Supportive neural mechanisms underlying successful emotion regulation for reappraisal success

Although the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is well-known for its role in emotion regulation, the interactions between cortical and subcortical regions that facilitate this process remain incompletely understood. The present study aims to enhance our understanding of the brain pathways and connectivity involved in emotion regulation. Thirty healthy, right-handed participants were presented with a total of 48 aversive images characterized by low normative valence and high arousal, along with 24 neutral photos. The preprocessing pipeline included slice timing correction, motion correction, structural alignment, and denoising. Connectivity analyses were performed using ROI-to-ROI, seed-to-voxel, voxel-to-voxel, and amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) approaches within FSL and the CONN toolbox to evaluate brain activation. Our results indicated that instructed cognitive reappraisal was associated with increased activation in the dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) and decreased activation in the ventromedial PFC (vmPFC). Functional connectivity analyses further revealed coordinated activity among the PFC and anterior cingulate regions during reappraisal. Cognitive reappraisal highlights the roles of the dlPFC, vlPFC, vmPFC, ACC, and amygdala in emotion regulation and executive control. These findings provide descriptive support for prefrontal cortex involvement in emotion regulation and are partially consistent with previously proposed dual-pathway frameworks.