Abstract:Emotion regulation is a critical life skill that develops throughout childhood and adolescence. Despite this development in emotional processes, little is known about how the underlying brain systems develop with age. This study examined emotion regulation in 112 individuals (aged 6-23 years) as they viewed aversive and neutral images using a reappraisal task. On "reappraisal" trials, participants were instructed to view the images as distant, a strategy that has been previously shown to reduce negative affect… Show more
“…Additionally, vlPFC and amygdala lesions have also been found to disrupt emotion regulation abilities [77,78]. These findings are compatible with an extensive functional neuroimaging literature suggesting that network-level interactions between the vlPFC, vmPFC, and amygdala are involved in successful emotion regulation [e.g., 79]. …”
Section: Mapping the Four Component Abilities Of Eisupporting
‘Emotional intelligence’ (EI) is one of the most highly used psychological terms in popular nomenclature, yet its construct, divergent, and predictive validities are contentiously debated. Despite this debate, the EI construct is composed of a set of emotional abilities – recognizing emotional states in the self and others, using emotions to guide thought and behavior, understanding how emotions shape behavior, and emotion regulation – that undoubtedly influence important social and personal outcomes. In this review, evidence from human lesion studies is reviewed in order to provide insight into the necessary brain regions for each of these core emotional abilities. Critically, we consider how this neuropsychological evidence might help to guide efforts to define and measure EI.
“…Additionally, vlPFC and amygdala lesions have also been found to disrupt emotion regulation abilities [77,78]. These findings are compatible with an extensive functional neuroimaging literature suggesting that network-level interactions between the vlPFC, vmPFC, and amygdala are involved in successful emotion regulation [e.g., 79]. …”
Section: Mapping the Four Component Abilities Of Eisupporting
‘Emotional intelligence’ (EI) is one of the most highly used psychological terms in popular nomenclature, yet its construct, divergent, and predictive validities are contentiously debated. Despite this debate, the EI construct is composed of a set of emotional abilities – recognizing emotional states in the self and others, using emotions to guide thought and behavior, understanding how emotions shape behavior, and emotion regulation – that undoubtedly influence important social and personal outcomes. In this review, evidence from human lesion studies is reviewed in order to provide insight into the necessary brain regions for each of these core emotional abilities. Critically, we consider how this neuropsychological evidence might help to guide efforts to define and measure EI.
“…Although there are no known direct anatomical connections between vlPFC and the amygdala, vlPFC is posited to modulate amygdala response through activation in the medial PFC (Pessoa, 2010; Pessoa, Kastner, & Ungerleider, 2002; Silvers et al, 2016). Cognitive reappraisal has been associated with a negative correlation between vlPFC and amygdala activation (Silvers et al, 2016).…”
Early life stress (ELS) is a significant risk factor for the emergence of internalizing problems in adolescence. Beginning in adolescence, females are twice as likely as males to experience internalizing disorders. The present study was designed to examine sex differences in the association between ELS and internalizing problems in early pubertal adolescents, and whether and how corticolimbic function and connectivity may underlie these associations. Fifty-nine early-pubertal males and 78 early-pubertal females, ages 9–13 years (all Tanner Stage 3 or below) underwent fMRI as they performed an emotion label task that robustly interrogates corticolimbic function. Participants were also interviewed about their experience of ELS. Females exhibited a positive association between ELS and internalizing problems, whereas males exhibited no such association. Whole-brain and amygdala region-of-interest analyses indicated that whereas females exhibited a positive association between ELS and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) during implicit emotion regulation, males showed no such association. Activation in these regions was positively associated with internalizing problems in females but not males; however, activation in these regions did not mediate the association between ELS and internalizing problems. Finally, both boys and girls exhibited an association between ELS and increased negative connectivity between right vlPFC and bilateral amygdala. Using a carefully characterized sample of early pubertal adolescents, the current study highlights important sex differences in the development of corticolimbic circuitry during a critical period of brain development. These sex differences may play a significant role in subsequent risk for internalizing problems.
“…Because the present manuscript is focused on uninstructed emotional responding, only results related to “Look” trials, wherein participants were instructed to “look at the picture like your normally would” are presented here. A separate manuscript reported on results comparing the other two trial types (“Close” and “Far”), wherein participants were instructed to either adopt a more emotionally immersed or distant mindset (Silvers et al, in press), but did not characterize results associated with Look trials. Close and Far trials constrain participant responding so that it is either pushed to be reactive or regulated whereas when individuals are left to their own devices (i.e., on Look trials), they may spontaneously adopt a mindset that is elsewhere on the reactive-regulated continuum.…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This suggest that perhaps children interpret a broader variety of affective and neutral stimuli as being salient or personally relevant than do adults and thus show elevated amygdala responses for both aversive and non-aversive stimuli. Among studies that have specifically examined age-related effects in the amygdala for aversive stimuli, several have focused on contrasts between aversive stimuli and fixation (Gee et al, 2013), or, in the case of our own work, on the effects of different regulatory conditions on responses to aversive stimuli (Silvers et al, in press; Silvers et al, 2015). While such approaches are useful for characterizing changes in amygdala function in affective contexts, they do not address whether or not such age-related changes are unique to affective contexts.…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…With regards to vmPFC, prior neuroimaging studies have revealed that vmPFC responses to aversive stimuli decrease during adolescence (McRae et al, 2012), and that functional connectivity between vmPFC and the amygdala in response to aversive stimuli is initially positive but becomes negative during the transition from childhood to adolescence (Gee et al, 2013; Silvers et al, in press). Such work suggests that vmPFC responses to aversive stimuli generally decrease with age but also that the way in which vmPFC and the amygdala interact changes as well.…”
Understanding how and why affective responses change with age is central to characterizing typical and atypical emotional development. Prior work has emphasized the role of the amygdala and prefrontal cortex (PFC), which show age-related changes in function and connectivity. However, developmental neuroimaging research has only recently begun to unpack whether age effects in the amygdala and PFC are specific to affective stimuli or may be found for neutral stimuli as well, a possibility that would support a general, rather than affect-specific, account of amygdala-PFC development. To examine this, 112 individuals ranging from 6–23 years of age viewed aversive and neutral images while undergoing fMRI scanning. Across age, participants reported more negative affect and showed greater amygdala responses for aversive than neutral stimuli. However, children were generally more sensitive to both neutral and aversive stimuli, as indexed by affective reports and amygdala responses. At the same time, the transition from childhood to adolescence was marked by a ventral-to-dorsal shift in medial prefrontal responses to aversive, but not neutral, stimuli. Given the role that dmPFC plays in executive control and higher-level representations of emotion, these results suggest that adolescence is characterized by a shift towards representing emotional events in increasingly cognitive terms.
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