Richard D Lane

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Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Lane, R. D. (2020). Neuroscience of Enduring Change: Implications for Psychotherapy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapters

• Lane, R. D. (2017). Forward. In Finished Business.
• Lane, R. D., & O'Connor, M. F. (2016). Neurobiology of Emotion, Cognition and Motivation. In Behavioral and Social Science in Medicine: Principles and Practice of Biopsychosocial Care. Springer.
• Lane, R. D., Critchley, H. D., & Taggart, P. (2016). Asymmetric autonomic innervation. In Handbook of Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine. New York: Springer.

Journals/Publications

• Chhatwal, J., & Lane, R. D. (2020). A Cognitive-Developmental Model of Emotional Awareness and Its Application to the Practice of Psychotherapy. Psychodynamic psychiatry, 44(2), 305-25.
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  The ability to be aware of one's own emotional states has been a time-honored ingredient of successful psychodynamic psychotherapy. With the rise of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), however, the utility of experiencing and reflecting upon emotional experience has become less certain, and a quantifiable measure of emotional awareness for clinicians has not been previously available. Several recent advances cast the role of emotional awareness in psychotherapy in a different light: (1) a new theory of change in psychotherapy has been formulated that highlights emotional experience as an important ingredient of change in a variety of modalities; (2) new evidence shows that individual differences in the capacity for emotional awareness predict successful psychotherapeutic outcome in the treatment of panic disorder both by manualized psychodynamic psychotherapy and CBT; and (3) a new online version of the electronic Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (eLEAS) has been created that can be used with individual patients as a guide to psychotherapy treatment. Here we review evidence of a reliable and valid measure of emotional awareness that has been used in both normative and clinical contexts. The psychotherapeutic treatment of three patients is described to illustrate the clinical manifestations of the different levels of emotional awareness and the ways the eLEAS can be useful in the clinical context, including (1) assessment of the patient's current level of emotional functioning and his or her potential for higher levels of functioning, (2) the targeting of interventions to facilitate functioning at the next level, and (3) a possible marker of treatment progress. These observations suggest that the eLEAS has the potential to be a clinically useful tool that may assist clinicians in guiding psychotherapy treatment.
• Hishaw, A., Lane, R. D., Smith, R., Solms, M., Weihs, K. L., Lane, R. D., & Weihs, K. L. (2020). Affective agnosia: a core affective processing deficit in the alexithymia spectrum. Biopsychosocial Medicine, 14(1), 1-14. doi:10.1186/s13030-020-00184-w
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  Affective agnosia, an impairment in knowing how one feels emotionally, has been described as an extreme deficit in the experience and expression of emotion that may confer heightened risk for adverse medical outcomes. Alexithymia, by contrast, has been proposed as an over-arching construct that includes a spectrum of deficits of varying severity, including affective agnosia at the more severe end. This perspective has been challenged by Taylor and colleagues, who argue that the concept of affective agnosia is unnecessary. We compare these two perspectives by highlighting areas of agreement, reasons for asserting the importance of the affective agnosia concept, errors in Taylor and colleagues’ critique, and measurement issues. The need for performance-based measures of the ability to mentally represent emotional states in addition to metacognitive measures is emphasized. We then draw on a previously proposed three-process model of emotional awareness that distinguishes affective response generation, conceptualization and cognitive control processes which interact to produce a variety of emotional awareness and alexithymia phenotypes - including affective agnosia. The tools for measuring these three processes, their neural substrates, the mechanisms of brain-body interactions that confer heightened risk for adverse medical outcomes, and the differential treatment implications for different kinds of deficits are described. By conceptualizing alexithymia as a spectrum of deficits, the opportunity to match specific deficit mechanisms with personalized treatment for patients will be enhanced.
• Kromenacker, B. W., Sanova, A. A., Marcus, F. I., Allen, J. J., & Lane, R. D. (2020). Vagal Mediation of Low-Frequency Heart Rate Variability During Slow Yogic Breathing. Psychosomatic medicine, 80(6), 581-587.
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  Changes in heart rate variability (HRV) associated with breathing (respiratory sinus arrhythmia) are known to be parasympathetically (vagally) mediated when the breathing rate is within the typical frequency range (9-24 breaths per minute [bpm]; high-frequency HRV). Slow yogic breathing occurs at rates below this range and increases low-frequency HRV power, which may additionally reflect a significant sympathetic component. Yogic breathing techniques are hypothesized to confer health benefits by increasing cardiac vagal control, but increases in low-frequency HRV power cannot unambiguously distinguish sympathetic from parasympathetic contributions. The aim of this study was to investigate the autonomic origins of changes in low-frequency HRV power due to slow-paced breathing.
• Lane, R. D. (2020). Alexithymia 3.0: Reimagining alexithymia from a medical perspective.. Biopsychosocial Medicine, 14(1), 1-8.
• Lane, R. D. (2020). Promoting the integration of psychodynamic and emotion-focused psychotherapies through advances in affective science and neuroscience. Clinical Social Work Journal, 48(3), 279-286.
• Lane, R. D. (2020). The construction of emotional experience: State-related emotional awareness and its application to psychotherapy research and practice. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 20(3), 479-487.
• Lane, R. D., & Smith, R. (2020). Evolution and development of the uniquely human capacity for emotional awareness: synthesis of comparative anatomical, cognitive, neurocomputational and evolutionary psychological perspectives. Biological Psychology, 107925.
• Lane, R. D., & Smith, R. (2020). Thinking through others’ emotions: Incorporating the role of emotional state inference in thinking through other minds.. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, E114.
• Lane, R. D., Anderson, F. S., & Smith, R. (2020). Biased Competition Favoring Physical Over Emotional Pain: A Possible Explanation for the Link Between Early Adversity and Chronic Pain. Psychosomatic medicine, 80(9), 880-890.
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  Early adversity predisposes to chronic pain, but a mechanistic explanation is lacking. Survivors of early adversity with chronic pain often seem impaired in their ability to be aware of, understand, and express distressing emotions such as anger and fear in social contexts. In this context, it has been proposed that pain may at times serve as a "psychic regulator" by preventing awareness of more intolerable emotions.
• Lane, R. D., Greenberg, L., Subic-Wrana, C., & Yovel, I. (2020). The role of enhanced emotional awareness in promoting change across psychotherapy modalities. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration.
• Lane, R. D., Solms, M., & Smith, R. (2020). Affective agnosia: A core affective processing deficit in the alexithymia spectrum.. Biopsychosocial Medicine, 14(1), 1-14.
• Smith, R., Quinlan, D., Schwartz, G. E., Sanova, A., Alkozei, A., & Lane, R. D. (2020). Developmental Contributions to Emotional Awareness. Journal of personality assessment, 101(2), 150-158.
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  The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) has received considerable support as a reliable and valid measure of individual differences in emotional awareness (EA) since the original report involving 40 participants (Lane, Quinlan, Schwartz, Walker, & Zeitlin, 1990 ). However, the hypothesized developmental nature of EA (conceptualized as a cognitive skill) has thus far only been examined in that 1 early study. Here we report multiple regression analyses on the entire sample of 94 participants who completed the LEAS as part of that original study, as well as the same developmental and affective measures used in the original report. We first observed that different developmental measures, including the Object Relations Inventory and the Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development, accounted for unique portions of the variance in LEAS scores. We also observed that higher LEAS scores were associated with greater within-category variance in the self-reported positive and guilt- and shame-related emotions people reported experiencing on a typical day. Based on these findings, we introduce a 3-dimensional cognitive-developmental framework that LEAS scores plausibly track, including (a) the transition from focusing on external/physical to internal/psychological characteristics, (b) greater conceptual complexity, and (c) self-other differentiation. We then discuss the implications of this framework for understanding the nature of EA and for future research.
