Neural systems underlying voluntary and automatic emotion regulation: toward a neural model of bipolar disorder (original) (raw)

Molecular Psychiatry volume 13, page 829 (2008)Cite this article

Phillips, Ladouceur and Drevets describe a new neural model of emotion regulation that includes voluntary and automatic regulatory subprocesses, centered in different regions of the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and parahippocampus. They highlight two major neural systems: (1) a feedforward pathway: a medial prefrontal cortical system, including the orbital frontal cortex, subgenual anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG), rostral ACG, hippocampus and parahippocampus, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and (2) a feedback pathway: a lateral prefrontal cortical system, including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. They then use this model as a theoretical framework to examine functional neural abnormalities in these neural systems that may predispose to the development of bipolar disorder, a major psychiatric disorder characterized by severe emotion dysregulation. In adult bipolar disorder, findings from structural and functional neuroimaging studies point to left-sided abnormalities in prefrontal cortical regions implicated in automatic (orange arrow) rather than voluntary (blue arrows) emotion regulation. In pediatric bipolar disorder and in children and adolescents at risk of bipolar disorder, emerging findings from neuroimaging studies similarly point to functional and structural abnormalities in prefrontal cortical, limbic and paralimbic regions implicated in automatic emotion regulation. DLPFC: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; MdPFC: dorsomedial prefrontal cortex; ACG:anterior cingulate gyrus; VLPFC: ventrolateral prefrontal cortex; OFC: orbital frontal cortex; hipp/parahip: hippocampus-parahippocampus region. For more information on this topic, please refer to article by Phillips et al. on pages 833–857.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
    M L Phillips, C D Ladouceur & W C Drevets
  2. Department of Psychological Medicine, Cardiff University School of Medicine, Cardiff, UK
    M L Phillips
  3. Section on Neuroimaging in Mood and Anxiety Disorders, NIH/NIMH, Bethesda, MD, USA
    W C Drevets

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  1. M L Phillips
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  2. C D Ladouceur
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  3. W C Drevets
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Phillips, M., Ladouceur, C. & Drevets, W. Neural systems underlying voluntary and automatic emotion regulation: toward a neural model of bipolar disorder.Mol Psychiatry 13, 829 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2008.82

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