Abstract
When experiencing negative emotions, individuals often reach out for social support to help regulate their emotions. In times of an acute crisis, however, close friends might not be available, and physical closeness might be impossible. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated the effect of social proximity on the effectiveness of social support for regulating emotions and the underlying neural mechanisms. Participants regulated their emotions in response to negative images either alone (intrapersonal regulation), or with help of a picture and supporting sentence provided by the best friend, or by a stranger (interpersonal regulation). Regulation success was enhanced for the support of friends compared to regulating alone or with the support of strangers. This effect was accompanied by the interplay of large-scale brain networks involved in processing emotions, social cognition, and cognitive control. Interpersonal regulation appeared to be implemented by lateral prefrontal regions. The amygdala showed increased activation for strangers. The activation profile of the social cognition network suggests a role in supporting empathic and mentalizing processes. The results highlight the power of social connectedness for boosting emotion regulation ability and the different neural networks that contribute to this effect.
Highlights
In emotionally challenging situations, such as being in lock-down during the COVID-19 pandemic, people often seek out support from family, friends, partners, or even strangers with the goal to alter one’s affective state (Rime, 2009), or to dampen stress (Uchino and Garvey, 1997)
We report two studies: a behavioral pilot experiment and an functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to investigate the effect of social proximity on emotion regulation, which served to replicate the effects of the behavioral pilot experiment and investigate the neural correlates of this process
We aimed to categorize the regions of interest (ROI) according to their activation profile: general involvement in emotion regulation, social cognition, or emotion generation influenced by social proximity
Summary
In emotionally challenging situations, such as being in lock-down during the COVID-19 pandemic, people often seek out support from family, friends, partners, or even strangers (e.g., via helplines) with the goal to alter one’s affective state (Rime, 2009), or to dampen stress (Uchino and Garvey, 1997). Reek et al (2016) proposed a framework for the implementation of interpersonal emotion regulation in the brain, which is based on three neural systems: (1) a cognitive control system, (2) social cognition and empathy system, and (3) an emotion generation system. The observer responds to the emotional response of the target and attempts to regulate the target’s emotions via strategies to enhance cognitive control (Reek et al, 2016) In the target, this should involve the neural cognitive control system (system I), including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC), and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as well as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and parietal cortex (e.g., Morawetz et al, 2017b, 2020); in addition, the involvement of the social cognition system (system II) related to empathy and mentalizing would occur, including dorsal premotor regions, temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and precuneus (Bernhardt and Singer, 2012; Decety and Jackson, 2004; Jauniaux et al, 2019). The amygdala has been suggested to be involved in social perception (detecting, decoding, and interpreting of social signals), social affiliation
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