Compassion-based emotion regulation up-regulates experienced positive affect and associated neural networks
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience February 19, 2015 Haakon G. Engen, Tania Singer 170 citations
Compassion-meditation and Reappraisal both effectively regulate emotional responses to others' suffering, but through different mechanisms. Compassion-meditation primarily increases positive affect and activates brain regions linked to affiliation and reward, such as the ventral striatum and medial orbitofrontal cortex, even before seeing distressing stimuli. Reappraisal mainly decreases negative affect. Compassion's regulatory mechanism involves the endogenous generation of positive affect independent of the stimulus, which may preserve emotional connectedness.