Kayla Smith
Research Mentor: Stefanie Russman Block
Mentor Department: Psychology/Psychiatry, LSA
Author(s): Kayla Smith, Sophia Hovakimian, Kristin Mannella, Krisanne Litinas, Kate Fitzgerald, David Fresco, Scott Peltier, Stephan Taylor, Stefanie Russman Block
Session: Session 6 (3:00 PM – 3:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 33
Abstract
Anxiety Disorders are some of the most common mental health conditions. Cognitive reappraisal is a type of emotion regulation strategy that can reduce anxiety, in which individuals change the meaning of a situation to alter their emotional response. When compared to healthy individuals, anxious individuals often struggle more to use cognitive reappraisal, typically because it can be very effortful and mentally demanding. There are various strategies of cognitive reappraisal, including changing current circumstances, changing future circumstances, acceptance, distancing oneself, etc. Previous literature suggests that the efficacy of these methods can vary significantly. The purpose of this study is to understand cognitive reappraisal strategies in individuals with anxiety using real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neurofeedback. During an fMRI scan, adult participants with anxiety, are instructed to “look†or “reappraise†sensitive, gory-type images while viewing a thermometer that reflects neural activity in regions related to cognitive reappraisal. After, participants answer open ended questions describing their thoughts and reappraisal strategies while in the scanner. This poster focuses specifically on the tactic of “changing current circumstances.†This tactic focuses on reinterpreting the current circumstances of the event so that the event is less negative than initially thought. An example of this is, “it looks bad, but it’s not actually that painful.†Trials where this tactic was employed are compared against those where it was not used and trials where other reappraisal strategies were used. Linear mixed-effects models will be used to examine the relationships between strategy type and activation within the prefrontal cortex. We hypothesize that the use of “changing current circumstances†will be positively correlated with higher levels of prefrontal cortex activation and lower arousal ratings, suggesting that this specific strategy may be a primary driver of successful neural regulation in anxious individuals. In our analyses, we found that “changing current circumstances†was associated with reducing subjective arousal and increased activation of the vlPFC and dmPFC. While some of the within-subject and between-subject trends did not show statistical significance, they highlighted that future research would be useful for the “changing current circumstances†reappraisal tactic.
