Abstracts

The Neural Basis of Affective Processes

TATIA M. C. LEE The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Emotion, emerged in the course of evolution, helps us survive various challenges. For example, "fear" protects us against danger; "joy" facilitates bonding between people offering nurturance to each other. Emotional impulses could also lead to socially inappropriate behaviors. Hence, efficient and effective emotion regulation mechanisms must be in place for the production of adaptive and goal-directed behaviours. Both behavioral and neuroimaging data have suggested that regulation of positive emotion was associated with strong and extensive activation in the left dorsal prefrontal regions and decreased activation in the left insula, the amygdala, the right rolandic operculum, and the lingual gyri. In contrast, regulation of negative emotion was associated with brain activity in the left orbitofrontal gyrus, the left superior frontal gyrus, the anterior cingulate gyrus, the left middle occipital gyrus, and the right precuneus. Men and women, when being exposed to similar affective stimuli, engage different patterns of neural activity when they attempt to understand the socio-affective world as well as regulate their affective states. Since emotion regulation is extremely important for adaptive social functioning and mental well-being, experience-induced neuroplastic changes and the potential beneficial effect of these changes on emotion regulation will be explored.