Emotion regulation success involves systematic gradient-based reconfigurations of large-scale activation patterns in the human brain

Emotion regulation is essential for well-being and mental health, yet individuals vary widely in their emotion regulation success. Why? Traditional neuroimaging studies of emotion regulation often focus on localized neural activity or isolated networks, overlooking how large-scale brain organization relates to the integration of distributed systems and sub-processes supporting regulatory success. Here, we applied a novel system-level framework based on spatial gradients of macroscale brain organization to study variance in emotion regulation success. Using two large functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) datasets (n = 358, n = 263), we projected global activation patterns from a laboratory emotion regulation task onto principal gradients derived from independent resting-state fMRI data from the Human Connectome Project. These gradients capture low-dimensional patterns of neural variation, providing a topographical framework within which complex mental phenomena, such as emotion regulation, emerge. In both datasets, individual differences in regulation success were associated with systematic reconfiguration along Gradient 1-a principal axis differentiating unimodal and heteromodal brain areas. This gradient-based neural reconfiguration also associates with lower negative affect in daily life, as measured via smartphone-based experience sampling in a subset of participants (n = 55). Meta-analytic decoding via Neurosynth revealed that Gradient 1 and regulation success align with multiple psychological processes, including social cognition, memory, attention, and negative emotion, suggesting this gradient reflects diverse, integrative demands during effective emotion regulation. These findings introduce a gradient-based perspective on emotion regulation success that is biologically grounded in well-established large-scale brain organization and ecologically valid through its links with real-world emotional experience. Such gradient-based dynamics may serve as predictive biomarkers of regulatory success and inform targeted interventions in clinical populations.