Self-Control 2 responses
Camille Barnes
The Bunge et al article stresses the importance of the prefrontal
cortex in both efforts to keep information in mind and ignoring
irrelevant information. In this study, they seek to determine if
these processes employ different or like brain regions. As the authors
noted, one must be cautious in interpretation of the results, since
most participants were aware of the working memory manipulation
(increasing the number of letters in a set), but were not conscious of
the interference manipulation (using letters that were present in the
previous set, therefore different brain regions could be active do to
this conscious/not conscious distinction. They found that the brain
areas sensitive to cognitive load were: Bilateral regions of the
dorsalateral and ventrolateral PFC, anterior insula, anterior
cingulate, parietal cortex, right frontopolar cortex, caudate nucleus
and cerebellum, while those sensitive to interference were: Middle
frontal gyrus, right anterior cingulate gyrus, right cerebellum, Left
inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral interior insula, bilateral parietal
cortex. Overall, cognitive load caused greater activation, and every
area activated by interference was also activated by cognitive load.
Also, load slowed on positive and negative trials, while interference
slowed only on negative trials. I thought this was interesting,
because it might be possible that for cognitive load, individuals are
engaging in an exhaustive search in which they process each letter
before deciding if it is a match or not, while with interference, they
are engaging in a serial search, where they process each letter until
the match is found and than end the search (without processing every
letter).
The Delgado et al article, tested the effectiveness of cognitive
strategies in reducing arousal and striatum activation to reward
conditioned cues. They found that engaging in emotional regulation
cognitive strategies did reduce physiological arousal and striatum
activation, but also increased activation in the left middle frontal
gyrus left inferior frontal gyrus and left inferior parietal cortex,
and the subgenual cingulate cortex (which is often associated with
fear extinction). These brain areas are likely important in
regulating one’s emotions.
The Kober et al article looked at the effectiveness of different
cognitive strategies in cigarette craving. This study used one
cognitive strategy that focused on short term consequences of smoking
behavior (it will taste good), and another that looked at long term
consequences of smoking behavior (I could get cancer). This study
also used a tempting food category, to determine if the results
generalize to other tempting situations. Participants were either
heavy smokers, light smokers, or non smokers. They were instructed to
think about short term or long term consequences of smoking or
consuming the high calorie food and were then asked to rate their
craving severity on a scale from 1-5. Researchers found a main effect
of strategy, such that participants reported greater craving following
now rather than later strategies. The authors mentioned that the
craving rating is not measuring actual smoking behavior, which I had
also noticed. It may be difficult to measure actual behavior in this
type of study, but it would at least be helpful to report data from
other studies about craving and smoking behavior correlations, to put
this particular data in perspective. One other issue I had was that
it seems severity of consequences and timing of consequences are
confounded, such that the long term effects are also much more sever
than the short term effects. Is it that looking far into the future
is useful in preventing cravings, or is it that greater consequences
are effective in reducing cravings?
The McRae, et al study looks at two different forms of emotional
regulation: distraction and reappraisal and their effectiveness and
brain activational properties. This study found that use of both
reappraisal and distraction reduces negative affect. Participants
were shown picture or series of letters and were instructed to attend
to it, reappraise it, or were shown a series of letters which served
as the distraction condition. Then they had to press a key indicating
if a letter was present (in the distraction condition) or hit any key
in other conditions. Then they rated how negative they felt. They
found that both strategies reduced negative affect, decreased amygdala
activation, and increased activation in prefrontal and cingulate
regions. Reappraisal resulted in greater decreases in negative affect
and increases in activation medial prefrontal and anterior temporal
regions (processing affective meaning), while distraction resulted in
greater decreases in activation in the amygdala and increases in
activation of prefrontal and parietal regions (selective attention).
