Motus Moderari: A Neuroscience-Informed Model for Self-Regulation of Emotion and Motivation

Abstract

This chapter takes a fresh look at emotion regulation and its associated neural systems by adopting a functionalist perspective on emotion and motivation. The common Latin root for both words is motus: to move. Considering emotion and motivation together because of their shared role in impelling behavior allows us to expand our theoretical perspective on “emotion regulation” to include attempts to control or modify motivational states (e.g., craving) as well as emotional ones. Researchers working in affective and clinical science have begun to establish the neural systems associated with the regulation of emotional and motivational states, respectively, but these literatures have remained largely unconnected. Here, we review human studies on emotion/motivation regulation that use neuroimaging, particularly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and highlight distinct and overlapping patterns during the regulation of emotion versus motivation. These two literatures reveal a broad pattern of prefrontal cortical regulation of subcortical systems but with some critical variations depending on the specific target of the regulation (e.g., positive vs. negative emotions), task type (e.g., implicit vs. explicit), and the degree of agency implied (e.g., whether or not escape is an option). We conclude by introducing an integrated framework for understanding the similarities and differences between different forms of emotion or motivation regulation. The goals of this framework are to accommodate existing results and meaningful differences between them and to provide a clear roadmap for future work to address gaps in the literature on emotion/motivation regulation.