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Category: Project

Description: Emotion regulation (ER) flexibility is the ability to adaptively switch between different ER strategies to adjust them to changing situational demands. Although greater flexibility is associated with better mental health, the neurocognitive mechanisms involved in this adaptive process have scarcely been explored. In the present study, we use an ER strategy switching task and measure electrocortical activity from healthy young adults (N = 63, age = 18-35 years, females) to investigate the neural mechanisms involved in performance-based monitoring processes and decision-making in the context of ER. Specifically, using state-of-the-art advanced source reconstruction and connectivity analyses, we plan to investigate the involvement of the medial and lateral frontopolar cortex (FPC) in monitoring the (current and alternative) ER strategy effectiveness, and the neural coupling between FPC and parietal cortex during implementation of a strategy switch. Moreover, we plan to replicate and extend findings by (Birk & Bonanno, 2016; Dorman Ilan et al., 2019; Shafir et al., 2016) using event-related potentials (ERPs, Late Positive Potential) and electromyographic (EMG, corrugator) activity with an improved task design to test whether reduced ER strategy effectiveness predicts switching to the alternative ER strategy and whether this consequently results in improved regulatory effects.