• Smith, R., Weihs, K. L., Alkozei, A., Killgore, W. D., & Lane, R. D. (2020). An Embodied Neurocomputational Framework for Organically Integrating Biopsychosocial Processes: An Application to the Role of Social Support in Health and Disease. Psychosomatic medicine, 81(2), 125-145.
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  Two distinct perspectives-typically referred to as the biopsychosocial and biomedical models-currently guide clinical practice. Although the role of psychosocial factors in contributing to physical and mental health outcomes is widely recognized, the biomedical model remains dominant. This is due in part to (a) the largely nonmechanistic focus of biopsychosocial research and (b) the lack of specificity it currently offers in guiding clinicians to focus on social, psychological, and/or biological factors in individual cases. In this article, our objective is to provide an evidence-based and theoretically sophisticated mechanistic model capable of organically integrating biopsychosocial processes.
• Beutel, M. E., Greenberg, L., Lane, R. D., & Subic-Wrana, C. (2019). Treating anxiety disorders by emotion-focused psychodynamic psychotherapy (EFPP)-An integrative, transdiagnostic approach. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy, 26(1), 1-13.
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  Anxiety disorders are characterized by high levels of anxiety and avoidance of anxiety-inducing situations and of negative emotions such as anger. Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) and psychodynamic psychotherapy (PP) have underscored the therapeutic significance of processing and transforming repressed or disowned conflicted or painful emotions. Although PP provides sophisticated means of processing intrapsychic and interpersonal conflict, EFT has empirically tested a set of techniques to access, deepen, symbolize, and transform emotions consistent with current conceptualizations of emotions and memory. Based on our clinical experience, we propose that an integrative emotion-focused and psychodynamic approach opens new avenues for treating anxiety disorders effectively, and we present a transdiagnostic manual for emotion-focused psychodynamic psychotherapy. The therapeutic approach takes into account both the activation, processing, and modification of emotion and the underlying intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts. The short-term treatment is based on the three phases of initiating treatment, therapeutic work with anxiety, and termination. Emotional poignancy (or liveliness) is an important marker for emotional processing throughout treatment. Instead of exposure to avoided situations, we endorse enacting the internal process of generating anxiety in the session providing a sense of agency and access to warded-off emotions. Interpretation serves to tie together emotional experience and insight into the patterns and the nature of underlying intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict. Treatment modules are illustrated by brief vignettes from pilot treatments.
• Parthasarathy, S., Zareba, W., Lane, R. D., Combs, D., Kobayashi, U., Martinez, L., Flores-Martinez, A., Poongkunran, C., Bailey, O., & Knitter, J. (2019). Comparison of Physiological Performance of Four Adaptive Servo Ventilation Devices In Patients With Complex Sleep Apnea. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
• Smith, R., Ahern, G. L., & Lane, R. D. (2019). The role of anterior and midcingulate cortex in emotional awareness: A domain-general processing perspective. Handbook of clinical neurology, 166, 89-101.
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  The cingulate cortex has been implicated in a wide range of overlapping cognitive, affective, skeletomotor, and visceromotor functions. In this chapter, we focus on the role of the anterior and midcingulate cortex (ACC and MCC) in facilitating a person's ability to recognize and understand his or her own emotions. Here, we illustrate how this ability-often referred to as "emotional awareness" (EA)-may require integration across each of the aforementioned functions. To appropriately situate the role of the cingulate in EA, we first summarize a number of studies that have highlighted ACC/MCC engagement in the context of emotion. We then describe prominent domain-general views of the ACC (in interaction with MCC), which together suggest that it may serve as a hub within a high-level visceromotor control system. This high-level system functions to predict and mobilize the required metabolic resources in a given situation via the integration of multimodal information available from both sensory cortices and memory. Based on this work, we show that EA can be seen as an important consequence of this integrative process and how it can help to explain the adaptive nature of such advanced emotional capacities. We close by briefly considering the potential clinical relevance of understanding ACC/MCC function and its specific role in emotion and awareness.
• Smith, R., Gudleski, G. D., Lane, R. D., & Lackner, J. M. (2019). Higher Emotional Awareness Is Associated With Reduced Pain in Irritable Bowel Syndrome Patients: Preliminary Results. Psychological reports, 33294119868778.
• Smith, R., Kaszniak, A. W., Katsanis, J., Lane, R. D., & Nielsen, L. (2019). The importance of identifying underlying process abnormalities in alexithymia: Implications of the three-process model and a single case study illustration. Consciousness and cognition, 68, 33-46.
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  We present an in-depth case study of a rare individual (whom we will refer to as "Jane") who reported an inability to experience emotion. Jane completed a range of assessments measuring alexithymia, emotional awareness, and emotion recognition ability. She, along with 22 control participants, also underwent skin conductance (SC) measurement and facial electromyography (EMG) during exposure to affective images, and self reported the valence/arousal of their responses to those images. Jane scored high on alexithymia and low on emotional awareness; yet she performed well on emotion recognition measures and showed a typical pattern of valence ratings. Her SC responses and subjective arousal ratings were atypically low, and some of her EMG responses were also atypical. Jane's deficit profile highlights the dissociability of self-focused emotional awareness and other-focused emotion recognition ability, as well as the dissociability between the generation and representation of valence and arousal (with both subjective and objective measures).
• Smith, R., Lane, R. D., Parr, T., & Friston, K. J. (2019). Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying emotional awareness: Insights afforded by deep active inference and their potential clinical relevance. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 107, 473-491.
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  Emotional awareness (EA) is recognized as clinically relevant to the vulnerability to, and maintenance of, psychiatric disorders. However, the neurocomputational processes that underwrite individual variations remain unclear. In this paper, we describe a deep (active) inference model that reproduces the cognitive-emotional processes and self-report behaviors associated with EA. We then present simulations to illustrate (seven) distinct mechanisms that (either alone or in combination) can produce phenomena - such as somatic misattribution, coarse-grained emotion conceptualization, and constrained reflective capacity - characteristic of low EA. Our simulations suggest that the clinical phenotype of impoverished EA can be reproduced by dissociable computational processes. The possibility that different processes are at work in different individuals suggests that they may benefit from distinct clinical interventions. As active inference makes particular predictions about the underlying neurobiology of such aberrant inference, we also discuss how this type of modelling could be used to design neuroimaging tasks to test predictions and identify which processes operate in different individuals - and provide a principled basis for personalized precision medicine.
• Herrmann, A. S., Beutel, M. E., Gerzymisch, K., Lane, R. D., Pastore-Molitor, J., Wiltink, J., Zwerenz, R., Banerjee, M., & Subic-Wrana, C. (2018). The impact of attachment distress on affect-centered mentalization: An experimental study in psychosomatic patients and healthy adults. PloS one, 13(4), e0195430.
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  We investigated the impact of attachment distress on affect-centered mentalization in a clinical and a non-clinical sample, comparing mentalization in a baseline condition to mentalization under a condition of attachment distress.
• Jalenques, I., Rondepierre, F., Mulliez, A., Lane, R. D., D'Incan, M., Consoli, S. M., & , L. (2018). Lower Emotion Awareness in Skin-Restricted Lupus Patients: A Case-Controlled Study. Psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 87(5), 313-315.
• Khalsa, S. S., Adolphs, R., Cameron, O. G., Critchley, H. D., Davenport, P. W., Feinstein, J. S., Feusner, J. D., Garfinkel, S. N., Lane, R. D., Mehling, W. E., Meuret, A. E., Nemeroff, C. B., Oppenheimer, S., Petzschner, F. H., Pollatos, O., Rhudy, J. L., Schramm, L. P., Simmons, W. K., Stein, M. B., , Stephan, K. E., et al. (2018). Interoception and Mental Health: A Roadmap. Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging, 3(6), 501-513.
