Abstract
Although the role of the insular cortex in representing bodily and emotional feelings has been recognized, whether the mid-posterior and anterior parts of the insula act differentially in the encoding and regulation of emotional feelings is still unclear. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we examined the effects of the creative cognitive reappraisals versus the non-creative ordinary reappraisals on the activation pattern of the mid-posterior and anterior insular cortex during the processing of unpleasant pictures by comparing the neural correlates for processing these pictures before and after the application of cognitive reappraisals. We found significant anterior insular activation after the application of cognitive reappraisals, especially the creative ones, in contrast to the significant mid-posterior insular activation before the application of the cognitive reappraisals or after the application of the non-creative ordinary reappraisals. This finding supports the posterior-to-anterior progression hypothesis with the mid-posterior insular cortex being used for the encoding of primary emotional feelings and the anterior insular cortex being used for the encoding of regulated or modulated emotional feelings.
Highlights
Cognitive reappraisal, which is a cognitive and linguistic strategy for altering the trajectory of emotional responses by reformulating the meaning of a situation, has been widely studied and applied in emotion regulation (Gross and John, 2003)
Given that the functions of the mid-posterior and insular cortex can be segregated, with the mid-posterior insular cortex playing a greater role in representing physiological reactivity and homeostatic states, and the anterior insular cortex playing a greater role in integrating homeostatic afferent activity from the dorsal posterior insula with emotional salience to form a global representation of the bodily feeling state (Craig, 2002, 2009), we made a key hypothesis in the present study that cognitive reappraisal would alter the emotional feelings represented in the insular cortex in a posterior-to-anterior progression manner (Craig, 2009)
Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that application of the cognitive reappraisals, especially the creative ones, could induce increased anterior insular activation and reduced mid-posterior insular activation
Summary
Cognitive reappraisal, which is a cognitive and linguistic strategy for altering the trajectory of emotional responses by reformulating the meaning of a situation, has been widely studied and applied in emotion regulation (Gross and John, 2003). According to the posterior-to-anterior progression hypothesis on the hierarchical functional organization of the insular cortex (Craig, 2002, 2009), the posterior, middle, and anterior parts of the insula cortex are responsible for encoding primary bodily and emotional feelings, for mental re-representation of these feelings integrated with external context information, as well as for continuously updating introspective awareness of the present emotion and bodily states, respectively Consistent with this theory, previous studies have demonstrated the double dissociation of activation in the mid-posterior and anterior insular cortex in the processing of sexual desire versus love (Cacioppo et al, 2012), primary versus secondary/modulated moral disgusts (Ying et al, 2018), and empathy and sympathy during childhood versus adulthood (with the latter showing increased frontalization and top–down modulation ability, Decety and Michalska, 2010)
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