Schedule of Events | Symposia

Cognition in Flexibility is Associated with Elevated Salience Network Activation During Emotion Regulation in Depression

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

Archita Tharanipathy¹, Desiree Webb¹, Sarah Zapetis¹, Ellie Xu¹, Jiani Li¹, Margarid Turnamian¹, Xinyan Tao¹, Emily Givens¹, Jonathan Stange¹; ¹University of Southern California

Cognitive flexibility is thought to facilitate effective emotion regulation, and may be particularly relevant to cognitive strategies such as reappraisal. Impaired cognitive flexibility is present in mood disorders such as depression, and may disrupt neural processes in regions of the brain responsible for emotion processing and regulation. This study explored brain regions implicated in both cognitive flexibility and reappraisal-related emotion regulation. We examined the relationship between cognitive flexibility and neural activation during cognitive reappraisal in a sample of 87 participants, including 47 with remitted major depressive disorder (rMDD) and 40 healthy comparisons (HC). Cognitive flexibility was assessed through a set-shifting task conducted in the lab, while reappraisal was measured during an emotion regulation task (ERT) in the MRI scanner using the reappraise-maintain contrast. Our results revealed that individuals with poorer performance on the set-shifting task exhibited greater activation of the salience network (SN), particularly the anterior cingulate, during reappraisal (k>57, p<.005). This could suggest that individuals with reduced cognitive flexibility may struggle to downregulate the SN when regulating emotions using reappraisal. These results highlight the importance of cognitive flexibility in emotion regulation, particularly for strategies like reappraisal that require the coordination of emotional and cognitive processes. Heightened SN engagement in individuals with poorer cognitive flexibility may contribute to ineffective emotion regulation. Enhancing cognitive flexibility might improve the ability to downregulate SN activity during reappraisal, offering a potential avenue for interventions aimed at improving emotion regulation in mood disorders.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions