Individual differences in neuroticism personality trait in emotion regulation

Background: Higher neuroticism personality trait individuals have more negative mood states, more sensitive to negative information, and higher risk of mental illness. Good emotion regulation ability play an important role in healthy psychological, social and physical outcomes. Previous studies have suggested that higher neuroticism individuals have a diminished ability to regulate emotion regulation. Up to now, few studies investigate the neural basis between neuroticism and emotion regulation. Method: In present study, we want to explore the neuroticism and the activity of some brain regions and functional amygdala connectivity (psycho-physiological interaction [PPI]) in a cognitive reappraisal task. Thus, 160 healthy young participants were scanned during a cognitive reappraisal task. Results: The results revealed that neuroticism scores showed a significant negative association with the activity of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), inferior frontal cortex and middle frontal cortex in regulation of negative emotion. PPI analyses revealed that neuroticism scores were negatively associated with amygdala-dmPFC connectivity in regulation of negative emotion. Limitation: Only cognitive reappraisal were investigated in this study. Other emotion regulation strategies such as expressive suppression need to be explored in the future study. Conclusion: These results may suggest that highly neurotic participants display diminished cognitive reappraisal and diminished control function of the dmPFC over the amygdala in regulation of negative emotion.