Using distraction to regulate emotion: Insights from EEG theta dynamics

Distraction is a powerful and widely-used emotion regulation strategy. Although distraction regulates emotion sooner than other cognitive strategies (Thiruchselvam, Blechert, Sheppes, Rydstrom, & Gross, 2011), it is not yet clear whether it is capable of blocking the earliest stages of emotion generation. To address this issue, we capitalized on the excellent temporal resolution of EEG by focusing on occipital theta dynamics which were associated with distinct stages of visual processing of emotional stimuli. Individually defined theta band dynamics were extracted from a previously published EEG dataset (Thiruchselvam et al., 2011) in which participants attended to unpleasant (and neutral) images or regulated emotion using distraction and reappraisal. Results revealed two peaks within early theta power increase, both of which were increased by emotional stimuli. Distraction did not affect theta power during an early peak (150-350 ms), but did successfully decrease activity in a second peak (350-550 ms). These results suggest that although distraction acts relatively early in the emotion-generative trajectory, it does not block fast detection of emotional significance. Given that theta dynamics were uncorrelated with Late Positive Potential activity, the present results also encourage researchers to add the occipital theta to the growing toolkit of EEG-based measures of emotion regulation.