title: Neural substrates of social emotion regulation: a FMRI study on imitation and expressive suppression to dynamic facial signals.
abstract: Emotion regulation is crucial for successfully engaging in social interactions. Yet, little is known about the neural mechanisms controlling behavioral responses to emotional expressions perceived in the face of other people, which constitute a key element of interpersonal communication. Here, we investigated brain systems involved in social emotion perception and regulation, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 20 healthy participants. The latter saw dynamic facial expressions of either happiness or sadness, and were asked to either imitate the expression or to suppress any expression on their own face (in addition to a gender judgment control task). fMRI results revealed higher activity in regions associated with emotion (e.g., the insula), motor function (e.g., motor cortex), and theory of mind (e.g., [pre]cuneus) during imitation. Activity in dorsal cingulate cortex was also increased during imitation, possibly reflecting greater action monitoring or conflict with own feeling states. In addition, premotor regions were more strongly activated during both imitation and suppression, suggesting a recruitment of motor control for both the production and inhibition of emotion expressions. Expressive suppression (eSUP) produced increases in dorsolateral and lateral prefrontal cortex typically related to cognitive control. These results suggest that voluntary imitation and eSUP modulate brain responses to emotional signals perceived from faces, by up- and down-regulating activity in distributed subcortical and cortical networks that are particularly involved in emotion, action monitoring, and cognitive control.
authors: Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, Stanford University Stanford, CA, USA ; Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva Geneva, Switzerland ; Laboratory for the study of Emotion Elicitation and Expression (E3 Lab), Department of Psychology, University of Geneva Geneva, Switzerland.
authors: Pascal
authors: P
authors: Vrticka
authors: Samanta
authors: S
authors: Simioni
authors: Eleonora
authors: E
authors: Fornari
authors: Myriam
authors: M
authors: Schluep
authors: Patrik
authors: P
authors: Vuilleumier
authors: David
authors: D
authors: Sander
keywords: emotion regulation; emotional facial expressions; expressive suppression; fMRI; imitation