Neural Correlates Of Automatic Emotion Regulation In Different Perceptual Levels And It’s Gender Difference

In our life, emotions have important effects on human decision-making and behavior. The individual will unconscious change the direction or the degree of emotion depending on the situation during it happens, this change does not need outside instruction and it is an automated process. Potential advantages of automatic emotion regulation is that it can handle some life issues, which resist consciously adjustment. To date, most studies have focused on conscious and voluntary emotion regulation, while unconscious and automatic emotion regulation (AER) is inadequate research. Given the importance of automatic emotion regulation in life, based on previous researches, this study will combine the research in the field of automatic emotion regulation and perceptual level, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to explore the neural mechanisms of automatic emotion regulation under different levels of perception and it’s gender differences.The whole dissertation included two studies. The first study used fMRI technology to investigate the cognitive neural mechanisms of automatic emotion regulation between implicit perceptual level and explicit perceptual level. Selected 40 college students in Zhejiang province to participate in the experiment and measured each student’s explicit perception and implicit perception. We used inhibition word in different perceptual levels to priming automatic emotion regulation to regulate negative emotional pictures, and rated the negative picture by pressing button, recording real-time changes of brain nerve through fMRI technology. These results revealed that automatic emotion regulation can effectively reduce negative emotion in different perceptual levels, compared to the level of implicit perception, the effective of AER under explicit perceptual level will be better. The inhibition word priming AER are more effectively reduce the individual’s negative emotion than the neutral word. The results of brain imaging found that there was difference in neural mechanisms of automatic emotion regulation between implicit perceptual level and explicit perceptual level. AER of negative emotion in explicit perceptual level would be associated with increased neural activity in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC). Based on the first study, the second study further explore the gender difference of neural mechanisms of AER in different perceptual levels. The results of behavior revealed that men compare women were experience less negative emotions. The gender difference of neural mechanisms of AER were exist. In particular, compared with women, men showed more increased activity in DLPFC.. DMPFC and left hippocampus gyrus in different perceptual levels, furthermore, men showed more increased activity in right hippocampus in implicit perceptual level.The discussion part based on the results of two studies and others, the author mainly explore the effect of automatic emotion regulation in different perceptual levels to regulate emotional response and the related neural mechanisms. We also discussion the gender difference of the neural mechanisms of AER. Simultaneously, the limitation of this research and proposed the future direction of further research were also discussed.