THE NEURAL CORRELATES OF EMOTION REGULATION AND URGENCY

Abstract

Recent studies have indicated five distinct facets of impulsivity related personality traits—each differentially related to risky behaviors. These facets are: sensation seeking, positive and negative urgency, premeditation, and perseverance. Urgency, defined as a tendency to behave impulsively in face of strong emotions, has been found to be the most consistent predictor of a number of problematic risky behaviors—including problematic substance use, pathological gambling, and problematic eating behaviors. It has been theorized that this relationship between urgency and problematic risky be-haviors can be attributed to an underlying dysfunction in the ability to regu-late emotions. No studies have examined the neural correlates of the urgen-cy facets. However, prior studies have looked at the neural correlates of emotion regulation, which is an aspect of the urgency facets. The intention of this poster is to review the neural correlates of emotion regulation in or-der to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying the urgency facets. Our review of the literature indicates that the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex are involved in emotion regulation. Particularly, emotion regulation processes may be attributed to the independent and syn-ergistic functioning of these regions. These findings indicate that urgency and possibly other impulsivity related personality traits may have measura-ble neural correlates. Moreover, these findings also introduce the possibility of targeting neural dysfunctions in order to reduce emotionally driven impul-siveness and consequent problematic behaviors.