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  Interoception refers to the process by which the nervous system senses, interprets, and integrates signals originating from within the body, providing a moment-by-moment mapping of the body's internal landscape across conscious and unconscious levels. Interoceptive signaling has been considered a component process of reflexes, urges, feelings, drives, adaptive responses, and cognitive and emotional experiences, highlighting its contributions to the maintenance of homeostatic functioning, body regulation, and survival. Dysfunction of interoception is increasingly recognized as an important component of different mental health conditions, including anxiety disorders, mood disorders, eating disorders, addictive disorders, and somatic symptom disorders. However, a number of conceptual and methodological challenges have made it difficult for interoceptive constructs to be broadly applied in mental health research and treatment settings. In November 2016, the Laureate Institute for Brain Research organized the first Interoception Summit, a gathering of interoception experts from around the world, with the goal of accelerating progress in understanding the role of interoception in mental health. The discussions at the meeting were organized around four themes: interoceptive assessment, interoceptive integration, interoceptive psychopathology, and the generation of a roadmap that could serve as a guide for future endeavors. This review article presents an overview of the emerging consensus generated by the meeting.
• Lane, R. D. (2018). From Reconstruction to Construction: The Power of Corrective Emotional Experiences in Memory Reconsolidation and Enduring Change. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 66(3), 507-516.
• Lane, R. D., Reis, H. T., Hsu, C. H., Kern, K. B., Couderc, J. P., Moss, A. J., & Zareba, W. (2018). Abnormal Repolarization Duration During Everyday Emotional Arousal in Long QT Syndrome and Coronary Artery Disease. The American journal of medicine, 131(5), 565-572.e2.
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  Rare, high-arousal negative emotions are known triggers of sudden death in individuals with preexisting heart disease. Whether everyday fluctuations in emotional arousal influence arrhythmia risk is unknown.
• Lane, R. D., Smith, R. W., Sechrest, L., Reidel, R., & Wright, R. (2018). Sex differences in emotion recognition ability: The mediating role of trait emotional awareness. Motivation and Emotion, 42, 149–160. doi:10.1007/s11031-017-9648-0
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  Abstract Although previous research on emotion recognitionability (ERA) has found consistent evidence for a femaleadvantage, the explanation for this sex difference remainsincompletely understood. This study compared males andfemales on four emotion recognition tasks, using a communitysample of 379 adults drawn from two regions of theUnited States (stratified with respect to age, sex, and socioeconomicstatus). Participants also completed the Levels ofEmotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), a measure of trait emotionalawareness (EA) thought to primarily reflect individualdifferences in emotion concept learning. We observed thatindividual differences in LEAS scores mediated the relationshipbetween sex and ERA; in addition, we observedthat ERA distributions were noticeably non-normal, andthat—similar to findings with other cognitive performancemeasures—males had more variability in ERA than females.These results further characterize sex differences in ERAand suggest that these differences may be explained by differencesin EA—a trait variable linked primarily to earlylearning.
• Smith, R., Alkozei, A., Killgore, W. D., & Lane, R. D. (2018). Nested positive feedback loops in the maintenance of major depression: An integration and extension of previous models. Brain, behavior, and immunity, 67, 374-397.
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  Several theories of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) have previously been proposed, focusing largely on either a psychological (i.e., cognitive/affective), biological, or neural/computational level of description. These theories appeal to somewhat distinct bodies of work that have each highlighted separate factors as being of considerable potential importance to the maintenance of MDD. Such factors include a range of cognitive/attentional information-processing biases, a range of structural and functional brain abnormalities, and also dysregulation within the autonomic, endocrine, and immune systems. However, to date there have been limited efforts to integrate these complimentary perspectives into a single multi-level framework. Here we review previous work in each of these MDD research domains and illustrate how they can be synthesized into a more comprehensive model of how a depressive episode is maintained. In particular, we emphasize how plausible (but insufficiently studied) interactions between the various MDD-related factors listed above can lead to a series of nested positive feedback loops, which are each capable of maintaining an individual in a depressive episode. We also describe how these different feedback loops could be active to different degrees in different individual cases, potentially accounting for heterogeneity in both depressive symptoms and treatment response. We conclude by discussing how this integrative model might extend understanding of current treatment mechanisms, and also potentially guide the search for markers to inform treatment selection in individual cases.
• Smith, R., Bajaj, S., Dailey, N. S., Alkozei, A., Smith, C., Sanova, A., Lane, R. D., & Killgore, W. D. (2018). Greater cortical thickness within the limbic visceromotor network predicts higher levels of trait emotional awareness. Consciousness and cognition, 57, 54-61.
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  Previous studies of trait emotional awareness (EA) have not yet examined whether differences in cortical structure might account for differences in EA. Based on previous research on the relationship between EA and both emotion conceptualization and visceromotor control processes, we tested two hypotheses in a sample of 26 healthy participants: that higher EA would be predicted by greater cortical thickness within (1) regions of the default mode network (DMN; linked with conceptualization processes), and/or (2) regions of the limbic network (linked with affect generation and visceromotor control processes). A non-significant correlation was found between EA and cortical thickness in the DMN. In contrast, a significant positive correlation was observed between EA and cortical thickness within the limbic network. These findings suggest that the structural integrity of cortical regions involved in the generation of affective bodily reactions may play a more important role in explaining differences in EA than previously thought.
• Smith, R., Killgore, W. D., & Lane, R. D. (2018). The structure of emotional experience and its relation to trait emotional awareness: A theoretical review. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 18(5), 670-692.
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  Emotional experience (EE) and trait emotional awareness (tEA) have recently become topics of considerable experimental/theoretical interest within the cognitive and neural sciences. However, to date there has been limited empirical focus on how individual differences in the factors contributing to EE (a state-based construct) might account for differences in tEA. To promote clear, well-guided empirical research in this area, in this article we first offer a concise review of the primary factors contributing to EE. We then provide a theoretical investigation into how individual differences in these factors (i.e., differences in affective response generation, affective response representation, and conscious access) could mechanistically account for differences in tEA; we also discuss plausible origins of these individual differences in light of current empirical findings. Finally, we outline possible experiments that would support (or fail to support) the role of each factor in explaining differences in tEA-and how this added knowledge could shed light on the known link between low tEA and multiple emotion-related mental and systemic medical disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record
• Smith, R., Killgore, W. D., Alkozei, A., & Lane, R. D. (2018). A neuro-cognitive process model of emotional intelligence. Biological psychology, 139, 131-151.
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  The construct of emotional intelligence (EI) broadly reflects the idea that individuals differ in their disposition/ability to adaptively generate, recognize, understand, and regulate the emotions of self and others. However, while the neural processes underlying such differences have begun to receive investigation, no brain-based model of EI has yet been proposed to help guide the design and interpretation of neuroimaging research in this area. In this article, we propose a neural model of EI to fill this need. This model incorporates recent insights from emotion theory, computational neuroscience, and large-scale network models of brain function. It also highlights several domain general processes - including those underlying conceptualization, automatic attention, habit formation, and cognitive control - that offer plausible targets for improving EI with training. Our model offers considerable promise in advancing understanding of intelligent emotional functioning and in guiding future neuroscience research on EI.
• Smith, R., Lane, R. D., Alkozei, A., Bao, J., Smith, C., Sanova, A., Nettles, M., & Killgore, W. D. (2018). The role of medial prefrontal cortex in the working memory maintenance of one's own emotional responses. Scientific reports, 8(1), 3460.
