A psychophysiological investigation of emotion regulation in chronic severe posttraumatic stress disorder.

There have been few direct examinations of the volitional control of emotional responses to provocative stimuli in PTSD. To address this gap, an emotion regulation task was administered to 27 Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom combat veterans and 23 healthy controls. Neutral and aversive photographs were presented to participants who did or did not employ emotion regulation strategies.

Seated movement indexes emotion and its regulation in posttraumatic stress disorder.

This paper reports the results of a study that administered an emotion regulation task to Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (27) and to healthy controls (23). Seated movement and postural responses were transduced with a sensitive accelerometer attached to the underside of a low-mass cantilevered chair. Consistent with prior studies in which subjects stood on force plates, aversive photographs induced attenuation of nondirectional movement in patients and controls.

Cognitive emotion regulation fails the stress test.

Cognitive emotion regulation has been widely shown in the laboratory to be an effective way to alter the nature of emotional responses. Despite its success in experimental contexts, however, we often fail to use these strategies in everyday life where stress is pervasive. The successful execution of cognitive regulation relies on intact executive functioning and engagement of the prefrontal cortex, both of which are rapidly impaired by the deleterious effects of stress.

Durable effects of cognitive restructuring on conditioned fear.

Studies of cognitive reappraisal have demonstrated that reinterpreting a stimulus can alter emotional responding, yet few studies have examined the durable effects associated with reinterpretation-based emotion regulation strategies. Evidence for the enduring effects of emotion regulation may be found in clinical studies that use cognitive restructuring (CR) techniques in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to alleviate anxiety. These techniques are based on cognitive theories of anxiety that suggest these disorders arise from biased cognitions; therefore, changing a person's thoughts will elicit durable changes in an individual's emotional responses.