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Increased Amygdala Activity Associated With Cognitive Reappraisal Strategy in Functional Neurologic Disorder, 2021, Hassa et al

Discussion in 'Other psychosomatic news and research' started by Andy, Apr 13, 2021.

  1. Andy

    Andy Committee Member

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    Hampshire, UK
    Cognitive reappraisal is an emotion regulation strategy to reduce the impact of affective stimuli. This regulation could be incomplete in patients with functional neurologic disorder (FND) resulting in an overflowing emotional stimulation perpetuating symptoms in FND patients. Here we employed functional MRI to study cognitive reappraisal in FND. A total of 24 FND patients and 24 healthy controls employed cognitive reappraisal while seeing emotional visual stimuli in the scanner. The Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) was used to evaluate concomitant psychopathologies of the patients. During cognitive reappraisal of negative IAPS images FND patients show an increased activation of the right amygdala compared to normal controls. We found no evidence of downregulation in the amygdala during reappraisal neither in the patients nor in the control group. The valence and arousal ratings of the IAPS images were similar across groups. However, a subgroup of patients showed a significant higher account of extreme low ratings for arousal for negative images. These low ratings correlated inversely with the item “anxiety” of the SCL-90-R. The increased activation of the amygdala during cognitive reappraisal suggests altered processing of emotional stimuli in this region in FND patients.

    Open access, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.613156/full
     
  2. Mithriel

    Mithriel Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    As is typical in papers about FND I can't make sense of this statement (or much of the rest!) If they mean that people with a lot of ill health can be emotional about things they should have used a control group with uncontested physical illness in case it is the fact of being ill that is the problem.

    Why just the patients? Maybe the scores for anxiety correlated with answers from the healthy controls too.

    It is another case of a scientific looking paper that is meaningless when you examine it. Why should emotion looking at IAPS images, whatever they are have any relevance to diarrhoea or not being able to move your right foot?
     
    Sean likes this.
  3. rvallee

    rvallee Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    12,299
    Location:
    Canada
    I especially love how this trope is so often used while we are also noted to have a very flat affect and low emotional response. Hysterical neurotics, I guess? Tiny giants?

    Good old Catch-22: you're ill because you are too emotional, or not enough, whatever it's your emotions and you're always wrong.
     
    JemPD, Sean and Mithriel like this.

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