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  The role of medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) in maintaining emotional information within working memory (WM) remains insufficiently investigated - with some studies suggesting this process activates MPFC and others suggesting its activity is suppressed. To reconcile these different results, we asked 26 healthy participants to complete a WM task involving the maintenance of emotional content (EWM), visual content (VWM), or no content ("rest") after exposure to emotion-provoking images. We also assessed individual differences in emotional awareness (EA). We observed that dorsal MPFC was more active during EWM than VWM; further, relative to the rest condition, both of these WM conditions involved suppression of ventral MPFC. We also observed that the dorsal anterior cingulate subregion of dorsal MPFC was positively associated with EA. We discuss how these results may be able to reconcile the findings of previous EWM studies, and extend understanding of the relationship between MPFC, EA, and WM.
• Smith, R., Lane, R. D., Sanova, A., Alkozei, A., Smith, C., & Killgore, W. D. (2018). Common and Unique Neural Systems Underlying the Working Memory Maintenance of Emotional vs. Bodily Reactions to Affective Stimuli: The Moderating Role of Trait Emotional Awareness. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 12, 370.
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  Many leading theories suggest that the neural processes underlying the experience of one's own emotional reactions partially overlap with those underlying bodily perception (i.e., interoception, somatosensation, and proprioception). However, the goal-directed maintenance of one's own emotions in working memory (EWM) has not yet been compared to WM maintenance of one's own bodily reactions (BWM). In this study, we contrasted WM maintenance of emotional vs. bodily reactions to affective stimuli in 26 healthy individuals while they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. Specifically, we examined the a priori hypothesis that individual differences in trait emotional awareness (tEA) would lead to greater differences between these two WM conditions within medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). We observed that MPFC activation during EWM (relative to BWM) was positively associated with tEA. Whole-brain analyses otherwise suggested considerable similarity in the neural activation patterns associated with EWM and BWM. In conjunction with previous literature, our findings not only support a central role of body state representation/maintenance in EWM, but also suggest greater engagement of MPFC-mediated conceptualization processes during EWM in those with higher tEA.
• Smith, R., Sanova, A., Alkozei, A., Lane, R. D., & Killgore, W. D. (2018). Higher levels of trait emotional awareness are associated with more efficient global information integration throughout the brain: a graph-theoretic analysis of resting state functional connectivity. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 13(7), 665-675.
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  Previous studies have suggested that trait differences in emotional awareness (tEA) are clinically relevant, and associated with differences in neural structure/function. While multiple leading theories suggest that conscious awareness requires widespread information integration across the brain, no study has yet tested the hypothesis that higher tEA corresponds to more efficient brain-wide information exchange. Twenty-six healthy volunteers (13 females) underwent a resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan, and completed the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS; a measure of tEA) and the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI-II; a measure of general intelligence quotient [IQ]). Using a whole-brain (functionally defined) region of interest (ROI) atlas, we computed several graph theory metrics to assess the efficiency of brain-wide information exchange. After statistically controlling for differences in age, gender and IQ, we first observed a significant relationship between higher LEAS scores and greater average degree (i.e. overall whole-brain network density). When controlling for average degree, we found that higher LEAS scores were also associated with shorter average path lengths across the collective network of all included ROIs. These results jointly suggest that individuals with higher tEA display more efficient global information exchange throughout the brain. This is consistent with the idea that conscious awareness requires global accessibility of represented information.
• McLaughlin, K. A., Lane, R. D., & Bush, N. R. (2017). Introduction to the Special Issue of Psychosomatic Medicine: Mechanisms Linking Early-Life Adversity to Physical Health. Psychosomatic medicine, 78(9), 976-978.
• Reis, H. T., O'Keefe, S. D., & Lane, R. D. (2017). Fun Is More Fun When Others Are Involved. The journal of positive psychology, 12(6), 547-557.
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  Fun activities are commonly sought and highly desired yet their affective side has received little scrutiny. The present research investigated two features of fun in two daily diary studies and one laboratory experiment. First, we examined the affective state associated with fun experiences. Second, we investigated the social context of fun, considering whether shared fun is more enjoyable than solitary fun. Findings from these studies indicated that fun is associated with both high-activation and low-activation positive affects, and that it is enhanced when experienced with others (especially friends). However, social fun was associated with increases in high-activation but not low-activation positive affect, suggesting that social interaction emphasizes energizing affective experiences. We also found that loneliness moderated the latter effects, such that lonely individuals received a weaker boost from shared compared to solitary fun. These results add to what is known about the impact of social contexts on affective experience.
• Smith, R., Alkozei, A., Bao, J., Smith, C., Lane, R. D., & Killgore, W. D. (2017). Resting state functional connectivity correlates of emotional awareness. NeuroImage, 159, 99-106.
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  Multiple neuroimaging studies have now linked emotional awareness (EA), as measured by the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), with activation in regions of neural networks associated with both conceptualization (i.e., default mode network [DMN] regions) and interoception (i.e., salience network [SN] regions) - consistent with the definition of EA as one's ability to appropriately recognize, conceptualize, and articulate the emotions of self and other in fine-grained, differentiated ways. However, no study has yet tested the hypothesis that greater LEAS scores are associated with greater resting state functional connectivity (FC) within these networks. Twenty-six adults (13 female) underwent resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging, and also completed the LEAS. Using pre-defined functional ROIs from the DMN and SN, we observed that LEAS scores were significantly positively correlated with FC between several regions of both of these networks, even when controlling for differences in general intelligence (IQ). These results suggest that higher EA may be associated with more efficient information exchange between brain regions involved in both interoception- and conceptualization-based processing, which could plausibly contribute to more differentiated bodily feelings and more fine-grained conceptualization of those feelings.
• Smith, R., Lane, R. D., Alkozei, A., Bao, J., Smith, C., Sanova, A., Nettles, M., & Killgore, W. D. (2017). Maintaining the feelings of others in working memory is associated with activation of the left anterior insula and left frontal-parietal control network. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 12(5), 848-860.
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  The maintenance of social/emotional information in working memory (SWM/EWM) has recently been the topic of multiple neuroimaging studies. However, some studies find that SWM/EWM involves a medial frontal-parietal network while others instead find lateral frontal-parietal activations similar to studies of verbal and visuospatial WM. In this study, we asked 26 healthy volunteers to complete an EWM task designed to examine whether different cognitive strategies- maintaining emotional images, words, or feelings- might account for these discrepant results. We also examined whether differences in EWM performance were related to general intelligence (IQ), emotional intelligence (EI), and emotional awareness (EA). We found that maintaining emotional feelings, even when accounting for neural activation attributable to maintaining emotional images/words, still activated a left lateral frontal-parietal network (including the anterior insula and posterior dorsomedial frontal cortex). We also found that individual differences in the ability to maintain feelings were positively associated with IQ and EA, but not with EI. These results suggest that maintaining the feelings of others (at least when perceived exteroceptively) involves similar frontal-parietal control networks to exteroceptive WM, and that it is similarly linked to IQ, but that it also may be an important component of EA.
• Smith, R., Thayer, J. F., Khalsa, S. S., & Lane, R. D. (2017). The hierarchical basis of neurovisceral integration. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 75, 274-296.
