A disposition to reappraise decreases anterior insula reactivity during anxious anticipation

Across individuals there is variability in one's inherent tendency to reappraise emotional events in everyday life, which may be related to how worried one becomes in the presence of an anticipated aversive event. The extent to which this natural tendency to reappraise has neurobiological correlates during anxious anticipation is unknown. Neuroimaging research indicates that responses in the anterior insula precede anticipated aversive events and appear to represent one's affective feeling state of anxious anticipation. Successful cognitive reappraisal should weaken this anticipatory insula response. Here, functional magnetic resonance images were acquired while participants completed an anticipation task. We found increased anterior insula activation during aversive anticipation and a negative association between anxious anticipatory right anterior insula reactivity and dispositional reappraisal. Thus, even without the instruction to reappraise, individuals high in dispositional reappraisal tended to have a reduced anticipatory insula response to aversive stimuli, thereby down-regulating a neural substrate for aversive anticipation.