Children recruit distinct neural systems for implicit emotional face processing

Abstract

The ability to properly distinguish facial emotions has a protracted development, not maturing until well into adolescence. Emotional faces activate emotion-specific neural networks in adults; whether these networks are operational in children is not known. Using an implicit face-processing task in 10-year-old children, we determined that the emotions of fear, disgust and sadness recruited distinct neural systems. These systems included a number of regions typically associated with processing emotions in adults, namely the amygdala and parahippocampal gyrus, insula and cingulate gyrus, as well as the fusiform and superior temporal gyri. Thus, in spite of immature behavioral responses to emotional faces in explicit tasks, neural networks for emotion-specific processing are present in young children.

Attention to the person or the emotion: Underlying activations in MEG

“…Attention to the emotion of the faces increased the M170 activation and showed significant bilateral insula activity. The insula is related to processing social cognition and emotional stimuli [12,13]. Inferior parietal cortex and supra-marginal gyrus are frequently activated with memory tasks [14]; here we found the effect over the right BA40, likely due to our use of face stimuli.…”

Functional Mapping of Dynamic Happy and Fearful Facial Expression Processing in Adolescents

“…Frontal regions in general are recruited for integration and interpretation of emotions (Lobaugh et al 2006;Kolb et al 1992). In addition, the default mode network of the brain is a subset of functional nodes that are activated during selfreferential and social tasks and deactivated during cognitively demanding tasks (Raichle et al 2001;Buckner and Vincenta 2007).…”

“…Neuroimaging studies have shown that both cortical and subcortical brain regions are involved in the perception of emotional facial expressions (Lobaugh et al 2006). The amygdala is an important structure in the perception and recognition of emotional faces (Calder et al 2001).…”

The stimuli drive the response: An fMRI study of youth processing adult or child emotional face stimuli

“…Functional MRI studies of face processing in youth have demonstrated that the same core regions of the brain that process emotional faces in adults also underlie face processing in youth (Hoehl et al, 2010;Lobaugh et al, 2006). Differences between children and adult participants primarily reside in the magnitude and extent to which face regions are engaged during face processing fMRI tasks, and in how particular brain regions respond selectively to specific valences.…”