Functional decoupling of emotion coping network subserves automatic emotion regulation by implementation intention

Automatic emotion regulation (AER) has received increasing attention. However, the effortless hypothesis of AER has yet to be directly tested and the neural mechanisms supporting AER remain unclear. Here, we addressed these two issues, by simultaneous recording behavioral assessments and functional MRI (fMRI) signals when thirty-one participants were required to watch neutral and disgust pictures in three experimental conditions: Watching, Goal Intention (GI) and Reappraisal by Implementation Intention (RII). RII decreased negative feelings and bilateral amygdala activity without engendering cognitive efforts, evidenced by the reduced self-reported efforts and less prefrontal engagement during RII compared to Watching and GI. These regulation effects should not be explained by emotional habituation, as further experiment did not show significant emotional habituation for the repetition of the same stimuli. Moreover, RII and GI produced similar functional connectivity (FC) of vACC (ventral anterior cingulate cortex) to left insula and right precuneus, corresponding to the common goal pursuit component of both strategies. Furthermore, RII relative to GI exhibited weaker FC in distributed brain networks subserving effortful control (e.g. inferior-superior parietal lobe FC), memory retrieval (e.g. inferior-middle temporal lobes and lingual-putamen FCs), aversive anticipation and emotion-related motor planning (e.g. putamen-operculum and vACC-supramarginal gyrus FCs). These findings suggest that RII downregulates disgust effortlessly, most likely mediated by the reduced online mobilization of neural systems subserving emotion-related coping.