Neural correlates of up-regulating positive emotions in fMRI and their link to affect in daily life

Emotion regulation is typically used to down-regulate negative or up-regulate positive emotions. While there is considerable evidence for the neural correlates of the former, less is known about the neural correlates of the latter—and how they are associated with emotion regulation and affect in daily life. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were acquired from 63 healthy young participants (22 ± 1.6 years, 30 female), while they up-regulated their emotions to positive and neutral images or passively watched them. The same participants’ daily affect and emotion regulation behavior was measured using experience sampling over 10 days. Focusing on the ventral striatum (VS), previously associated with positive affective processing, we found increased activation during the up-regulation to both positive and neutral images. VS activation for the former positively correlated with between- and within-person differences in self-reported affective valence during fMRI but was not significantly associated with up-regulation in daily life. However, participants with lower daily affect showed a stronger association between changes in affect and activation in emotion-related (medial frontal and subcortical) regions—including the VS. These results support the involvement of the VS in up-regulating positive emotions and suggest a neurobehavioral link between emotion-related brain activation and daily affect.