Amygdala-prefrontal connectivity during emotion regulation: A meta-analysis of psychophysiological interactions

Emotion regulation is a critical factor in mental health, yet understanding the specific neural pathways involved in the cognitive control of emotions remains challenging. Existing research suggests that the prefrontal cortex exerts top-down control over subcortical emotion-generative regions, particularly the amygdala. However, because standard correlational analyses do not demonstrate functional coupling, researchers often turn to psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses to identify regions whose connectivity with a seed region (like the amygdala) changes during specific tasks. This study aims to synthesize these findings to determine the consistency and convergence of amygdala-prefrontal connectivity across existing studies.

The authors conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis using the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) algorithm on fifteen fMRI studies that utilized PPI to examine amygdala-frontocortical connectivity during emotion regulation. They performed three distinct analyses to account for differences in methodology, such as the inclusion of covariates (e.g., individual regulation success or self-control scores) and the specific emotion regulation strategies employed (e.g., reappraisal vs. distraction).

The synthesis reveals that the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) is the most robustly connected region with the amygdala during emotion regulation, a finding largely driven by studies focusing on reappraisal. When focusing exclusively on the down-regulation of emotions via reappraisal, the coupling network expands to include the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC).

These results support models of emotion regulation that propose dynamic communication between prefrontal cognitive control networks and the subcortical emotion-generative network. The convergence of these findings suggests that the left vlPFC may facilitate the selection of appropriate reappraisal strategies, while the dlPFC and dmPFC may provide the necessary cognitive and mental-state monitoring resources for effective regulation. Interestingly, the inclusion of studies that utilized individual difference measures as covariates suggests that the strength of this connectivity is potentially modulated by the regulator's baseline ability to successfully manage their emotional responses.