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  The neurovisceral integration (NVI) model was originally proposed to account for observed relationships between peripheral physiology, cognitive performance, and emotional/physical health. This model has also garnered a considerable amount of empirical support, largely from studies examining cardiac vagal control. However, recent advances in functional neuroanatomy, and in computational neuroscience, have yet to be incorporated into the NVI model. Here we present an updated/expanded version of the NVI model that incorporates these advances. Based on a review of studies of structural/functional anatomy, we first describe an eight-level hierarchy of nervous system structures, and the contribution that each level plausibly makes to vagal control. Second, we review recent work on a class of computational models of brain function known as "predictive coding" models. We illustrate how the computational dynamics of these models, when implemented within our proposed vagal control hierarchy, can increase understanding of the relationship between vagal control and both cognitive performance and emotional/physical health. We conclude by discussing novel implications of this updated NVI model for future research.
• Bush, N. R., Lane, R. D., & McLaughlin, K. A. (2016). Mechanisms Underlying the Association Between Early-Life Adversity and Physical Health: Charting a Course for the Future. Psychosomatic medicine, 78(9), 1114-1119.
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  Early-life adversities (ELA) are associated with subsequent pervasive alterations across a wide range of neurobiological systems and psychosocial factors that contribute to accelerated onset of health problems and diseases. In this article, we provide an integrated perspective on recent developments in research on ELA, based on the articles published in this Special Issue of Psychosomatic Medicine. We focus on the following: 1) the distinction between specific versus general aspects of ELA with regard to the nature of exposure (e.g., physical and sexual abuse, emotional abuse or neglect, relative socioeconomic deprivation), biological and behavioral correlates of ELA, and differences across diseases; 2) the importance of timing in the critical phases of exposure to ELA; and 3) adaptive versus dysfunctional responses to ELA and their consequences for biological and behavioral risk factors for adverse health outcomes. This article concludes with outlining important new targets for research in this area, including the neurobiology of affect as a mechanism linking ELA to adverse health outcomes, and the need for large-scale longitudinal investigations of multisystem processes relevant to ELA in diverse samples, starting prenatally, continuing to late adolescence, and with long-term follow-up assessments that enable evaluation of incident disease outcomes.
• Lane, R. D., & Chhatwal, J. (2016). Levels of Emotional Awareness: A cognitive-developmental model and its application to the practice of psychotherapy. Psychodynamic Psychiatry.
• Lane, R. D., Reis, H. T., & O'Keefe, S. D. (2016). Fun is more fun when others are involved. Journal of Positive Pyschology.
• Lane, R. D., Shiykumar, K., Ajijola, O., Anand, I., Armour, J. A., Chen, P. S., Esler, M., De Ferrari, G., Fishbein, M. C., Goldberger, J., Harper, R., Joyner, M., Khalsa, S., Kumar, R., Mahajan, A., Po, S., Schwartz, P. J., Somers, V., Valderrabano, M., , Vaseghi, M., et al. (2016). Clinical Neurocardiology – Defining the value of neuroscience-based cardiovascular therapeutics. Journal of Physiology.
• Lane, R. D., Smith, R., Allen, J. J., Thayer, J. F., & Fort, C. (2016). . Regional frontal lobe response magnitudes during affective shifting covary with resting heart rate variability in healthy volunteers but not depressed subjects. Journal of Psychophysiology.
• Lane, R. D., Verkuil, B., Brosschot, J. F., Tollenaar, M. S., & Thayer, J. F. (2016). Prolonged non-metabolic heart rate variability reduction as a physiological marker of psychological stress in daily life. Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
• Reis, H. T., O’Keefe, S. D., & Lane, R. D. (2016). Fun is more fun when others are involved. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 0(0), 1-11.
• Smith, R., & Lane, R. D. (2016). Unconscious emotion: A cognitive neuroscientific perspective. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 69, 216-38.
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  While psychiatry and clinical psychology have long discussed the topic of unconscious emotion, and its potentially explanatory role in psychopathology, this topic has only recently begun to receive attention within cognitive neuroscience. In contrast, neuroscientific research on conscious vs. unconscious processes within perception, memory, decision-making, and cognitive control has seen considerable advances in the last two decades. In this article, we extrapolate from this work, as well as from recent neural models of emotion processing, to outline multiple plausible neuro-cognitive mechanisms that may be able to explain why various aspects of one's own emotional reactions can remain unconscious in specific circumstances. While some of these mechanisms involve top-down or motivated factors, others instead arise due to bottom-up processing deficits. Finally, we discuss potential implications that these different mechanisms may have for therapeutic intervention, as well as how they might be tested in future research.
• Smith, R., Alkozei, A., Lane, R. D., & Killgore, W. D. (2016). Unwanted reminders: The effects of emotional memory suppression on subsequent neuro-cognitive processing. Consciousness and cognition, 44, 103-113.
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  The neural basis of voluntarily suppressing conscious access to one's own memories (retrieval suppression [RS]) has recently received considerable attention. However, to date there has been limited research examining the effects of RS on subsequent processing of associated retrieval cues. In this study 47 healthy participants completed a Think/No Think task for memories of emotionally unpleasant visual scenes. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), participants were then presented with cues associated with both suppressed ("no-think-cues") and non-suppressed ("think-cues") memories, and then asked to perform simple arithmetic problems. We observed that, compared to think-cues, no-think-cues were associated with greater left mid/anterior insula activation and with greater insula-anterior cingulate functional connectivity; left insula activation also predicted worse arithmetic performance. These results suggest that cues associated with suppressed negative memories may lead to greater activation of the brain's "salience" network, and reduced available cognitive resources for completion of an ongoing goal-directed task.
• Smith, R., Baxter, L. C., Thayer, J. F., & Lane, R. D. (2016). Disentangling introspective and exteroceptive attentional control from emotional appraisal in depression using fMRI: A preliminary study. Psychiatry research.
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  The neurocognitive abnormalities in affective experience associated with depression remain incompletely understood. We examined BOLD activity in 10 healthy and 10 depressed subjects while they viewed emotional picture sets and categorized their experience in the moment as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral (introspective attention), as well as when they viewed matched pictures and judged whether they depicted indoor or outdoor scenes (exteroceptive attention). Contrasts permitted investigation of differences in neural activity between groups associated with (1) attentional control, and (2) appraisal of valence. Introspective attentional control (compared to exteroceptive attentional control) activated a common pregenual anterior cingulate (pACC) region in depressed and control subjects. Contrasts between appraised valences of attended emotional responses revealed a consistent pattern of increased BOLD activity to unpleasant emotional responses and decreased BOLD activity to pleasant emotional responses in depressed subjects relative to controls in ventromedial prefrontal cortex and insula. These findings support the conclusion that mechanisms for conscious attention to emotional experiences are intact in depressed subjects and that the affective disturbance in MDD is related to altered reactivity to pleasant vs. unpleasant stimuli.
• Subic-Wrana, C., Greenberg, L. S., Lane, R. D., Michal, M., Wiltink, J., & Beutel, M. E. (2016). Affective Change in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Theoretical Models and Clinical Approaches to Changing Emotions. Zeitschrift fur Psychosomatische Medizin und Psychotherapie, 62(3), 207-23.
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  Affective change has been considered the hallmark of therapeutic change in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic writers have begun to incorporate theoretically the advanced understanding of emotional processing and transformation of the affective neurosciences. We ask if this theoretical advancement is reflected in treatment techniques addressing the processing of emotion.
• Verkuil, B., Brosschot, J. F., Tollenaar, M. S., Lane, R. D., & Thayer, J. F. (2016). Prolonged Non-metabolic Heart Rate Variability Reduction as a Physiological Marker of Psychological Stress in Daily Life. Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, 50(5), 704-714.
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  Prolonged cardiac activity that exceeds metabolic needs can be detrimental for somatic health. Psychological stress could result in such "additional cardiac activity."
