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LIT-1359: A systems identification approach using Bayes factors to deconstruct the brain bases of emotion regulation

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Properties5
StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-22 (NOTE-1061) from the bioRxiv preprint, version 2 (10 May 2023), not the closed version of record; worth reading as the first imaging study of reappraisal large enough (n = 182 and 176, replicated in both) to give evidence for nulls, which lets it say which regions are engaged only by regulating, which are shared with generating negative emotion, and which emotion-responsive regions reappraisal leaves unchanged. Most of the reappraisal network is shared with generation, a smaller anterior prefrontal and temporo-parietal set is selective for it, and every subcortical emotion-responsive region, amygdala and PAG included, was unchanged while reported negative affect fell. One instructed strategy, one picture task, BOLD means and one rating per trial; its talk of "subcortical-level affective experience" goes beyond what was measured.
Version2
Tagsemotion-and-affect, neuroscience
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1061 — Bo et al. — Deconstructing the brain bases of emotion regulation
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-1237 — Instructed reappraisal lowers reported negative affect to aversive pictures while the responses of the amygdala, periaqueductal gray, hypothalamus and other subcortical regions to the same pictures show evidence of no change; the regions it reduces are cortical, mainly higher visual and parietal, THEORY-871 — In two midlife community samples (n = 182 and 176), instructed reappraisal of aversive pictures, mostly by reinterpretation, lowered reported negative affect, while the BOLD responses of the amygdala, periaqueductal gray, hypothalamus and the other subcortical regions that responded to the pictures showed evidence of no change (Bayes factors below 1/10); the emotion-responsive regions it reduced were all cortical, mainly higher visual and parietal, THEORY-878 — Instructed reappraisal of aversive pictures engages anterior prefrontal, temporo-parietal and cerebellar regions that show evidence of no response to negative emotion generation, beside a larger set of regions engaged both by generation and by reappraisal: in this task part of regulation runs in regions apart from generation, and most of it in regions shared with it

Graph View

Bo, K., Kraynak, T. E., Kwon, M., Sun, M., Gianaros, P. J. & Wager, T. D. (2024). A systems identification approach using Bayes factors to deconstruct the brain bases of emotion regulation. Nature Neuroscience 27(5): 975–987. doi:10.1038/s41593-024-01605-7. Preprint: bioRxiv, doi:10.1101/2023.04.26.538485, as “Deconstructing the brain bases of emotion regulation: A systems-identification approach using Bayes factors”.

Key takeaways

From the reading, NOTE-1061. Page numbers are the preprint’s.

  • Nulls made the question answerable. A region is “Reappraisal only” if it responds to reappraisal and shows 10:1 evidence of no response to negative against neutral pictures without it. A null at that strength needs at least 120 participants (p. 5).
  • Reported affect falls. Reappraisal lowered negative ratings (d = 0.92); “81% of individual participants showed regulation effects in the same direction as the group findings” (p. 7).
  • Mostly shared, partly selective. “The majority of the regions activated by reappraisal were also activated during negative emotion-generation without explicit reappraisal instructions” (p. 18). Sixteen regions, anterior prefrontal, temporo-parietal and cerebellar, were selective for reappraisal (p. 8), and they best predicted its success (r = 0.2; pp. 11–12).
  • Subcortical responses unchanged. “Most regions responsive to emotional stimuli were non-modifiable, including all subcortical emotion-related regions” (p. 10). Amygdala subregions and PAG showed evidence of no reduction (all BF < 0.1), some moving the other way (p. 11).
  • What reappraisal reduces is cortical. The eight modifiable regions were “located exclusively in the cortex”, mainly higher visual and parietal areas, read by the authors as semantic and conceptual representation of the picture (pp. 10, 21).
  • Limits the authors state. The component definitions assume that the two contrasts capture appraisal and that appraisal produces no decreases; “emotion appraisal may not be sufficiently defined by current contrast” (p. 23).

Why this is here

The owner’s exchange of 2026-10-21, “Experience and interpretation”, asked whether experience is constituted by interpretation or produced by it. The exchange cited this study as a limit on the constitutive reading of affect: some emotion systems were modulated by reappraisal and a largely subcortical one was not. On the exchange’s reading, not every component of an emotion is open to reinterpretation. Bears on THEORY-056, THEORY-680 and CLAIM-412.

Corrected 2026-10-22, from the reading. The description is right about the subcortical regions and too narrow about the rest. The unmodulated set is most of the emotion-responsive brain, cortex included (lateral OFC, medial prefrontal, midcingulate, parietal); the subcortical regions are those where nothing was modulated. And the limit holds only if the unchanged subcortical response is a component of the experience. The study measured BOLD and one rating per trial, and the rating did fall; the subcortical response did not predict how far (r = 0.015). Reading the unchanged response as the emotion behind a changed feeling is the split Barrett et al. (LIT-1353) reject. The study does bear directly on the dispute between THEORY-056 and THEORY-680: most of the reappraisal network is shared with generation, as THEORY-056 expects, and a selective set is not, as THEORY-680 expects. Filed from it: THEORY-878 (the shared and selective sets) and THEORY-871 (what reappraisal changes and does not).

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