Neurobehavioral Intervention as a Novel Treatment Approach for Emotion-Regulatory Deficits

A standardized set of facial emotions (fear and happy) were presented for a duration of about 1 second in quick succession (a new face every 3-5 seconds). Across each face was written an emotional word ("FEAR" or "HAPPY"), which could be either congruent or incongruent with the facial expression. The participant was instructed to identify the facial emotion as quickly as possible and ignore the overlaid emotion word. The outcome measure of interest was the average speed (across all trials presented) within which an individual could correctly identify the facial emotion as a function of time (pre or post-intervention), treatment arm (control or intervention), facial affect (fear or happy), and congruency of word and facial affect (congruent or incongruent).

The degree of differential BOLD signal change (T2*-weighted contrast in a defined region of the brain as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging) within each individual, averaged across trials, during facial affect identification (fear or happy) and induction of emotional conflict (when the emotion word "FEAR" or "HAPPY" was either congruent or incongruent with the facial expression). We examined the differential degree of amygdala BOLD signal change as a function of emotion type (fear or happy), congruency (congruent or incongruent), and hemisphere (left or right) at baseline and 3 months.