TITLE:
Autonomic Mechanisms of Emotional Reactivity and Regulation
AUTHORS:
Catherine C. Uy, Iain A. Jeffrey, Matthew Wilson, Viswanath Aluru, Anita Madan, Ying Lu, Preeti Raghavan
KEYWORDS:
Heart Rate Variability; Sympathetic; Parasympathetic; Emotions
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.4 No.8,
August
12,
2013
ABSTRACT: The ability to perceive and regulate our emotions appropriately is
essential for social behavior. Our subjective emotional states to changing
external cues are accompanied by physiological changes in heart rate
variability (HRV), which is regulated by the sympathetic and parasympathetic
branches of the autonomic nervous systems (ANS). In this pilot study, we sought to elucidate the autonomic basis of
emotional reactivity and regulation in response to ecologically-valid emotional
stimuli—presented in the form of filmclips—in healthy subjects. Subjects
watched a series of videos, validated to elicit feelings of amusement, sexual
amusement, sadness, fear, and disgust. Subjects were also asked to regulate the
outward expression of their response to disgust by suppressing or amplifying it
when instructed. Electrodes placed on the torso measured cardiac and
respiratory signals, which were processed to compute HRV, which when analyzed with the concurrent respiratory
signal calculates measures of parasympathetic activity (RFA, Respiratory
Frequency Area, from higher frequencies) and sympathetic activity (LFA, Low
Frequency Area, from lower frequencies). Fluctuations in LFA and RFA were
computed by the coefficient of variation, and the intensity of the emotional
response to the film-clips was captured via questionnaires. Our results suggest
that in healthy individuals, higher intensities of subjective emotional
experience, both positive (e.g., amusement) and negative (e.g., amplified
disgust) elicit higher LFA (sympathetic) responses, whereas emotional
regulation is mediated primarily by fluctuations in RFA (parasympathetic)
activity. Furthermore, correlations between emotional intensity and components
of HRV suggest that higher positive or lower negative emotional states may
increase the capacity for emotional regulation via modulation of the
parasympathetic component. Our results suggest that a sense of humor might
facilitate emotional control.