Neural Predictors of Decisions to Cognitively Control Emotion

Deciding to control emotional responses is a fundamental means of responding to environmental challenges, but little is known about the neural mechanisms that predict the outcome of such decisions. We used fMRI to test whether human brain responses during initial viewing of negative images could be used to predict decisions to regulate affective responses to those images. Our results revealed the following: (1) decisions to regulate were more frequent in individuals exhibiting higher average levels of activity within the amygdala and regions of PFC known a priori to be involved in the cognitive control of emotion and (2) within-person expression of a distributed brain pattern associated with regulating emotion predicted choosing to regulate responses to particular stimuli beyond the predictive value of stimulus intensity or self-reports of emotion. These results demonstrate the behavioral relevance of variability in brain responses to aversive stimuli and provide a model that leverages this variability to predict behavior.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Everyone experiences stressors, but how we respond to them can range from protracted disability to resilience and growth. One key process underlying this variability is the agentic decision to exert control over emotional responses. We present an fMRI-based model predicting decisions to control emotion, finding that activity in brain regions associated with the generation and regulation of emotion was predictive of which people choose to regulate frequently and a distributed brain pattern associated with regulating emotion was predictive of which stimuli regulation was chosen. These brain variables predicted future decisions to regulate emotion beyond what could be predicted from stimulus and self-report variables.