One interesting follow up would be if participants are doing
concurrent tasks that involve for instance the prefrontal and parietal
regions, would reappraisal be more effective, or a task that involved
medial prefrontal and anterior temporal regions, would distraction be
more effective?
beka strock
SOC Neuro Wk 8 Disc Paper
The McRae et al (2009) paper was really well done—the design not only compared conditions, but built strong theoretical predictions based on contrasting two different processes (distraction versus reappraisal). More importantly, it examined common processes thought to be theoretically based in a self-control network as well as differences between the two specific processes. I thought this design was much more sophisticated than some of the initial “significant difference from baseline” studies we read earlier in the course. I particularly liked the reliance on other related studies while still breaking new ground, an excellent balance I thought. The most interesting conclusion to me, aside from the common activation of self-control areas, was the differential recommended usages for each strategy, i.e. reappraisal/memory enhancing/long-term strategy versus distraction/limited processing/one-time use strategy. While perhaps this seems obvious in retrospect, it brings to mind strengths and limitations of each strategy by situational needs and dependences. Ending on a clinical/applied note was a nice touch to bring the data back to real-world applications as well.
I did not feel that the Bunge et al (2001) has a strong of a theoretical grounding or as clear of an explanation of predictions or results. The basic idea that processing increased amounts of information (increased load) versus sorting competing information (inhibiting interference) would have some shared and discrepant activations makes sense, but the “so what” is less clear—why is this distinction important? Although the authors argue that these are two sides of self-control/inhibition of information (keeping thoughts in working memory or out of mind), I am not convinced that this distinction is clear.
The smoking regulation study by Kober et al (2009) evaluated and confirmed the use of reappraisal strategy in decreasing cravings for undesirable behaviors such as smoking and unhealthy eating, finding that focusing on short-term versus long-term effects of consumption respectively increased or decreased cravings. However, I was surprised that the authors did not address neural substrates of these findings.
In the Delgado et al (2008) study, the reduction strategy (regulate) very effectively modified the reward expectation of the skin conduction response to the extent that baseline non-reward was equal to regulated reward CS response. The extreme effectiveness of this control strategy, however, made me wonder whether the lab reward CS was really as stimulating as a real-world example; since it was decreased so effectively, perhaps it wasn’t strongly conditioned or the reward was not important enough ($4). This may limit the applicability of the Delgado et al (2008) findings to reward stimuli that are relatively unimportant to the perceiver. I was interested to see that the article referred to supplementary methods available online in a number of places, however when looking up the article on nature neuroscience, there was not separate link to such documents available to the general public that I could find—maybe you have to be a subscriber to access them, not sure. In any case, while I was initially impressed with this idea, I think that it would have to be a publicly available option to be truly useful for reference.
Stuart Daman
some and did not share some activation. They suggest that the common
regions may serve both functions, but seem a little resistant to state
this definitively, why? Perhaps the processes are not as different as
they suggest. Sure, they are different, one is the conscious
maintenance of information and the other is the inhibition of
interference. However, these processes may have more in common than
they they do not have in common. As such, we should expect them to
share some activation regions. I'm not sure why they make this seem
highly probable rather than definitively so. The limits of fMRI
resolution are a good point, but the way they convey their message
makes it sound like they are not even convinced of it (although I
was); i.e. it's not assertive enough! Perhaps this was simply because
of the distinction between PFC areas and the other areas of the
frontal cortex, but I do not see why these make such a major
difference. In addition, I believe Camille makes an important point
regarding the conscious/non-conscious distinction about participants'
awareness of the interference manipulation (would data differ without
the two people that did notice?).
The Delgado paper was interesting too, but I think that they
overstepped their generalizations a lot. They showed the emotion
regulation can reduce arousal and reward response in the brain, to a
potential reward. And I see that additional method info is available,
but I think it's crucial to know whether or not their participants
actually got any money. If not, then this is essentially meaningless,
because nothing was real to the participant; the potential for
imaginary money is pish posh. If the participants actually got paid,
then let's keep talking like this means something.
One of the main points they seem to be driving home is that this paves
the way for possible way to control other urges like drug cravings. I
don't think so. An opportunity for money is not the same as a drug
craving. An opportunity could be explained as an unexpected reward,
i.e. there is a chance it won't be obtained and it may not have been
seeked out intentionally. A craving is 'automatic' and internal. We
cannot predict a drug craving, it just occurs and it is immediate.
