title: Fear is only as deep as the mind allows: a coordinate-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies on the regulation of negative affect.
abstract: Humans have the ability to control negative affect and perceived fear. Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether this affect regulation capacity relies on a common neural mechanism in different experimental domains. Here, we sought to identify commonalities in regulatory brain activation in the domains of fear extinction, placebo, and cognitive emotion regulation. Using coordinate-based activation-likelihood estimation meta-analysis we intended to elucidate concordant hyperactivations and the associated deactivations in the three experimental domains, when human subjects successfully diminished negative affect. Our data show that only one region in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) controlled negative affective responses and reduced the degree of subjectively perceived unpleasantness independent of the experimental domain. This down-regulation of negative affect was further accompanied by a concordant reduction of activation in the left amygdala. Finally, the soothing effect of placebo treatments and cognitive reappraisal strategies, but not extinction retrieval, was specifically accompanied by a coherent hyperactivation in the anterior cingulate and the insular cortex. Collectively, our data strongly imply that the human VMPFC may represent a domain-general controller of perceived fear and aversiveness that modulates negative affective responses in phylogenetically older structures of the emotion processing system. In addition, higher-level regulation strategies may further engage complementary neural resources to effectively deal with the emotion-eliciting events.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Psychotherapy, Georg August University Göttingen, Germany. e.diekhof@gmx.de
authors.forename: Esther Kristina
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Diekhof
authors.forename: Katharina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Geier
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Falkai
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Gruber
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005108:Extinction, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology