In the past century, medical progress has helped increase life expectancy and improve health outcomes more generally. Despite this progress, psychiatric disorders—especially affective disorders including depressive and anxiety disorders—are quite common and have been linked to dysfunction in endocrine and immune systems. In this review, we discuss neurobiological correlates of emotion regulation strategies and their effects on mental and physical health. Some of these correlates, namely sub-regions of prefrontal cortex, also play a key regulatory role in autonomic, endocrine, and immunological processes. Given this functional overlap, we propose a novel neuro-immuno-affective framework that targets improving emotion regulation, in order to: (1) reduce negative affect associated with depressive and/or anxiety disorders; and (2) alter endocrine and immune system functioning (e.g., reduce inflammation)—via changes in activity within (and connectivity between) brain systems that support (successful) emotion regulation. We conclude by arguing that such a framework can be adapted for psychiatric treatment protocols that holistically incorporate neural and immunological biomarkers to promote mental and physical health.

在过去的一个世纪中，医学的进步帮助人们增加了预期寿命并更全面地改善了健康状况。尽管取得了这一进展，精神疾病（尤其是包括抑郁症和焦虑症在内的情感疾病）还是很常见，并与内分泌和免疫系统功能障碍有关。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了情绪调节策略的神经生物学相关性及其对心理和身体健康的影响。这些相关因素中的一些，即前额叶皮层的子区域，在自主神经，内分泌和免疫过程中也起着关键的调节作用。鉴于这种功能上的重叠，我们提出了一种旨在改善情绪调节的新型神经-免疫-情感框架，以：（1）减少与抑郁症和/或焦虑症相关的负面影响；（2）通过支持（成功的）情绪调节的大脑系统内（和之间的连通性）的变化来改变内分泌和免疫系统的功能（例如，减轻炎症）。我们通过争论得出结论，可以将这样的框架适用于精神治疗方案，该方案将神经和免疫生物标记物整体纳入以促进心理和身体健康。