Getting yourself put on Wheel of Fortune takes a conscious effort,
planning, and you could still go home with (almost) no reward. What I
am basically trying to say is that I'm not sure emotion regulation
would be anywhere near as effective for a drug craving. Alleviating
the effects of these takes a lot more work (years of therapy and
soberness, etc.). With such powerful implications, you would think
that this sort of research could be published in a place/journal in
which it is more accessible as well (even if I don't agree with it),
Beka made a comment about this as well.
The Kober et al. (2010) paper made a case for the relevance of these
ideas to smokers' cravings, but they did not look at neural substrates
for their effects.
I read the McRae et al. (2009) paper next. The mentioned specific
types of emotion regulation: distraction and reappraisal. Maybe it was
just me, but is reappraisal essentially what Delgado were looking at?
Or was it something different? Could employing more specific emotion
regulation strategies, such as reappraisal, be at least as effective?
In other news regarding the McRae et al. (2009) paper... Why only
women? They showed that these two emotion regulation strategies relied
on some similar and some different areas of the brain. This is quite
similar to the basic things showed by Bunge et al. (2001), although
there are different processes targeted here. These authors were more
assertive with the notion that some areas were in fact shared, whereas
others are different.
The ability of these researchers to make specific implications for
specific populations (adolescents vs. older folks/schizos) was really
cool. Also are picture stimuli and painful stimulation the only
paradigms in which this stuff has been researched? Wouldn't it be more
helpful to find more paradigms that illustrate the same effects than
only using the same two time and time again?
Jenny Perella
for keeping relevant info in mind, and interference resolution
(behavioral inhibition), responsible for keeping irrelevant info out
of mind, share common or have distinct regions of activation within
the prefrontal cortex. They scan their participants with fMRI while
employing manipulations of each working memory load and interference.
Overall, they found that working memory and interference resolution
have the following regions of activity in common: the bilateral
ventrolateral/dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior insula,
anterior cingulate, and parietal cortex; these regions were activated
when either working memory or interference demands increased. However,
there were also some regions of activation distinct to each process,
and the degree of activation of the common areas also differed per
process. In particular, efficient interference resolution, but not
efficiency in working memory, was associated with activation in the
right middle frontal gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus. That
is, subjects who were least prone to interference showed the greatest
activation in these parts. Subjects who were most susceptible to
increases in working memory load showed increased activation in the
anterior cingulate. According to the authors, the data suggest that
although there is much overlap, some regions are more critical for
each process.
One thing I thought about while reading this article was about
the neural correlates in people with ADHD. The authors discuss
previous literature in which monkeys with working memory deficits (due
to pfc lesions) could actually use working memory but could not
suppress irrelevant info, to me suggesting adequate activation in the
anterior cingulate, but impaired activity in the right middle frontal
gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus. This behavioral pattern
seems similar to patients with ADHD, who seem to be able to maintain
short-term memory but are easily distracted by external stimuli; in
other words, they seem to be able to maintain relevant info but have
deficits in interference resolution. I wondered what the neurobiology
of ADHD people compared to controls would look like when doing these
kinds of tasks.
I thought that the authors did a great job in the discussion of
reviewing previous literature that opposes their results and
explaining away alternative hypotheses/evidence. They had logical
arguments and were very thorough.
Delgado et al (2008) examined regulation strategies for positive,
anticipatory emotions brought about by a learned positive stimulus.
Previous literature has found that the striatum is important for
affective learning and general reward processing, and that this
activation can be maladaptive, specifically when the reward relates to
drugs/cravings and other risk-seeking behaviors. In their study, the
specific question of interest was, how do emotion regulation
strategies influence the physiological and neural correlates of
expectations of reward? The authors hypothesized that cognitive
strategies would successfully decrease arousal brought on by cues
triggering reward, while simultaneously decreasing the reward-related
activity in the striatum. Indeed, this is what they found.
