Emotion Regulation in the Gradient Framework: Large-Scale Brain Organization Shapes Individual Differences in Reappraisal Success

Abstract

Emotion regulation is essential for well-being and mental health, yet individuals vary widely in their emotion regulation success. Why? Traditional neuroimaging studies of emotion regulation often focus on localized neural activity or isolated networks, overlooking how large-scale brain organization may shape the integration of distributed systems and sub-processes supporting regulatory success. Here, we applied a novel system-level framework based on spatial gradients of macroscale brain organization to study variance in emotion regulation success. Using two large fMRI datasets (n=358, n=263), we projected global activation patterns from a laboratory emotion regulation task onto principal gradients derived from independent resting-state fMRI data from the Human Connectome Project. These gradients capture low-dimensional patterns of neural variation, providing a topographical framework within which complex mental phenomena, such as emotion regulation, emerge. In both datasets, individual differences in regulation success were predicted by systematic reconfiguration along Gradient 1--a principal axis differentiating unimodal and heteromodal brain areas. This gradient-based neural reconfiguration also predicted lower negative affect in daily life, as measured via smartphone-based experience sampling in a subset of participants (n=55). Meta-analytic decoding via Neurosynth revealed that Gradient 1 and regulation success align with multiple psychological processes, including social cognition, memory, attention, and negative emotion, suggesting this gradient reflects diverse, integrative demands during effective emotion regulation. These findings advance a network-level account of regulatory success, offering a biologically grounded, ecologically valid framework for understanding adaptive emotional functioning. Such gradient-based dynamics may serve as predictive biomarkers of regulatory success and inform targeted interventions in clinical populations. Significance StatementWhy are some people better than others at regulating their emotional experiences? This study employs a novel systems neuroscience framework to demonstrate that successful emotion regulation relies not only on localized brain activity, but also on how large-scale neural activation patterns systematically shift along principal axes of the brains intrinsic, large-scale spatial architecture. We demonstrate that variance in emotion regulation success--both in the laboratory (assessed using an established emotion regulation task) and in daily life (captured using phone-based experience sampling)--is associated with dynamic transitions along a principal neural gradient from sensory to transmodal association regions in the brain. This insight may lead to the development of new brain-based markers for predicting emotional resilience and tailoring mental health interventions.