, 2014, for review). Collectively, these findings suggest that under the stressful conditions when we are most likely to engage see more in deliberate forms of cognitive emotion regulation is precisely when the resources supporting these techniques may be compromised. Evidence for this has already been demonstrated in anxiety disorder patients that consistently show impairments using cognitive regulation strategies in the laboratory (Mennin et al., 2005 and Cisler et al., 2010), as well as individuals with high trait anxiety

(Indovina et al., 2011 and Lissek et al., 2005). This is consistent with research showing that negative affect is related to the failure to exercise self-regulatory control over thoughts and behavior (Baumeister and Heatherton, 1996 and Heatherton and Wagner, 2011). Based on

this research, a recent study in our laboratory tested the hypothesis that cognitive emotion regulation would be impaired after exposure to stress (Raio et al., 2013). After a fear-conditioning task where physiological arousal was measured as an index of fear, participants were trained selleck to re-appraise the aversive CS and re-structure the fear-conditioning task overall in a less threatening manner. One day later, participants either underwent a physiological stressor (i.e., CPT) or a non-stress control task, before repeating the aversive-learning task, this time with instructions to utilize their newly acquired regulation skills. The CPT elicited greater stress responses as measured by self-report, as well as increases in salivary alpha-amylase and cortisol, markers of noradrenergic and HPA-axis activity, respectively. Stressed participants exhibited marked impairments no regulating both physiological and subjective fear responses to the aversive CS and showed comparable fear responses to the previous day prior to regulation training. In contrast, controls showed reductions in both assays of fear expression. Stress may exert detrimental effects on the capacity to cognitively regulate fear responses through a number of potential mechanisms. In our study,

we found a positive association between alpha-amylase and fear responses after stress, suggesting that the effects of noradrenergic activity on the brain regions that support the regulation of fear may be one possible mechanism by which cognitive fear regulation is impaired. Excessive levels of noradrenaline released after stress can target brain regions that support cognitive emotion regulation, including the amygdala, vmPFC and dorsolateral PFC (see: Arnsten, 2009; or, Hermans et al., 2014, for review). Noradrenaline exerts regionally specific effects on the brain due to various receptor subtype availability (Berridge and Waterhouse, 2003). For example, alpha-2 adrenergic receptors, which are densely distributed throughout the lateral PFC, have a high affinity for noradrenaline.