Abstract: It is very important to withhold improper behaviors in emotional situations. Recently, brain imaging technologies have been applied to investigate the neural mechanisms of how emotion affects behavioral inhibition. According to these findings, behavioral inhibition in emotional contexts requires an interaction of inhibitory and emotional processes that recruits brain regions beyond those engaged by either process alone. At the neural substrate level, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, insular cortex and amygdala were involved in the integration of emotional information and the behavioral inhibition process. However, the time course of the integration process is still unclear. Individual differences (age, gender and personality) and emotional factors (valence and arousal) also mediated the effects of emotion affecting inhibition in neural level. Future studies should focus on identifying to what extent and when the integration and dissociation between emotion and inhibition processes occur.

Key words: emotion, behavioral inhibition, neural mechanism, functional MRI, ERP