of somatosensory processing only to be present in the time range of the N140 component and for longer latencies with an enhanced negativity for tactile stimuli at attended compared to unattended locations. Taken together, the pattern of the results from this study suggests that visuotactile spatial effects on somatosensory processing occur prior and independent of tactile-spatial attention.