The Neural Correlates of Future Positive Reappraisal

Acute stress has been shown to produce an adverse effect on mental and physical health. Historically, the effects of stress have been treated with a diverse array of pharmacological agents and psychotherapies. Engaging in future positive reappraisal (thinking about a negative current situation in terms of producing a better future outcome of the situation) serves as a beneficial form of stress management. A paradigm featuring changes in the current difficulty and future difficulty of anagrams per trial aimed to induce future positive reappraisal to regulate negative affect to a stressor. The paradigm failed to yield behavioral changes in affect (for both the behavioral study [N=88] and the behavioral fMRI study [N=19]) when the current difficulty was hard, and the future difficulty of the subsequent trial was easy compared to hard. There was also no significant evidence that the vmPFC was activated during the future positive reappraisal condition. The inconclusiveness of the behavioral and neural findings suggests that future research should be conducted on a larger population pool, explore future positive reappraisals with a paradigm that is more sensitive at producing future positive reappraisal, and a form of data analysis that can detect changes in affect to an individual across each trial.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Okonmah-Obazee, Stephanie

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/93907

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/93907