Increased limbic and striatal activation in adolescence has been attributed to a relative delay in the maturation of prefrontal areas, resulting in the increase of impulsive reward-seeking behaviors that are often observed during puberty. However, it remains unclear whether and how this general developmental pattern applies to the control of social emotional actions, a fundamental adult skill refined during adolescence. This domain of control pertains to decisions involving emotional responses. When faced with a social emotional challenge (e.g., an angry face), we can follow automatic response tendencies and avoid the challenge or exert control over those tendencies by selecting an alternative action. Using an fMRI-adapted social approach-avoidance task, this study identifies how the neural regulation of emotional action control changes as a function of human pubertal development in 14-year-old adolescents (n ϭ 47). Pubertal maturation, indexed by testosterone levels, shifted neural regulation of emotional actions from the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus and the amygdala to the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC). Adolescents with more advanced pubertal maturation showed greater aPFC activity when controlling their emotional action tendencies, reproducing the same pattern consistently observed in adults. In contrast, adolescents of the same age, but with less advanced pubertal maturation, showed greater pulvinar and amygdala activity when exerting similarly effective emotional control. These findings qualify how, in the domain of social emotional actions, executive control shifts from subcortical to prefrontal structures during pubertal development. The pulvinar and the amygdala are suggested as the ontogenetic precursors of the mature control system centered on the anterior prefrontal cortex.

In a community sample of 116 children, assessments of parent-child interaction, parent-child attachment, and various parental, child, and contextual characteristics at 15 and 28 months and at age 5 were used to predict externalizing behavior at age 5, as rated by parents and teachers. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis and path analysis yielded a significant longitudinal model for the prediction of age 5 externalizing behavior, with independent contributions from the following predictors: child sex, partner support reported by the caregiver, disorganized infant-parent attachment at 15 months, child anger proneness at 28 months, and one of the two parent-child interaction factors observed at 28 months, namely negative parent-child interactions. The other, i.e., a lack of effective guidance, predicted externalizing problems only in highly anger-prone children. Furthermore, mediated pathways of influence were found for the parent-child interaction at 15 months (via disorganized attachment) and parental ego-resiliency (via negative parentchild interaction at 28 months).

Animal and human studies have shown that both early-life traumatic events and ongoing stress episodes affect neurodevelopment, however, it remains unclear whether and how they modulate normative adolescent neuro-maturational trajectories. We characterized effects of early-life (age 0–5) and ongoing stressors (age 14–17) on longitudinal changes (age 14 to17) in grey matter volume (GMV) of healthy adolescents (n = 37). Timing and stressor type were related to differential GMV changes. More personal early-life stressful events were associated with larger developmental reductions in GMV over anterior prefrontal cortex, amygdala and other subcortical regions; whereas ongoing stress from the adolescents’ social environment was related to smaller reductions over the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortex. These findings suggest that early-life stress accelerates pubertal development, whereas an adverse adolescent social environment disturbs brain maturation with potential mental health implications: delayed anterior cingulate maturation was associated with more antisocial traits – a juvenile precursor of psychopathy.

Early life-stress, particularly maternal deprivation, is associated with long-lasting deviations in animals’ freezing responses. Given the relevance of freezing for stress-coping, translational research is needed to examine the relation between insecure infant-parent attachment and bodily freezing-like behavior in humans. Therefore, we investigated threat-related reductions in body sway (indicative of freezing-like behavior) in 14-year-old adolescents (N = 79), for whom attachment security was earlier assessed in infancy. As expected, insecure (vs. secure) attachment was associated with less body sway for angry vs. neutral faces. This effect remained when controlling for intermediate life events. These results suggest that the long-lasting effects of early negative caregiving experiences on the human stress and threat systems extend to the primary defensive reaction of freezing. Additionally, we replicated earlier work in adults, by observing a significant correlation (in adolescents assessed as securely attached) between subjective state anxiety and reduced body sway in response to angry vs. neutral faces. Together, this research opens venues to start exploring the role of freezing in the development of human psychopathology.