Brain Imaging and Psycho-pathological Studies on Self-regulation of Emotion

Emotion regulation shares knowledge from several disciplines including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and cybernetics. Plato, Aristotle and the Stoich emphasized relative importance of reasoning to emotion. Although there exist many differences among the contemporary philosophers, many of them had the beliefs that negative emotions are one of the primary cause of suffering and dysfunction of the people. Naturally, since the days of Aristotle, the importance of negative emotions was given a primary consideration. In recent times, various neurological and psychological findings opened up a new era on emotion regulation and control. This chapter provides the cutting edge information with regard to neurological basis of emotion regulation. Healthy individuals usually are capable of consciously and voluntarily changing their neural activity describing their emotional state and process. This chapter will emphasize the capability of human-consciousness to volitionally influence the electrical activity of our brain and modulate the impact of emotion on the neuro-endocrine immune network.