What is the Link Between Emotional Intelligence and Emotion Regulation? Behavioural and Resting-State Functional Connectivity Evidences

A converging body of behavioural findings supports the hypothesis that the dispositional use of Emotion Regulation (ER) strategies depends on trait Emotional Intelligence (trait EI) levels. Unfortunately, neuroscientific investigations of such relationship are missing. To fill this gap, we analysed behavioural and resting state data from 79 healthy participants to corroborate whether the same neural circuit predicting trait EI, also predicts specific ER strategies. An unsupervised machine learning approach (Independent Component Analysis) was used to decompose resting-sate functional networks and to assess whether they predict trait EI and specific ER strategies. Behavioural results showed that total trait EI index significantly predicts and negatively correlates with the frequency of use of typical dysfunctional ER strategies (suppression and self-blame). Crucially, we observed that an increased BOLD temporal variability within sensorimotor and language networks predicts both high trait EI and the frequency of use of cognitive reappraisal. By contrast, a decreased variability in language network predicts the use of suppression. These findings support the tight connection between high trait EI and individual tendency to use functional ER strategies, and provide the first evidence that modulations of BOLD temporal variability in specific brain networks may be pivotal in explaining this relationship.