Theta oscillations during cognitive reappraisal of sad and fearful stimuli

This paper describes the importance of theta frequency oscillations through analysis in emotion regulation and in various oscillatory patterns with reappraising sad and fear stimuli. Previous research suggests that the processing of fear and sadness has different neural bases, and that dynamics in theta frequency is particularly sensitive to the processing of emotional stimuli. However, it remains unknown whether theta oscillations vary in emotion regulation processes as a function of discrete emotions. We, therefore, explored theta oscillatory patterns of cognitive reappraisal for sad and fearful stimuli by spectrum analysis. EEG from 24 healthy volunteers was recorded correspondingly while they were asked to passively watch or reappraise the content of pictures with sad or fear emotion. In the first "watching" task, volunteers were asked to only watch the stimulus attentively. In the later "regulation" tasks, the volunteers, however, were asked to engage in cognitive reappraisal and decrease the negative interpretation of the presenting scenes. Through our analysis of the results, we realized that fearful stimuli were invoked stronger than sad stimuli in both "watching" and "regulation" tasks. Furthermore, the reappraisal or fearful scenes could decrease the theta oscillations more in "regulation" task than in "watching" task with fearful stimuli.