Study shows how using mental strategies can alter the brain's reward circuitry The cognitive strategies humans use to regulate emotions can determine both neurological and physiological responses to potential rewards, a team of New York University and Rutgers University neuroscientists has discovered. The findings, reported in the most recent issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, shed light on how the regulation of emotions may influence decision making.

Sigmund Freud suggested that traumatic events are forgotten because they are hidden from our conscious awareness, or repressed; Brown and Kulik (1977) found that highly emotional events, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy are often vividly remembered (although this has been widely disputed); now, research published in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that people tend to underestimate the intensity of the actual emotions if they are mixed, rather than happy or sad.