Kober et al (2010) look at the ability of cognitive strategies to
regulate cigarette cravings in cigarette smokers, finding that
reframing thoughts about smoking consequences from immediate terms to
long-term is effective in decreasing smoking. As a general comment,
this article made me think about how several of our articles this week
focus on the efficacy of cognitive strategies in reducing a certain
behavior. However, they do not attempt to get at the self control
needed to engage in these cognitive strategies. Is use of the strategy
effortful/depleting (i.e. reason for common relapse in smoking
cessation studies)? If it is depleting, then will the cognitive
strategies become less effective over time, or will people become more
efficient at using the strategies, making the process easier? Along
these same lines, these strategies work initially; that is, they work
in the moment of the experiment. Eventually, though, will people
become habituated to them, making them less effective over time?
Both heavy smokers and chippers showed decreased cravings in the
LATER strategy condition than in the NOW strategy condition. However,
these LATER cravings were still (presumably) significantly higher than
in the no-smoking group. The authors suggest that LATER cognitive
strategies could help prevent relapse when trying to quit smoking,
though they clearly state there is as of yet no conclusion that
cravings are related to relapse. While results of their study may
support this hypothesis, the fact that there is still significant
craving also suggests that, though the LATER strategy reduces the
craving, it may not reduce it enough to prevent relapse. This
particular argument needs to be tested. Also, it would be interesting
to see a longitudinal design.
The McRae et al (2009) article was similar in structure to the
Bunge article, suggesting both common and distinct regions of
activation associated with distraction and reappraisal as forms of
cognitive emotion regulation. In common, both processes are associated
with decreased negative affect, decreased activation in the amygdala,
left insula, right inferior parietal lobe, and middle temporal gyrus,
and increased activation in the dACC and prefrontal/cingulated
regions. Distinct to each process, reappraisal was associated with
greater decreases in negative affect and greater increases in the mPFC
and anterior temporal cortex, areas important for processing affective
meaning. Distraction was associated with greater decreases in amygdala
activation and greater increases in prefrontal and parietal regions.
The decreases in amygdalal activation are presumed to be due to the
more ‘cold’/less emotional nature of distraction compared to
reappraisal, and the increases in prefrontal/parietal regions are
thought to represent the shifting in attention that occurs with
distraction. Again similar to Bunge et al (2001), the authors conclude
that distraction and reappraisal employ relatively the same neural
systems involved in attention and cognitive regulation but in
different ways/to different degrees, and have different emotional
consequences.
All through the article I, like Stuart, was wondering why the
sample was only women. The authors FINALLY mention this briefly in the
last column of the last page of the article (maybe because reviewers
questioned it too?): “In the present study, we chose to include only
women so as to avoid gender-related factors that might influence
emotional responding or emotion regulation.” They cite other research
to support this claim, but I think it would have been better if they
addressed this earlier when discussing their hypotheses and designs.
I also had some concerns about the instructions. The “decrease”
instructions clearly indicated to participants that they are likely to
have negative feelings toward the stimulus. As such, it’s possible
that they might try to make their ‘typical’ reactions more negative in
order to make the “decrease” process easier/more clear? Again, the
authors do address this in the limitations section, but I am still not
convinced. Also, when I realized that participants during the
“decrease” trials were “not to focus on the non-emotional aspects of
the picture” (p.2), I found it surprising that there was less amygdala
activation during the distraction phase.
I had some thoughts about the McRae article relating to our
readings in general and in terms of the other studies in particular.
Here, reappraisal resulted in greater decreases in negative affect and
increases in activation of medial pfc and anterior temporal regions.
Would we expect to see this difference between NOW and LATER
conditions (reappraisal) in the cigarette study if we had fMRI, which
is a form of reappraisal? Secondarily, which is more effortful,
reappraisal or distraction? What about in the long run? And which,
then, in terms of depletion, which is most effective? This study looks
at the immediate effects of these strategies on negative affect, but I
wondered specifically about the long-term efficacy of each independent
of effort/depletion. The authors argue that reappraisal is more
effective, but, depending on the goal, distraction may be just as
effective (if not more so) because it is associated with impaired
memory for items viewed during distraction. This suggests that
distraction after traumatic events may impair memory and subsequent
emotional suffering due to decreased memory of event; it could help
with ptsd. Would reappraisal do that? It is probably harder to
reappraise something legitimately awful (like a rape) than it is to
distract from it. Can distraction prevent synapses from forming/
strengthening, impairing memory for an event?
