Emotion regulation capacity lacks a shared neural signature.

Authors

Maurizio Sicorello, Jenny Zaehringer, Thomas E Kraynak, Peter J Gianaros, Stephan Nebe, Lena M Paschke, Rosa Steimke, Christine Stelzel, Henrik Walter, Kevin S LaBar, John L Graner, Sang Hee Kim, Michèle Wessa, Magdalena Sandner, Franziska Weinmar, Birgit Derntl, Nathan T M Huneke, Harry A Fagan, Guillén Fernández, Linlin Yan, Agar Marín-Morales, Juan Verdejo-Román, Trevor Steward, Ben J Harrison, Christopher G Davey, Denise Dörfel, Maital Neta, Jordan Pierce, David S Stolz, Johanna Kissler, Anissa Benzait, Susanne Erk, Stella Berboth, Carien M van Reekum, Emma Tupitsa, Satja Mulej Bratec, Christian Sorg, Laura Müller-Pinzler, Andrzej Sokołowski, Wojciech Ł Dragan, Monika Folkierska-Żukowska, Valerie L Jentsch, Christian J Merz, Christoph Scheffel, Kersten Diers, Kaoru Nashiro, Jungwon Min, Mara Mather, Steve Heinke, Anne Gärtner, Kateri McRae, John P Powers, Nick Doren, Silvia U Maier, Isabel Dziobek, Simón Guendelman, Michael Gaebler, Judith K Daniels, Matthias Burghart, Stephanie N L Schmidt, Lena Hofhansel, Ute Habel, NIDER Consortium, Nils Kohn, Carmen Morawetz

Published in

Nature. Oct 28, 2026. Epub Oct 28, 2026.

Abstract

Cognitive reappraisal refers to changing how one thinks about a situation to alter its emotional impact. It is central to well-being¹ and engages prefrontal regulatory circuits², prompting the assumption that their activity reflects a person's capacity to regulate emotions^3-5. Yet evidence for this assumption remains inconclusive and has not been established at scale. Here we analysed 40 task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) datasets in a preregistered consortium with 2,175 participants and show that three widely used indicators of reappraisal capacity-trait questionnaires, task-based affective ratings and amygdala down-regulation-do not converge on a common core. Moreover, none of the three indicators showed the expected association with canonical prefrontal regulatory circuits. Trait questionnaires showed no detectable neural associations across the brain and task-based affective ratings were instead associated with responses in the amygdala and sensorimotor cortices. At the process level, canonical control circuits were engaged during both emotion generation and reappraisal, challenging their presumed specificity for emotion regulation. These findings caution against using activation in putatively regulatory brain regions to infer how well a person regulates emotions, with implications for neural biomarkers, interventions and psychoeducation that link emotion regulation difficulties to specific regional brain deficits.

PMID:
42951968
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 29 Oct 2026.

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