Published online 11 August 2004 Well being and affective style neural substrates and biobehavioural correlates Richard J Davidson Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience W M Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior University of Wisconsin Madison 1202 West Johnson Street Madison WI 53706 USA rjdavids wisc edu One of the most salient features of emotion is the pronounced variability among individuals in their reactions to emotional incentives and in their dispositional mood Collectively these individual differences have been described as affective style Recent research has begun to dissect the constituents of affective style The search for these components is guided by the neural systems that instantiate emotion and emotion regulation In this article this body of research and theory is applied specifically to positive affect and well being The central substrates and peripheral biological correlates of well being are described A resilient affective style is associated with high levels of left prefrontal activation effective modulation of activation in the amygdala and fast recovery in response to negative and stressful events In peripheral biology these central patterns are associated with lower levels of basal cortisol and with higher levels of antibody titres to influenza vaccine The article concludes with a consideration of whether these patterns of central and peripheral biology can be modified by training and shifted toward a more salubrious direction Keywords affective neuroscience resilience prefrontal cortex brain asymmetry emotion regulation affective style 1 INTRODUCTION One of the most salient characteristics of emotion is the extraordinary heterogeneity in how different individuals respond to the same emotionally provocative challenge Such differences in patterns of emotional reactivity play a crucial role in shaping variations in well being Although individual differences in emotion processing can be found at many levels of phylogeny they are particularly pronounced in primates and probably are most extreme in humans A number of evolutionary theorists have speculated on the adaptive significance of such individual differences Wilson 1994 Although these arguments have never been applied to the domain of emotion and affective style it is not difficult to develop hypotheses about how such differences might provide advantages to individuals living in groups However rather than focus on the distal causes of such individual differences which are so difficult to subject to rigorous test I wish only to call attention to the possibility that variability in characteristics such as fearfulness or cheerfulness might provide some adaptive benefit to individuals living together in groups Instead this article examines the proximal mechanisms that underlie such individual differences with a focus on well being The central substrates of individual differences in components of well being will be described The possible influence of the central circuitry of emotion on peripheral biological indices that are relevant to physical health and illness will also be considered It is helpful to contrast wellbeing with specific types of psychopathology that involve One contribution of 12 to a Discussion Meeting Issue The science of well being integrating neurobiology psychology and social science Phil Trans R Soc Lond B 2004 359 1395 1411 doi 10 1098 rstb 2004 1510 dysfunctions in the circuitry of adaptive emotional responding Accordingly some mention of recent work on the neurobiology of mood and anxiety disorders will be made Finally plasticity in the underlying brain circuitry that instantiates affective style will be described and its role in promoting resilience will be considered Affective style refers to consistent individual differences in emotional reactivity and regulation see Davidson 1998a Davidson et al 2000a b It is a phrase that is meant to capture a broad array of processes that either singly or in combination modulate an individual s response to emotional challenges dispositional mood and affectrelevant cognitive processes Affective style can refer to valence specific features of emotional reactivity or mood or it can refer to discrete emotion specific features Both levels of analysis are equally valid and the choice of level should be dictated by the question posed Rapid developments in our understanding of emotion mood and affective style have come from the study of the neural substrates of these phenomena The identification of the brain circuitry responsible for different aspects of affective processing has helped to parse the domain of emotion into more elementary constituents in a manner similar to that found in cognitive neuroscience where an appeal to the brain has facilitated the rapid development of theory and data on the subcomponents of various cognitive processes e g Kosslyn Koenig 1992 This article will highlight some of the advances that have been made in our understanding of the brain mechanisms that underlie affective style These advances have emerged from three major sources studies of patients with discrete lesions of the brain neuroimaging studies of normal indivi 1395 2004 The Royal Society 1396 R J Davidson Well being and affective style duals and studies of pathologies of brain function in patients with various psychiatric and neurological disorders that involve abnormalities in emotion I will use the material on pathology to help to identify the neural circuitry crucial to certain forms of positive affect so that we can begin to place well being squarely within a neurobiological framework Both lesion and neuroimaging studies provide information primarily on the where question that is where in the brain are computations related to specific aspects of affective processing occurring It is important at the outset to consider both the utility of knowing where and how such information can provide insight into the how question that is how might a particular part of the brain instantiate a specific process that is essential to affective style The brain sciences are now replete with information on the essential nature of specific types of information processing in different regions of the brain For example there is evidence to suggest that the DLPFC is important for maintaining a representation of information online in the absence of immediate cues The neurophysiological basis of this type of information processing has been actively studied in the