Editorial: Advances in Emotion Regulation: From Neuroscience to Psychotherapy

[摘要] The first section of the special issue starts with a reflection on the importance of distinguishing explicit emotion regulation based on conscious and effortful application of strategies from implicit emotion regulation based on automatically and unconsciously designed mechanisms (Rice). Parallels are made with the psychoanalytic concept of defense mechanisms as a form of implicit emotion regulation. Another aspect explored in this part is the role of empathy in mediating the association between difficulties in emotion regulation and hostility (Contardi et al.). Cai et al. explore how sex and extraversion modulate self-reported emotional experience in an ERP experiment. The authors suggest that there is a male advantage for using expressive suppression for emotion regulation in non-extraverted, ambivert individuals. Deficits in the regulation of interpersonal emotions have been linked to severe psychiatric disorders. Understanding how patients experience and fail to regulate such emotions is of fundamental importance (Grecucci et al., 2015a). Depression is strongly characterized by difficulties in regulating unpleasant emotions. An intriguing psychodynamic hypothesis considers depression as a failure in mother-infant interactions during childhood that affects the construction of the representation of the self, others, and relationships. Messina et al. provide a link between abnormal activation of the default system in the brain observed in depression and the exaggerated negative self-focus and rumination that lead to emotion dysregulation in these patients. Clinical implications are also discussed.

[学科分类] 心理学（综合）

[关键词] emotion regulation;psychotherapy;affective neuroscience;memory reconsolidation