• Breitborde, N. J., Dawley, D., Bell, E. K., Vanuk, J. R., Allen, J. J., & Lane, R. D. (2015). A personalized paced-breathing intervention to increase heart rate variability among individuals with first-episode psychosis following stress exposure. Schizophrenia research, 169(1-3), 496-7.
• Lane, R. D., Fink, W., Chen, K., Roveda, J., Allen, J., & Vanuk, J. (2015). Wearable sensor based stress management using integrated respiratory and ECG waveforms. In Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN), 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference, 1-6.
• Lane, R. D., Hsu, C., Locke, D. E., Ritenbaugh, C., & Stonnington, C. M. (2015). Role of theory of mind in emotional awareness and alexithymia: Implications for conceptualization and measurement. Consciousness and cognition, 33, 398-405.
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  The goal of this study was to determine whether alexithymia, which is characterized by difficulty in recognizing and describing emotions, is associated with impairments in the ability to mentally represent emotional states. We studied 89 outpatients including 29 conversion disorder patients, 30 functional somatic syndrome [e.g. fibromyalgia] patients and 30 medical controls. Groups did not differ on affective or cognitive Theory of Mind (ToM) measures, the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) or the Twenty-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) after adjusting for Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) variables. Across all patients, LEAS but not TAS-20 correlated positively with affective and cognitive ToM measures after adjusting for PANAS scores. Impairments in ToM functioning influence LEAS performance but not TAS-20 scores. These findings support the distinction between a milder "anomia" form of alexithymia associated with impaired emotion naming and a more severe "agnosia" form associated with impaired mental representation of emotion.
• Lane, R. D., Lane, R. D., Nadel, L., Greenberg, L., & Ryan, L. (2015). The Integrated Memory Model: A new framework for understanding the mechanisms of change in psychotherapy. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46-64.
• Lane, R. D., Ryan, L., Nadel, L., & Greenberg, L. (2015). Memory reconsolidation, emotional arousal, and the process of change in psychotherapy: New insights from brain science. The Behavioral and brain sciences, 38, e1.
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  Since Freud, clinicians have understood that disturbing memories contribute to psychopathology and that new emotional experiences contribute to therapeutic change. Yet, controversy remains about what is truly essential to bring about psychotherapeutic change. Mounting evidence from empirical studies suggests that emotional arousal is a key ingredient in therapeutic change in many modalities. In addition, memory seems to play an important role but there is a lack of consensus on the role of understanding what happened in the past in bringing about therapeutic change. The core idea of this paper is that therapeutic change in a variety of modalities, including behavioral therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, emotion-focused therapy, and psychodynamic psychotherapy, results from the updating of prior emotional memories through a process of reconsolidation that incorporates new emotional experiences. We present an integrated memory model with three interactive components - autobiographical (event) memories, semantic structures, and emotional responses - supported by emerging evidence from cognitive neuroscience on implicit and explicit emotion, implicit and explicit memory, emotion-memory interactions, memory reconsolidation, and the relationship between autobiographical and semantic memory. We propose that the essential ingredients of therapeutic change include: (1) reactivating old memories; (2) engaging in new emotional experiences that are incorporated into these reactivated memories via the process of reconsolidation; and (3) reinforcing the integrated memory structure by practicing a new way of behaving and experiencing the world in a variety of contexts. The implications of this new, neurobiologically grounded synthesis for research, clinical practice, and teaching are discussed.
• Lane, R. D., Weihs, K. L., Herring, A., Hishaw, A., & Smith, R. (2015). Affective agnosia: Expansion of the alexithymia construct and a new opportunity to integrate and extend Freud's legacy. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 55, 594-611.
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  We describe a new type of agnosia consisting of an impairment in the ability to mentally represent or know what one is feeling. Freud the neurologist coined the term "agnosia" in 1891 before creating psychoanalysis in 1895 but the term has not been previously applied to the domain of affective processing. We propose that the concept of "affective agnosia" advances the theory, measurement and treatment of what is now called "alexithymia," meaning "lack of words for emotion." We trace the origin of the alexithymia construct and discuss the strengths and limitations of extant research. We review evidence that the ability to represent and put emotions into words is a developmental achievement that strongly influences one's ability to experience, recognize, understand and use one's own emotional responses. We describe the neural substrates of emotional awareness and affective agnosia and compare and contrast these with related conditions. We then describe how this expansion of the conceptualization and measurement of affective processing deficits has important implications for basic emotion research and clinical practice.
• Lichev, V., Sacher, J., Ihme, K., Rosenberg, N., Quirin, M., Lepsien, J., Pampel, A., Rufer, M., Grabe, H. J., Kugel, H., Kersting, A., Villringer, A., Lane, R. D., & Suslow, T. (2015). Automatic emotion processing as a function of trait emotional awareness: an fMRI study. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 10(5), 680-9.
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  It is unclear whether reflective awareness of emotions is related to extent and intensity of implicit affective reactions. This study is the first to investigate automatic brain reactivity to emotional stimuli as a function of trait emotional awareness. To assess emotional awareness the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) was administered. During scanning, masked happy, angry, fearful and neutral facial expressions were presented to 46 healthy subjects, who had to rate the fit between artificial and emotional words. The rating procedure allowed assessment of shifts in implicit affectivity due to emotion faces. Trait emotional awareness was associated with increased activation in the primary somatosensory cortex, inferior parietal lobule, anterior cingulate gyrus, middle frontal and cerebellar areas, thalamus, putamen and amygdala in response to masked happy faces. LEAS correlated positively with shifts in implicit affect caused by masked happy faces. According to our findings, people with high emotional awareness show stronger affective reactivity and more activation in brain areas involved in emotion processing and simulation during the perception of masked happy facial expression than people with low emotional awareness. High emotional awareness appears to be characterized by an enhanced positive affective resonance to others at an automatic processing level.
• Schafer, S. M., Wager, T. D., Mercado, R. A., Thayer, J. F., Allen, J. J., & Lane, R. D. (2015). Partial Amelioration of Medial Visceromotor Network Dysfunction in Major Depression by Sertraline. Psychosomatic medicine, 77(7), 752-61.
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  Major depression is associated with reduced cardiac vagal control, most commonly indexed by heart rate variability. To examine the dynamics of this abnormality, we examined within-participant covariation over time between brain activity, cardiac vagal control, and depressive symptoms in depressed patients treated with sertraline and in healthy volunteers.
• Smith, R., & Lane, R. D. (2015). The neural basis of one's own conscious and unconscious emotional states. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 57, 1-29.
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  The study of emotional states has recently received considerable attention within the cognitive and neural sciences. However, limited work has been done to synthesize this growing body of literature within a coherent hierarchical, neuro-cognitive framework. In this article, we review evidence pertaining to three interacting hierarchical neural systems associated with the generation, perception and regulation of one's own emotional state. In the framework we propose, emotion generation proceeds through a series of appraisal mechanisms - some of which appear to require more cognitively sophisticated computational processing (and hence more time) than others - that ultimately trigger iterative adjustments to one's bodily state (as well as to the modes of processing in other cognitive systems). Perceiving one's own emotions then involves a multi-stage interoceptive/somatosensory process by which these body state patterns are detected and assigned conceptual emotional meaning. Finally, emotion regulation can be understood as a hierarchical control system that, at various levels, modulates autonomic reactions, appraisal mechanisms, attention, the contents of working memory, and goal-directed action selection. We highlight implications this integrative model may have for competing theories of emotion and emotional consciousness and for guiding future research.
