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Anticipation of difficult tasks: neural correlates of negative emotions and emotion regulation
BACKGROUND: Difficult cognitive tasks are often associated with negative feelings. This can be already the case for the mere anticipation of having to do a difficult task. For the case of difficult math tasks, it was recently suggested that such a negative emotional response may be exclusive to high...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6421679/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30885230 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12993-019-0155-1 |
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author | Klein, Elise Bieck, Silke M. Bloechle, Johannes Huber, Stefan Bahnmueller, Julia Willmes, Klaus Moeller, Korbinian |
author_facet | Klein, Elise Bieck, Silke M. Bloechle, Johannes Huber, Stefan Bahnmueller, Julia Willmes, Klaus Moeller, Korbinian |
author_sort | Klein, Elise |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Difficult cognitive tasks are often associated with negative feelings. This can be already the case for the mere anticipation of having to do a difficult task. For the case of difficult math tasks, it was recently suggested that such a negative emotional response may be exclusive to highly math-anxious individuals. However, it is also conceivable that negative emotional responses simply reflect that math is perceived as difficult. Here we investigated whether non-math-anxious individuals also experience negative emotional responses when anticipating to do difficult math tasks. METHODS: We compared brain activation following the presentation of a numerical cue indicating either difficult or easy upcoming proportion magnitude comparison tasks. RESULTS: Comparable to previous results for highly math-anxious individuals we observed a network associated with negative emotions to be activated in non-math-anxious individuals when facing cues indicating a difficult upcoming task. Importantly, however, math anxiety scores did not predict the neural response. Furthermore, we observed activation in areas associated with processes of cognitive control areas such as anterior cingulate cortex, which were suggested to play a key role in emotion regulation. CONCLUSION: Activation in the emotion processing network was observed when anticipating an upcoming difficult (math) task. However, this activation was not predicted by individual’ degree of math anxiety. Therefore, we suggest that negative emotional responses to difficult math tasks might be a rather common reaction not specific to math-anxious individuals. Whether or not this initial negative response impairs math performance, however, might depend on the ability to regulate those emotions effectively. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12993-019-0155-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6421679 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-64216792019-03-28 Anticipation of difficult tasks: neural correlates of negative emotions and emotion regulation Klein, Elise Bieck, Silke M. Bloechle, Johannes Huber, Stefan Bahnmueller, Julia Willmes, Klaus Moeller, Korbinian Behav Brain Funct Research BACKGROUND: Difficult cognitive tasks are often associated with negative feelings. This can be already the case for the mere anticipation of having to do a difficult task. For the case of difficult math tasks, it was recently suggested that such a negative emotional response may be exclusive to highly math-anxious individuals. However, it is also conceivable that negative emotional responses simply reflect that math is perceived as difficult. Here we investigated whether non-math-anxious individuals also experience negative emotional responses when anticipating to do difficult math tasks. METHODS: We compared brain activation following the presentation of a numerical cue indicating either difficult or easy upcoming proportion magnitude comparison tasks. RESULTS: Comparable to previous results for highly math-anxious individuals we observed a network associated with negative emotions to be activated in non-math-anxious individuals when facing cues indicating a difficult upcoming task. Importantly, however, math anxiety scores did not predict the neural response. Furthermore, we observed activation in areas associated with processes of cognitive control areas such as anterior cingulate cortex, which were suggested to play a key role in emotion regulation. CONCLUSION: Activation in the emotion processing network was observed when anticipating an upcoming difficult (math) task. However, this activation was not predicted by individual’ degree of math anxiety. Therefore, we suggest that negative emotional responses to difficult math tasks might be a rather common reaction not specific to math-anxious individuals. Whether or not this initial negative response impairs math performance, however, might depend on the ability to regulate those emotions effectively. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12993-019-0155-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2019-03-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6421679/ /pubmed/30885230 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12993-019-0155-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Klein, Elise Bieck, Silke M. Bloechle, Johannes Huber, Stefan Bahnmueller, Julia Willmes, Klaus Moeller, Korbinian Anticipation of difficult tasks: neural correlates of negative emotions and emotion regulation |
title | Anticipation of difficult tasks: neural correlates of negative emotions and emotion regulation |
title_full | Anticipation of difficult tasks: neural correlates of negative emotions and emotion regulation |
title_fullStr | Anticipation of difficult tasks: neural correlates of negative emotions and emotion regulation |
title_full_unstemmed | Anticipation of difficult tasks: neural correlates of negative emotions and emotion regulation |
title_short | Anticipation of difficult tasks: neural correlates of negative emotions and emotion regulation |
title_sort | anticipation of difficult tasks: neural correlates of negative emotions and emotion regulation |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6421679/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30885230 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12993-019-0155-1 |
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