Schedule of Events | Symposia

How Emotional Regulation Contributes to Tsunami Evacuation: An fMRI Study

Poster Session D - Monday, March 31, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Masato Takubo^1,2 (takubo.masato.s4@dc.tohoku.ac.jp), Ryo Ishibashi³, Naoki Miura⁴, Azumi Tanabe-Ishibashi^2,5, Motoaki Sugiura^2,5; ¹School of Medicine, Tohoku University, ²Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University, ³Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, ⁴Faculty of Engineering, Tohoku Institute of Technology, ⁵International Research Institute of Disaster Science, Tohoku University

Effective evacuation decision-making during tsunamis is essential for minimizing casualties. Emotional regulation traits are known to be associated with prompt evacuation behaviors; however, the neural mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. This fMRI study aimed to explore these mechanisms by investigating the relationship between emotional regulation traits and neural responses during evacuation decisions. 58 subjects in their 20s undertook an evacuation decision-making task (earthquake scenarios consisting of earthquake information of various risk levels and current location information, followed by decisions to evacuate from a possible subsequent tsunami), and their brain activity during the task was scanned. During decision-making, individuals with higher emotional regulation scores exhibited reduced activity in the insula and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Additionally, reaction-time-dependent brain activity for scenario responses was negatively correlated with activity in the parahippocampal place areas (PPA). In individuals with lower emotional regulation scores, activation of the insula, associated with emotional processing, and the mPFC, linked to defensive mechanisms, may contribute to a tendency to reject catastrophic scenarios. The PPA may support spatially realistic mental simulations during the task, justifying their decision not to evacuate. In contrast, individuals with higher emotional regulation traits may lack such inappropriate bias mechanisms, as suggested by lower responses in these regions, enabling prompt evacuation decisions. Understanding this relationship provides valuable insights for disaster preparedness strategies tailored to individual differences in emotional regulation.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions