How can the brain manage negative emotions in real life?
When faced with stress or adversity, people typically manage their negative emotions through two primary psychological strategies: reappraisal, which involves actively changing how we interpret a situation, and acceptance, which centres on acknowledging and allowing our feelings without judgement. While both methods are highly effective and form the foundation of major psychotherapeutic approaches, it has long remained unclear how they actually operate in the human brain during complex, real-world experiences.
A groundbreaking study led by Professor Benjamin Becker from the Department of Psychology at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has successfully mapped these neural dynamics. Published recently in Nature Communications, the research was carried out in collaboration with several universities in China. By combining realistic, dynamic video clips with advanced AI-inspired decoding techniques, the team has provided an unprecedented insight into how our brains handle emotional distress in life-like scenarios.
For decades, traditional neuroscience experiments have relied on static, isolated images to observe which specific brain regions are activated during emotion regulation. However, real-life emotions do not occur in a vacuum; they unfold continuously over time, much like a film. To capture this complexity, Professor Becker’s team utilised dynamic video clips. Their findings revealed that successful emotion regulation does not rely on a single, isolated “control centre” in the brain. Instead, it emerges from highly co-ordinated, whole-brain interactions that integrate thousands of voxels across sensory, control, self-referential, and subcortical systems.
By evaluating both strategies within the same participants, the study demonstrated that the brain can regulate negative emotions through more than one route. The researchers discovered that while acceptance and reappraisal share a common neural core linked to self-related processing — which helps us monitor and integrate emotional experiences with our personal goals — they diverge significantly in the wider networks they recruit. Reappraisal relies much more heavily on brain networks associated with cognitive control and active regulation. Conversely, acceptance reflects a more embodied, experiential neural approach.
Ultimately, these findings suggest that there is no single “best” approach to managing difficult emotions in daily life. Because the brain is naturally wired with multiple pathways to cope with distress, emotional well-being depends on cognitive flexibility — the ability to choose the strategy that best fits the individual and the situation.
Looking to the future, Professor Becker and his team aim to expand their research from individual brains to social environments. Recognising that social support is one of the most powerful natural tools for stress reduction, the team has already developed brain – computer interface applications to leverage this process. They are currently exploring whether AI-based approaches, such as chatbots powered by large language models, can engage the same neural pathways involved in human social support to effectively help people reduce stress in their everyday lives.
Full article: https://croucher.org.hk/en/news/handling-negative-feelings-involves-the-whole-brain-not-a-single-region