The amygdala is a structure deep in the brain that tends to be active when people react emotionally to events (as well as in a variety of other circumstances). So one can assume that people would be less active if they tried to dampen their feelings. But to find out whether this is actually true, you have to look at brain activity. Here, the team relied on 40 functional MRI data sets and provided a sufficiently large data set to identify even relatively small effects.
That’s a good thing, because the effects were really hard to see. “The effect size was comparatively small: in order to capture this effect size with a statistical power of 80 percent, a single study would have to test 1,105 participants,” the researchers note and go on to say that very few fMRI studies would have access to nearly as many subjects.
However, even greater problems arose when the differences between individuals in the MRI data were compared with their differences in the questionnaires or task-based assessments. The variance of the different measures was almost uncorrelated with each other. We could go through the numbers, but one number from the newspaper illustrates the problem quite clearly.
When any of the typical measures of emotional regulation varies, it rarely varies in a consistent way.
When any of the typical measures of emotional regulation varies, it rarely varies in a consistent way.
Photo credit: Sicorello et. al.
A question of timing?
Further problems became apparent when researchers began examining activity in the areas of the brain responsible for high-level decision-making. If people were truly using their ability to reappraise emotional triggers, these areas should probably be active because they are needed to drive the reappraisal process.
But that wasn’t what the fMRI data showed. Instead, there was a correlation between the amygdala’s response and the response elsewhere in the brain. In other words, when the amygdala was very active, meaning a stronger emotional response, activity in the decision-making areas of the brain was also higher. When the emotional response appeared dampened, activity in the thinking centers was also lower.