David Dinwiddie
In the Delgado article the thing that stood out to me the most was that the statistics were used poorly. Thanks Bruce! In the skin conductance they reported main effects for both the type of conditioned stimuli and the type of instructions. They also found a significant interaction. I would have liked to know more about this interaction such as the simple main effects. Without this information the interaction is fairly useless. The graph does help clarify the effects but it would be nice to see it in words. In the neurological part of the study they reported using post hoc t-tests rather than a Tukey test which I believe would be more valuable. Given these errors, and the very low number of participants, I am very skeptical of the results.
The McRae article showed that there was differential activation in the brain associated with distraction vs. reappraisal. I didn’t really have any trouble with the methods when I read it on my own, in fact I was thinking that they came up with a very creative way of testing each method in the same study. After reading the responses, specifically Jenny’s I would agree that their instructions could lead to people having different and more negative reactions to the pictures than they would have naturally had. In terms of the debate about using a sample of only women, I have no problem with doing that. However if you use a sample of only women it’s hard to generalize any claims. I realize that for the most part men and women would process things similarly it is hard to know for sure if that would be the case in this experiment.
The Kober article was not directly related to neuroscience but one can connect it through relating it to the other articles. It tested participants who were heavy smokers, lighter smokers or non-smokers. They told participants to focus on either the short term consequences or long term consequences of smoking or other crave worthy foods while looking at pictures. Cravings were reduced when thinking about the long term consequences. The problem with using this as a method of reducing smoking is that these people began smoking because they weren’t thinking about the long-term consequences. If they did, maybe they wouldn’t smoke but techniques need to be developed to help them look at the long term consequences other than having a person telling them.
The last of the articles I read was the Bunge article. This article showed that there were some similarity in regions activated with increased cognitive load and distraction and some differential activation. Those who were best able to deal with distraction had higher levels or activation in the right middle frontal gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus. This means they would be able to keep irrelevant information out of mind and relevant information in it.
Lindsay Morton
The four articles presented this week provide a nice overview of some of the social neuroscience work that has been completed on self-regulatory strategies. The specific focus seemed to be regulation of emotion and information processing. The work of Bunge et al. (2001) examined the neural correlates of working memory and interference resolution. In the introduction, the authors highlight that working memory encompasses the ability to suppress interference (p. 2075). Thus, it was not incredibly surprising that a large degree of overlap was found in the activation related to the manipulations of memory load and proactive interference. One position that is advanced is the idea the anterior cingulate is involved in detecting conflict and that the lateral PFC is involved in resolving it. This drew my attention to current research on self-control failure, and while much is known about the effects, less is clear about how and why it occurs. One possible test could examine if self-control depletion is happening at the point of conflict detection or at the point of resolution. In addition, Jenny’s discussion of the potential relevance of these findings to ADHD is a good point, especially in light of Bunge et al.’s (2001) notion that both working memory and inhibition (i.e., suppression of information and behavioral responses) impact individual differences in cognitive ability.
The three other articles for this week all seemed to correspond with an examination of reappraisals of cues and emotions. Kober et al. (2009) examined how “Now” and “Later” cognitive strategies affect cravings in a linear fashion among heavy smokers, chippers, and non-smokers. Delgado, Gillis, & Phelps (2008) look at how cool processing of a reward stimuli attenuates skin conductance and striatum activation. This work suggests an increased capacity for emotional regulation and subsequent decreased arousal when reward-related information is processed in a manner which is hot (e.g., “think of…potential reward”) or cool (e.g., “think of something…that calms you”). McRae et al. (2009) specifically compares and contrasts the neural architecture of distraction and reappraisal, and the authors attempt to extend knowledge about these cognitive strategies. Although it was covered in the discussion and in others’ posts, the discussion of how the participants were directed to reinterpret stimuli caught my attention. It made me wonder if the results are, in part, capturing the initial appraisal process in which the person would first need to determine his or her own natural reaction to the image and then act to change its meaning in a positive direction. In class tomorrow, it would be great to further discuss the point of how this difference in stimulus-focused attention and appraisal may have long-term effects or may be differentially effective in certain real life scenarios.
