Restoring emotional stability: Cortisol effects on the neural network of cognitive emotion regulation

Effective emotion regulation in stressful contexts is a key feature of mental health. Acute stress, however, impairs prefrontal top-down control, probably leading to a decline of emotion regulatory capacities. By contrast, the delayed cortisol increase in response to a stressor or after a pharmacological manipulation has been linked to mood-protecting effects and emotion regulation success. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, healthy men and women received either 30 mg cortisol or placebo 90 min before they were exposed to an emotion regulation paradigm involving neutral and negative pictures. As expected, behavioural and brain imaging data indicated successful induction and downregulation of negative emotions via cognitive reappraisal and distraction. Cortisol enhanced regulatory activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex when participants used distraction and reduced emotion-related activation in the amygdala when regulating emotions via cognitive reappraisal. Together, these findings provide first evidence for a delayed glucocorticoid-induced facilitation of cognitive emotion regulation processes that might be beneficial for restoring emotional stability in the aftermath of stressful events.