Staying cool when things get hot: emotion regulation modulates neural mechanisms of memory encoding.

During times of emotional stress, individuals often engage in emotion regulation to reduce the experiential and physiological impact of negative emotions. Interestingly, emotion regulation strategies also influence memory encoding of the event. Cognitive reappraisal is associated with enhanced memory while expressive suppression is associated with impaired explicit memory of the emotional event.

Rebuttal to Hasan and Pedraza in comments and controversies: "Improving the reliability of manual and automated methods for hippocampal and amygdala volume measurements".

Here we address the critiques offered by Hasan and Pedraza to our recently published manuscript comparing the performance of two automated segmentation programs, FSL/FIRST and FreeSurfer (Morey R, Petty C, Xu Y, Pannu Hayes J, Wagner H, Lewis D, LaBar K, Styner M, McCarthy G. (2009): A comparison of automated segmentation and manual tracing for quantifying of hippocampal and amygdala volumes. Neuroimage 45:855-866).

Alterations in the neural circuitry for emotion and attention associated with posttraumatic stress symptomatology.

Information processing models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suggest that PTSD is characterized by preferential allocation of attentional resources to potentially threatening stimuli. However, few studies have examined the neural pattern underlying attention and emotion in association with PTSD symptomatology. In the present study, combat veterans with PTSD symptomatology engaged in an emotional oddball task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

A comparison of automated segmentation and manual tracing for quantifying hippocampal and amygdala volumes.

Large databases of high-resolution structural MR images are being assembled to quantitatively examine the relationships between brain anatomy, disease progression, treatment regimens, and genetic influences upon brain structure. Quantifying brain structures in such large databases cannot be practically accomplished by expert neuroanatomists using hand-tracing. Rather, this research will depend upon automated methods that reliably and accurately segment and quantify dozens of brain regions.

The role of trauma-related distractors on neural systems for working memory and emotion processing in posttraumatic stress disorder.

The relevance of emotional stimuli to threat and survival confers a privileged role in their processing. In PTSD, the ability of trauma-related information to divert attention is especially pronounced. Information unrelated to the trauma may also be highly distracting when it shares perceptual features with trauma material.

Neural systems for executive and emotional processing are modulated by symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder in Iraq War veterans.

The symptom-provocation paradigms generally used in neuroimaging studies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have placed high demands on emotion processing but lacked cognitive processing, thereby limiting the ability to assess alterations in neural systems that subserve executive functions and their interactions with emotion processing. Thirty-nine veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while exposed to emotional combat-related and neutral civilian scenes interleaved with an executive processing task. Contrast activation maps were regressed against PTSD symptoms as measured by the Davidson Trauma Scale.