A Busier Brain Is Not Necessarily Better Regulation
The fNIRS evidence adds a neural dimension to the affect-labeling and reappraisal interaction, but it does not turn a behavioral association into a finished explanation. The 2024 study found that combining labeling with reappraisal changed activity in prefrontal regions while also reducing the behavioral benefit of reappraisal. The useful judgment is therefore two-sided: the combined task was measurably different in the brain and in reported emotion, yet increased prefrontal activity could reflect cognitive demand, attention, or task structure rather than more successful regulation.
What the fNIRS signal adds
The study examined 35 adults who imagined negative emotional vignettes. Each trial began with a rating of how intense the negative emotion was. Participants then completed one of four combinations: affect labeling with reappraisal, no affect labeling with reappraisal, affect labeling without reappraisal, or neither labeling nor reappraisal. Affect labeling involved selecting an emotion word that matched the experience; the no-labeling control involved selecting nonsense syllables. Reappraisal involved trying to reinterpret the vignette in a calmer or more positive way.
This design allowed the researchers to collect two kinds of evidence from the same interaction. The behavioral measure asked how negative emotion changed from the baseline rating during the task. The neural measure used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to track changes in oxygenated hemoglobin across prefrontal regions near the forehead. In accessible terms, the study asked both what participants reported feeling and how the measured cortical signal differed while they performed the competing tasks.
The behavioral result matched the sequence finding described earlier. Reappraisal reduced negative emotion. But the combination of affect labeling and reappraisal was less effective than reappraisal without prior labeling. Affect labeling without reappraisal did not produce a discernible difference from the corresponding no-label, no-reappraisal condition. The neural measurement did not replace that result; it was collected to help characterize what kind of processing accompanied it.
The signal was especially different in the combined condition. The study reported significant interactions between labeling and regulation across the measured prefrontal regions. The abstract emphasizes increased oxyhemoglobin in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal and right ventrolateral or ventral prefrontal cortex during reappraisal with affect labeling. The authors connect the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with cognitive control, a family of processes involved in maintaining a task, shifting attention, and working with information. That connection makes a cognitive-demand interpretation plausible: adding a label before reappraisal may require the participant to manage more than one operation while trying to change the emotional meaning of the vignette.
The relationship between the two outcomes is the important part. The condition with more prefrontal signal was not the condition with the largest emotional reduction. In fact, the combined condition showed a smaller reappraisal benefit behaviorally. This prevents a common but unreliable inference: more activity does not automatically mean better regulation. A region associated with control can become more active because a task is harder, because competing demands must be coordinated, or because attention is being deployed differently. Activity is a measure of processing, not a score for success.
The study therefore adds a constraint to the psychological story. The combined act of labeling and reappraising was not simply a behavioral instruction with no measurable difference in cortical processing.