Changes in Medial Prefrontal Cortex Mediate Effects of Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback on Positive Emotional...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Implicit emotion regulation is linked to medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activity.
• Previous evidence is largely correlational, necessitating causal investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the causal relationship between mPFC-amygdala functional connectivity and emotional memory biases.
• To examine the impact of heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback on brain mechanisms of emotion regulation.

Main Methods:

• A randomized clinical trial involving participants assigned to increase (Osc+) or decrease (Osc-) heart rate oscillations via biofeedback.
• Assessment of emotional memory biases using encoding, recall, and recognition tasks post-intervention.
• Measurement of resting-state functional connectivity between the mPFC and left amygdala.

Main Results:

• Participants increasing HRV (Osc+) exhibited a greater positive emotional memory bias compared to those decreasing HRV (Osc-).
• The Osc+ manipulation significantly increased left amygdala-mPFC resting-state functional connectivity.
• This enhanced functional connectivity mediated the observed effects of the intervention on emotional bias.

Conclusions:

• Daily practice of increasing heart rate oscillations via biofeedback can enhance implicit emotion regulation.
• This enhancement is achieved by increasing mPFC coordination of emotion-related neural circuits.
• Findings provide causal evidence for the role of mPFC-amygdala connectivity in emotion regulation and memory.