• Smith, R., Alkozei, A., Lane, R. D., & Killgore, W. D. (2015). Unwanted reminders: The effects of memory suppression on subsequent cognition processing. Consciousness and Cognition.
• Smith, R., Allen, J. J., Thayer, J. F., & Lane, R. D. (2015). Altered functional connectivity between medial prefrontal cortex and the inferior brainstem in major depression during appraisal of subjective emotional responses: A preliminary study. Biological psychology, 108, 13-24.
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  We tested the hypothesis that reduced rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC)-subcortical functional connectivity in depressed subjects might account for depression-related autonomic dysregulation.
• Smith, R., Braden, B. B., Chen, K., Ponce, F. A., Lane, R. D., & Baxter, L. C. (2015). The neural basis of attaining conscious awareness of sad mood. Brain imaging and behavior, 9(3), 574-87.
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  The neural processes associated with becoming aware of sad mood are not fully understood. We examined the dynamic process of becoming aware of sad mood and recovery from sad mood. Sixteen healthy subjects underwent fMRI while participating in a sadness induction task designed to allow for variable mood induction times. Individualized regressors linearly modeled the time periods during the attainment of self-reported sad and baseline "neutral" mood states, and the validity of the linearity assumption was further tested using independent component analysis. During sadness induction the dorsomedial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices, and anterior insula exhibited a linear increase in the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal until subjects became aware of a sad mood and then a subsequent linear decrease as subjects transitioned from sadness back to the non-sadness baseline condition. These findings extend understanding of the neural basis of conscious emotional experience.
• Smith, R., Killgore, W. D., & Lane, R. D. (2015). A reconceptualization of emotional intelligence based on neural systems. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral.
• Wright, R., Riedel, R., Sechrest, L., Lane, R. D., & Smith, R. (2018). Sex differences in emotion recognition ability: The mediating role of trait emotional awareness. Motivation and Emotion, 42(1), 149–160. doi:https://doi-org.ezproxy1.library.arizona.edu/10.1007/s11031-017-9648-0
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  Although previous research on emotion recognition ability (ERA) has found consistent evidence for a female advantage, the explanation for this sex difference remains incompletely understood. This study compared males and females on four emotion recognition tasks, using a community sample of 379 adults drawn from two regions of the United States (stratified with respect to age, sex, and socioeconomic status). Participants also completed the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), a measure of trait emotional awareness (EA) thought to primarily reflect individual differences in emotion concept learning. We observed that individual differences in LEAS scores mediated the relationship between sex and ERA; in addition, we observed that ERA distributions were noticeably non-normal, and that—similar to findings with other cognitive performance measures—males had more variability in ERA than females. These results further characterize sex differences in ERA and suggest that these differences may be explained by differences in EA—a trait variable linked primarily to early learning.
• Ihme, K., Sacher, J., Lichev, V., Rosenberg, N., Kugel, H., Rufer, M., Grabe, H., Pampel, A., Lepsien, J., Kersting, A., Villringer, A., Lane, R. D., & Suslow, T. (2014). Alexithymic features and the labeling of brief emotional facial expressions - An fMRI study. Neuropsychologia, 64C, 289-299.
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  The ability to recognize subtle facial expressions can be valuable in social interaction to infer emotions and intentions of others. Research has shown that the personality trait of alexithymia is linked to difficulties labeling facial expressions especially when these are presented with temporal constraints. The present study investigates the neural mechanisms underlying this deficit. 50 young healthy volunteers had to label briefly presented (≤100ms) emotional (happy, angry, fearful) facial expressions masked by a neutral expression while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A multi-method approach (20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale and Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia) was administered to assess alexithymic tendencies. Behavioral results point to a global deficit of alexithymic individuals in labeling brief facial expressions. Alexithymia was related to decreased response of the ventral striatum to negative facial expressions. Moreover, alexithymia was associated with lowered activation in frontal, temporal and occipital cortices. Our data suggest that alexithymic individuals have difficulties in creating appropriate representations of the emotional state of other persons under temporal constraints. These deficiencies could lead to problems in labeling other people׳s facial emotions.
• Lane, R. D. (2014). Is it possible to bridge the Biopsychosocial and Biomedical models?. BioPsychoSocial medicine, 8(1), 3.
• Moeller, S. J., Konova, A. B., Parvaz, M. A., Tomasi, D., Lane, R. D., Fort, C., & Goldstein, R. Z. (2014). Functional, structural, and emotional correlates of impaired insight in cocaine addiction. JAMA psychiatry, 71(1), 61-70.
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  Individuals with cocaine use disorder (CUD) have difficulty monitoring ongoing behavior, possibly stemming from dysfunction of brain regions mediating insight and self-awareness.
• Smith, R., Allen, J. J., Thayer, J. F., Fort, C., & Lane, R. D. (2014). Increased association over time between regional frontal lobe BOLD change magnitude and cardiac vagal control with sertraline treatment for major depression. Psychiatry research, 224(3), 225-33.
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  Regions of the medial visceromotor network (MVN) participate in concurrently regulating shifts in both affective state and cardiac vagal control in the attentional background, and this regulatory ability may be impaired in depression. We examined whether the relationship between changes in BOLD within MVN regions and changes in cardiac vagal control (VC) during affective state shifting changed with depression treatment. Ten depressed and ten control subjects performed an emotional counting Stroop task designed to trigger affective change in the attentional background while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and concurrent electrocardiography (ECG) on four occasions: week 0 (pre-treatment) and weeks 2, 6 and 12 of treatment on sertraline. We measured the absolute value of change between adjacent emotional and neutral conditions in both VC and the BOLD signal in specific regions of the MVN. Over time consistent increases were observed in BOLD-VC magnitude correlations in depressed subjects in subgenual ACC and left DLPFC, which strongly correlated with depressive symptom improvement. Symptom improvement over time was also associated with decreases in the magnitude of both BOLD shifts and VC shifts within-subjects. This suggests that as depressive symptoms improve on sertraline, subgenual ACC and DLPFC may more efficiently regulate visceral states during affective state shifting.
• Smith, R., Fass, H., & Lane, R. D. (2014). Role of medial prefrontal cortex in representing one's own subjective emotional responses: a preliminary study. Consciousness and cognition, 29, 117-30.
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  The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been implicated in attending to one's own emotional states, but the role of emotional valence in this context is not understood. We examined valence-specific BOLD activity in a previously validated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm. Ten healthy subjects viewed emotional pictures and categorized their experience as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. All three categories activated a common region within mPFC. Subtraction of neutral from pleasant or unpleasant conditions instead revealed ventromedial PFC (vmPFC), suggesting that this region represents emotional valence. During exteroceptive attention, greater mPFC responses were observed in response to emotional relative to neutral stimuli, consistent with studies implicating mPFC in the top-down modulation of emotion-biased attention. These findings may help to integrate the two proposed roles of mPFC in emotional representation and top-down modulation of subcortical structures.
• Subic-Wrana, C., Beutel, M. E., Brähler, E., Stöbel-Richter, Y., Knebel, A., Lane, R. D., & Wiltink, J. (2014). How is emotional awareness related to emotion regulation strategies and self-reported negative affect in the general population?. PloS one, 9(3), e91846.
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  The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) as a performance task discriminates between implicit or subconscious and explicit or conscious levels of emotional awareness. An impaired awareness of one's feeling states may influence emotion regulation strategies and self-reports of negative emotions. To determine this influence, we applied the LEAS and self-report measures for emotion regulation strategies and negative affect in a representative sample of the German general population.

