Abstract
Multiple theories have proposed that increasing central arousal through the brain’s locus coeruleus—norepinephrine system may facilitate cognitive control and memory. However, the role of the arousal system in emotion regulation is less well understood. Pupil diameter is a proxy to infer upon the central arousal state. We employed an emotion regulation paradigm with a combination of design features that allowed us to dissociate regulation from emotional arousal in the pupil diameter time course of 34 healthy adults. Pupil diameter increase during regulation predicted individual differences in emotion regulation success beyond task difficulty. Moreover, the extent of this individual regulatory arousal boost predicted performance in another self-control task, dietary health challenges. Participants who harnessed more regulation-associated arousal during emotion regulation were also more successful in choosing healthier foods. These results suggest that a common arousal-based facilitation mechanism may support an individual’s self-control across domains.
Highlights
Multiple theories have proposed that increasing central arousal through the brain’s locus coeruleus— norepinephrine system may facilitate cognitive control and memory
To dissociate these two aspects, we employed a combination of design features in the emotion regulation paradigm that allowed us to separate regulation-associated from emotional arousal components in the pupil diameter time course
We demonstrate that this is tied to the individual level of regulation-related arousal, indexed by pupil dilation, and independent from the estimated effects of task difficulty that we quantify via affective distance (Eq 3a)
Summary
Multiple theories have proposed that increasing central arousal through the brain’s locus coeruleus— norepinephrine system may facilitate cognitive control and memory. One crucial problem for the interpretation of such physiological readouts in emotion regulation research is whether an increase in pupil dilation relates to emotional arousal induced by the stimulus content or to engagement in genuine cognitive control processes in service of regulation To dissociate these two aspects, we employed a combination of design features in the emotion regulation paradigm that allowed us to separate regulation-associated from emotional arousal components in the pupil diameter time course. Recent findings offered new insights into the basic mechanisms of emotion processing and cognitive control, by demonstrating that exerting executive control modulates both the parasympathetic and sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system to increase sympathetic activity and attenuates the parasympathetic pupil light reflex as well as the emotional arousal reaction measured in the pupil in response to negative s timuli[35]. These results showcase the importance of noradrenergic arousal as a proxy for and potential facilitator of cognitive control[51,52]
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