I also need to note (sorry-can’t end without a methodological critique) that the way in which the participant response dependent variable was measured seemed peculiar. McRae et al. (2009) had participants watch a bar grow over a period of 4 seconds and pick when it signaled “strength of negative affect.” The forced choice response in which participants need to pick their level of a certain feeling (e.g., on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much)) has been critiqued as not touching on how people typically define their own experiences. At the same time, I believe that people (at least in the United States) are accustomed to responding on these types of questionnaires. I would have to argue that spatially expanding bars is something that seems difficult to interpret. In addition, the gender issue is an important one. There is research to suggest that women are higher in overall emotionality and although I’m not certain where the literature stands on gender differences in reappraisal and distraction strategies, it would be informative to determine if these neural relationships can be observed in men.
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Jennifer Vosilla
Delgado, Gillis & Phelps (2008)
This article looked at activity in brain regions and physiological arousal (via Skin Conductance Responses) in connection to emotion regulation strategies and the expectation of rewards. As hypothesized, the authors found that in regards to the anticipation of a potential reward, using emotion regulation strategies decreased arousal and neural activity in the stratium. I had questions about the participants in this one. All you know for certain is that they obtained written consent, which the authors thought it appropriate to say twice in the article. How were they recruited? How many males/females were used? Were they paid? Was there any screening process (handedness, use of medication, history of psychiatric disorders)? In addition, I think Stuart makes a good point that comparing a drug craving to receiving a “potential” award of $4 is making a big leap.
McRae, Hughes, Chopra, Gabrieli, Gross, & Ochsner (2009)
This was perhaps my favorite article for this week as I think it was structured well, and they gave in depth explanations backed by empirical support for their predictions and results. Specifically, the authors were looking to directly compare the emotional regulation strategies of distraction of reappraisal. The authors found a significant decrease in negative affect and activation in the amygdala as well as increased activation in prefrontal and cingulated regions during both the reappraisal and distraction conditions. Although there was a greater decrease in negative affect and greater activity in the medial prefrontal and anterior temporal regions (associated with affective processing) in the reappraisal condition wherein during the distraction condition there was a greater decrease in amygdala activation and greater increase in prefrontal and parietal region activity that past research has implicated in selective attention. Therefore, they suggest that reappraisal involves regulating the affective aspects of the stimulus while distraction involves less processing of the affective aspects.
Kober, Kross, Mischel, Hart & Ochsner (2010)
In this article, the authors compared heavy (>11 cigarettes a day, 7 days a week), light (<6 cigarettes a day, at least 4 times a week) and non-smokers and their intensity of craving on a 5 point scale either food or cigarettes following photographs of cigarettes or fatty foods. In the introduction, they say that “the effective use of cognitive strategies can reduce both craving and smoking behavior in cigarette smokers”, which leads me to believe that they will show that both craving and smoking behavior is reduced, but they don’t. They do show that through reappraisal or thinking about the long-term consequences of consuming cigarettes (the LATER cue), as compared to thinking about the immediate consequences (NOW cue), participants did have a significantly less desire to consume a cigarette. Also during the cigarette trials, it was shown that relative to both heavy and light smokers, non-smokers showed significantly smaller differences between the 2 cues, whereas there was not a significant difference between the difference in the cues comparing heavy and light smokers.
Bunge, Ochsner, Desmond, Glover & Gabrieli (2001)
Bunge et al. looked at the regions involved in increased working memory load and interference resolution. Using the Sternberg item recognition paradigm, both were manipulated to answer whether they share common or distinct prefrontal regions. They found that there was common activation in the bilateral ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior insula, anterior cingulated and parietal cortex. The most interesting find was that activation in the right middle frontal gyrus and left inferior frontal gyrus were correlated with interference susceptibility, while activation in theanterior cingulated was correlated with load susceptibility. Their findings suggest that WM and interference resolution do share a common neural network as every region activated by the Interference manipulation was also activated by the Load manipulation.