Università Roma Tre

Goals
What is self-control and what is emotion regulation? How do they work; what psychological and brain mechanisms do they depend on? Why is voluntary control of psychological processes, such as staying focused, resisting distractions, managing a negative emotion, restraining brooding or the mind's tendency to wander, so difficult? And why does voluntary control of actions often fail? That is, for what reasons do we fall back into habits we no longer want to have, into different forms of addiction, toward psychoactive substances, behaviors, emotionally destructive relationships? And for what reasons do we so frequently fail to contain an inappropriate impulse or expression of emotion that we know is potentially harmful?
Are there techniques, training, practical exercises for developing self-control, regulating emotions more effectively, governing our habits? What psychological and brain mechanisms are they based on? How are they performed and what evidence of effectiveness exists in the scientific literature?
The Course, aims to provide participants with knowledge of the main theoretical elements and models of explanations of the processes of self-control and emotion regulation, between neuroscience, psychosocial science and philosophy.
At the same time, the Course aims to teach exercises and techniques useful for improving self-regulatory capacity, including several Mindfulness-based practices, illustrating their scientific basis and experimental verification of effectiveness.
At the end of the Course, the student should know and understand the main explanatory models of self-control and emotion regulation and will have a basic mastery of the most popular and scientifically validated techniques, exercises and trainings for cognitive enhancement, self-control and emotion regulation.

Program

1. General neuroscience principles for understanding self-control and emotions.
- Brain and mind. Between biological evolution, heredity, environment and experience
- The maturation of brain circuits of emotions and voluntary control of behavior
- Attention, working memory, self-control
Exercises:
- How do you feel? Description of affective states and enhancement of emotional literacy
- The experience of (dis)control of the mind

2. We become what we repeatedly do: the plasticity of the brain and behavior
- How the neuron and neurotransmission work
- Neuroplasticity and learning
- The different types of associative learning
- Construction and fixation of habits and automatisms
Exercises:
- Exploring memory
- Training attention with breathing

3. What is an emotion?
- Emotions as adaptive programs/ Emotions as constructs
- The main theories of emotion
- Human history and the evolutionary incongruence of emotional programs
Exercises:
- Basic meditation
- Well-remembered and reactivated well-being
- Naming emotions (Strengthening vocabulary of emotions)


4. Emotions Regulation
- Outlines of the psychobiology of emotions
- Emotions and language, Recognizing and naming an emotion as implicit emotion regulation
- The different possible strategies of emotion regulation, adaptive/ dysfunctional
- Learning and modification of emotional response styles
Exercises:
- Introduction to body scan
- STOP technique - Stop, Take a breath, Observe, Proceed

5. Emotions and stress
- Brief history of the concept of stress, from pathophysiology, to the cognitive dimension of emotions
- The mechanisms of stress
- The impact of chronic stress on the brain and cognitive and executive functions
Exercises:
- Measuring perceived stress
- Relaxation training
- Diaphragmatic breathing
- Gratitude journal


6. Cognitive training and contemplative practices. Mindfulness-based practices: scientific evidence and general introduction
- What is Mindfulness
- Risks and consequences of chronic distraction and Mind wandering
- Mind wandering and negative mood
- Mindfulness and emotion regulation
- Mindfulness and neuroplasticity
Exercises:
- Basic Mindfulness Meditation
- Meditation in motion


7. Voluntary control of behavior: how it works, how it discharges, how it is enhanced
- The neural basis of self-control
- Attention and self-control
- Self-control and ego depletion (Ego depletion)
Exercises:
- Self-affirmation;
- Implementation of intentions
- Mantra Meditation

8. Voluntary control of behavior: how to strengthen it
- Self-control can be trained and enhanced
- Physical Exercise as a form of training self-control
- Ego depletion, Mindfulness and other exercises to train the “muscle” of self-control
Exercises:
- Basic Mindfulness Meditation
- Mindfulness meditation on emotions

9. Prosocial behaviors, cognitive empathy
- Prosocial behaviors, executive functions and self-control
- Prosocial behaviors, psychological health and well-being
- What is empathy 1: Cognitive empathy and brain correlates
Exercises:
- Developing empathic communication: The technique of Reflective Listening;
- Empathy Training


10. Prosocial behaviors, affective empathy and compassion
- What is affective empathy and brain correlates
- Empathy as embodied simulation of others' emotions
- Neuroplasticity and the prosocial brain
Exercises:
- Compassion meditation
- Feeling connected

Stefano Canali, Regolare le emozioni. Teorie e metodi per lo sviluppo e il potenziamento dell’autocontrollo. Carocci, Roma, 2021. Mandatory
The adopted text is essential for taking the learning progress tests after each lecture and for the final test, all questions will be formulated on the contents of the adopted text