This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. Primary support for the subproject and the subproject's principal investigator may have been provided by other sources, including other NIH sources. The Total Cost listed for the subproject likely represents the estimated amount of Center infrastructure utilized by the subproject, not direct funding provided by the NCRR grant to the subproject or subproject staff. Objective: Clinical data suggest that abnormalities in the regulation of emotional processing contribute to the pathophysiology of generalized anxiety disorder, yet these abnormalities remain poorly understood at the neurobiological level. We recently reported in healthy volunteers that the pregenual anterior cingulate regulates emotional conflict on a trial-by-trial basis by dampening activity in the amygdala. We also showed that this process is specific to the regulation of emotional, compared to non-emotional, conflict. Here we examined whether this form of non-instructed emotion regulation is perturbed in generalized anxiety disorder. Methods: 17 patients and 24 healthy comparison subjects, were studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed an emotional conflict task, which involved categorizing facial affect while ignoring overlayed affect label words. We compared trial-by-trial changes in conflict regulation using behavioral and neural measures. To read about other projects ongoing at the Lucas Center, please visit http://rsl.stanford.edu/ (Lucas Annual Report and ISMRM 2011 Abstracts)
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