Neuroscientists Identify Brain Regions Responsible for Warding off Negative Emotion

Neuroscientists Identify Brain Regions Responsible for Warding off Negative Emotion

hirty healthy subjects were recruited into the study, conducted inside an MRI lab at Columbia's Neurological Institute of New York. Participants' brains were monitored while they wore video goggles showing a series of 48 aversive photographs, such as a mutilated human hand and a malnourished child. Participants viewed each image for eight seconds.

Moments before viewing half of the photographs, participants were instructed by a researcher to use cognitive "reinterpretation" techniques that protect the body from adverse visceral reaction. Each subject practiced these techniques during a training session beforehand. If a subject viewed an image of a sick man in a hospital bed, for example, he could prevent a negative reaction by telling himself the bedridden man wasn't sick, but resting. After viewing each photograph, subjects evaluated the intensity of their emotions.

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