Proceedings Publications

• Lane, R. D. (2017, 3/17). Chair, Roundtable Discussion. In 75th Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society.

Presentations

• Lane, R. D. (2021, February 20). A working model of psychotherapeutic change: Memory Reconsolidation in the presence of emotional arousal. Invited talk. online: Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC) and the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation in New York.
• Lane, R. D. (2021, June 25). Priorities in research on memory reconsolidation in psychotherapy. Structured discussion on “Memory reconsolidation in psychotherapy research” (Ueli Kramer, Ph.D., chair). Heidelberg, Germany: Annual meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research.
• Lane, R. D. (2021, May 3). Memory reconsolidation, emotional arousal and enduring change in psychotherapy.. “Navigating the therapeutic space: How new understanding of fundamental mechanisms supports psychotherapeutic work (Jeffery Smith, M.D., chair). Los Angeles, CA: Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association.
• Lane, R. D. (2021, September 17). What has neuroscience done for you lately? It’s future role in translational psychosomatic science. Chair, principal organizer and speaker at on-line 3-hour webinar on computational neuroscience in psychosomatic medicine. online: American Psychosomatic Society.
• Lane, R. D. (2021, September 2). What is the best way to validate a digital version of the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale in German?. Evaluation Group for the Analysis of Data (EGAD). Tucson, AZ: Department of Psychology, University of Arizona.
• Lane, R. D. (2020, July). Memory Reconsolidation, Emotional Arousal and Enduring Change in Psychotherapy: Implications for Psychoanalytic Research and Practice. Invited presentation to the online conference titled “Neuropsychoanalysis Around the World”. online: International Neuropsychoanalysis Society.
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  20 minute presentation
• Lane, R. D. (2020, October). Memory Reconsolidation, Emotional Arousal and Enduring Change in Psychotherapy: Challenges and Opportunities for Psychoanalytic Research and Practice. Online conference hosted by the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society. online: International Neuropsychoanalysis Society.
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  1 hour lecture and 1 hour discussion
• Lane, R. D. (2020, Spring). Emotional Awareness: New Developments in Theory, Research and Clinical Applications. Grand Rounds. Tucson, AZ: Dept of Psychiatry University of Arizona.
• Lane, R. D. (2017, 11/17). Spirit of the Senses. Rules for Successful Relationships.
• Lane, R. D. (2017, 3/17). Cracking the code: Everyday emotion alters ventricular repolarization duration in coronary artery disease. 75th Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society.
• Lane, R. D. (2017, 3/17). Deficits in the mental representation of emotional states in functional somatic syndromes and their implications for assessment. 75th Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society.
• Lane, R. D. (2017, 3/17). Early Life Adversity Predicts Coronary Heart Disease: Evidence, Mechanisms and Implications. 75th Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society.
• Lane, R. D. (2017, 5/17). Memory Reconsolidation, Emotional Arousal and the Process of Change in Psychotherapy. In symposium titled “Are we there yet? Seeking theoretical convergence”. Annual meeting of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI).
• Lane, R. D. (2017, 5/17). Psychotherapeutic Treatment of Chronic Pain by Enhancing Emotional Awareness. Annual meeting of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI).
• Lane, R. D. (2017, 5/17). Role of Implicit emotion in pain modulation. In invited symposium sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse titled “What is Pain to the Brain?. Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society.
• Lane, R. D. (2017, 5/17). What is essential to bringing about therapeutic change? How can research hypotheses be tested in live psychotherapy sessions?. Annual meeting of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI).
• Lane, R. D. (2017, 9/17). Memory reconsolidation, emotional arousal and the process of change in psychotherapy. New insights from brain science.
• Lane, R. D. (2017, 9/17). Synthesis and Future Directions. Neuroscience of Enduring Change: Implications for Psychotherapy.
• Lane, R. D. (2016, June). Emotional Arousal and Memory Reconsolidation: A Common Change Process? An Investigation using Videotaped Examples. Annual Meeting of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration. Dublin, Ireland.
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  Workshop panel member: Emotional Arousal and Memory Reconsolidation: A Common Change Process? An Investigation using Videotaped Examples. (Chair: Rhonda Goldman, Ph.D.) Annual Meeting of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration. Dublin, Ireland, June 16-18, 2016.
• Lane, R. D. (2016, June). Memory reconsolidation, emotional arousal and the process of change. Annual Meeting of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration. Dublin, Ireland.
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  Model overview and clinical applications. In symposium titled “Memory reconsolidation, emotional arousal and the process of change.” (Chair: Rhonda Goldman, Ph.D.) Annual Meeting of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration. Dublin, Ireland, June 16-18, 2016.
• Lane, R. D. (2016, June). “Emotional Awareness: Implications for psychotherapeutic intervention and prevention”. Annual Meeting of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration. Dublin, Ireland.
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  Overview of levels of emotional awareness and its application to psychotherapy. In symposium titled “Emotional Awareness: Implications for psychotherapeutic intervention and prevention” (Chair: Richard D. Lane, M.D., Ph.D.). Annual Meeting of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration. Dublin, Ireland, June 16-18, 2016.
• Lane, R. D. (2016, March). Chair, plenary lecture by Kevin Tracey, M.D. Mapping reflexes in immunity: The coming of bioelectronic medicine.. Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society. Denver, CO.
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  Chair, plenary lecture by Kevin Tracey, M.D. Mapping reflexes in immunity: The coming of bioelectronic medicine. Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society, Denver, CO, March 11, 2016.
• Lane, R. D. (2016, March). Roundtable Discussion. Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society. Denver, CO.
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  Chair, Roundtable Discussion with Paul D. MacLean Award Winner (Emeran Mayer, M.D.). Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society, Denver, CO, March 12, 2016.
• Lane, R. D. (2016, October). An integrated model of emotion, brain, and risk for chronic pain. “Neuroscience of pain: Early adversity, mechanisms and treatment.” Mid-Year Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society. New York, NY.
• Lane, R. D., Kromenacker, B., Sanova, A., & Allen, J. (2016, November). Low frequency heart rate variability due to slow yoga breathing is vagally mediated. Interoception Summit. Tulsa, OK.
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  Lane R, Kromenacker B, Sanova A, Allen JJB. Low frequency heart rate variability due to slow yoga breathing is vagally mediated. Invited speaker at the Interoception Summit, Tulsa, OK, November 15-16, 2016.
• Lane, R. D., Reis, H., Hsu, P., & Zabera, W. (2016, March). Activated positive affect associated with exaggerated shortening of ventricular repolarization duration in patients with congenital Long QT Syndrome. Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society. Denver, CO.
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  Activated positive affect associated with exaggerated shortening of ventricular repolarization duration in patients with congenital Long QT Syndrome. Oral presentation at Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society, Denver, CO, March 10, 2016.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, April). Idea to asset seminar. University of Arizona College of Science. Tucson, AZ: Tech Launch Arizona.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, April). Preconference Workshop on Emotional and Health Consequences of Early Life Adversity. Society for Affective Science. Oakland, CA.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, February). Memory reconsolidation, emotional arousal and the process of change in psychotherapy: new insights from brain science. 23rd Annual Psychiatry Review Course. Tucson, AZ.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, January). Healing unexplainable pain: Advances in neuroscience and treatment of psychosomatic distress. Columbia University: New York State Psychiatric Institute. New York.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, January). Levels of emotional awareness: Psychometric, neuroanatomical and clinical correlates. Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. New Haven, CT.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, January). Symptom Formation and Mechanisms of Change in Somatoform Disorders: Research Findings and Implications for Treatment. Fifth Annual Meeting of the Psychodynamic Psychoanalytic Research Society. New York.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, January). Toward optimal self-regulation of healt. University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center Board of Directors. Phoenix, AZ.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, July). Emotional awareness, bodily physiology and the brain: The science behind greatness. Lapin International Leadership Team Meeting. Tucson, AZ.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, June). Memory reconsolidation, emotional arousal and the process of change in psychotherapy: new insights from brain science. American Psychoanalytic Association.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, March). Learning from stress: why is it bad for the brain? Structure, function and performance.. Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society. Savannah, Georgia.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, March). Young Investigator Colloquium. Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society.
• Lane, R. D. (2015, October). Recent advances in understanding the link between heart rate variability and emotion: from the subliminal to real life. Emotions 2015: 6th International Conference on emotions. Tilburg University: Tilburg, Netherlands.
• Weihs, K. L., Lane, R. D., Landa, A., & Gundel, H. (2015, January). Symptom Formation and mechanisms of Change in Somatoform Disorders: Research findings and implications for treatment. Psychodynamic Psychoanalytic Research Society, 5th Annual Meeting. New York, NY.
• Lane, R. D. (2014, March). Plenary Lecture and Roundtable Discussion with Paul D. MacLean Award Winner. Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society.

Poster Presentations

• Lane, R. D. (2021, November 8-11). Functional Neuroimaging of the Autonomic Brain: A Meta-Analysis. Poster session. online: Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
• Lane, R. D. (2017, 3/17). Low frequency heart rate variability due to slow yoga breathing is vagally mediated. 75th Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society.

Reviews

• Panksepp, J., Lane, R. D., Solms, M., & Smith, R. (2016. Reconciling cognitive and affective neuroscience perspectives on the brain basis of emotional experience.
  More info

  The "affective" and "cognitive" neuroscience approaches to understanding emotion (AN and CN, respectively) represent potentially synergistic, but as yet unreconciled, theoretical perspectives, which may in part stem from the methods that these distinct perspectives routinely employ-one focusing on animal brain emotional systems (AN) and one on diverse human experimental approaches (CN). Here we present an exchange in which each approach (1) describes its own theoretical perspective, (2) offers a critique of the other perspective, and then (3) responds to each other's critique. We end with a summary of points of agreement and disagreement, and describe possible future experiments that could help resolve the remaining controversies. Future work should (i) further characterize the structure/function of subcortical circuitry with respect to its role in generating emotion, and (ii) further investigate whether sub-neocortical activations alone are sufficient (as opposed to merely necessary) for affective experiences, or whether subsequent cortical representation of an emotional response is also required.

Creative Productions

• Lane, R. D. (2016. Reconsolidation of emotional memories – A new theory of enduring change that can potentially promote integration across major psychotherapy modalities. The Integrative Therapist.
  More info

  Reconsolidation of emotional memories – A new theory of enduring change that can potentially promote integration across major psychotherapy modalities. The Integrative Therapist (Newsletter of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration) Vol 2 Issue 4 October 2016, pages 8-9.

Others

• Lane, R. D. (2015, August). What’s it like to have never felt an emotion? By David Robson. BBC Science Website. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150818-what-is-it-like-to-have-never-felt-an-emotion