Brain-wide connectivity changes due to social-emotional regulation during a naturalistic fMRI task

Social-emotional (SE) regulation is necessary for successful social interactions. Such emotion regulation (ER), however, has been examined in only a few studies using naturalistic SE tasks during functional neuroimaging. We examined ER in typically developed young adults (n = 62) watching and listening to a video of a person telling an emotional (positive, negative) or neutral story during functional MRI. We calculated brain-wide voxel-to-voxel functional connectivity (FC) using data-driven functional connectivity multivariate pattern analysis. Participants made two visits, the first involving only passive video viewing, while the second visit included application of an ER reappraisal strategy during video viewing. Contrasts of video emotion type across visits (main effect of Emotion) demonstrated regional FC differences depending on emotion type while contrasts between passive and ER visits (main effect of Regulation) showed significant FC differences involving left temporoparietal junction, left supramarginal gyrus, posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and precuneus. We found no significant Emotion by Regulation interaction. Our results suggest prefrontal involvement in implicit ER (negative stimuli) and the role of medial posterior regions associated with the default mode network (PCC and precuneus) during explicit ER and provide insight into the neural substrates underlying introspective SE cognition central to ER strategies such as reappraisal and mindfulness.