Mood Dysregulation and Stabilization: Perspectives from Emotional Cognitive Neuroscience

Mood is conceptualized as a long-lasting emotional state, which can have profound implications for mental and physical health. The development of neuroimaging methods has enabled significant advances towards elucidating the mechanisms underlying regulation of mood and emotion; however, our understanding of mood and emotion dysregulation in stress-related psychiatric disorders is still largely lacking. From the cognitive-affective neuroscience perspective, achieving deeper, more mechanistic understanding of mood disorders necessitates detailed understanding of specific components of neural systems involved in mood dysregulation and stabilization. In this review, we provide an overview of neural systems implicated in the development of a long-term negative mood state, as well as those related to emotion and emotion regulation, and discuss their proposed involvement in mood and anxiety disorders.