Compassion-based emotion regulation up-regulates experienced positive affect and associated neural networks.

ABSTRACT: Emotion regulation research has primarily focused on techniques that attenuate or modulate the impact of emotional stimuli. Recent evidence suggests that this mode regulation can be problematic in the context of regulation of emotion elicited by the suffering of others, resulting in reduced emotional connectedness. Here, we investigated the effects of an alternative emotion regulation technique based on the up-regulation of positive affect via Compassion-meditation on experiential and neural affective responses to depictions of individuals in distress, and compared these with the established emotion regulation strategy of Reappraisal. Using fMRI, we scanned 15 expert practitioners of Compassion-meditation either passively viewing, or using Compassion-meditation or Reappraisal to modulate t

SUBMITTER: Engen HG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4560943 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature