TY - JOUR
T1 - Diminished Neural Responses to Emotionally Valenced Facial Stimuli
T2 - A Potential Biomarker for Unemotional Traits in Early Childhood
AU - Hoyniak, Caroline P.
AU - Bates, John E.
AU - Petersen, Isaac T.
AU - Yang, Chung Lin
AU - Darcy, Isabelle
AU - Fontaine, Nathalie M.G.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements This project was supported by a Project Development Team within the ICTSI NIH/NCRR Grant Number TR000006 and the Department of Criminal Justice, Indiana University Bloomington. Caroline Hoyniak is supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation Grant Number 1342962. Dr.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
PY - 2019/2/15
Y1 - 2019/2/15
N2 - Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are characterized by deficits in guilt/empathy, shallow affect, and the callous and manipulative use of others. Individuals showing CU traits have increased risk for behavior problems and reduced responses to displays of distress in others. To explore how deficits in emotion-processing are associated with CU traits, the current study examined the association between callous-unemotionality and a neural index of facial emotion processing, using the event-related potential technique in a group of 3–5 year olds. Children viewed a series of static emotional faces, depicting either fear or happiness, while electroencephalography data were collected. The N170 component, thought to index the neural processes associated with face perception, was examined along with CU traits. Findings suggest that the unemotional dimension of CU traits is associated with diminished emotion-processing responses to fearful faces. Reduced neural responses to facial depictions of fear could be a biomarker for unemotional traits in early childhood.
AB - Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are characterized by deficits in guilt/empathy, shallow affect, and the callous and manipulative use of others. Individuals showing CU traits have increased risk for behavior problems and reduced responses to displays of distress in others. To explore how deficits in emotion-processing are associated with CU traits, the current study examined the association between callous-unemotionality and a neural index of facial emotion processing, using the event-related potential technique in a group of 3–5 year olds. Children viewed a series of static emotional faces, depicting either fear or happiness, while electroencephalography data were collected. The N170 component, thought to index the neural processes associated with face perception, was examined along with CU traits. Findings suggest that the unemotional dimension of CU traits is associated with diminished emotion-processing responses to fearful faces. Reduced neural responses to facial depictions of fear could be a biomarker for unemotional traits in early childhood.
KW - CU traits
KW - Early childhood
KW - Event-related potential
KW - Unemotional traits
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85048896338&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10578-018-0821-9
DO - 10.1007/s10578-018-0821-9
M3 - Article
C2 - 29934771
AN - SCOPUS:85048896338
VL - 50
SP - 72
EP - 82
JO - Child psychiatry and human development
JF - Child psychiatry and human development
SN - 0009-398X
IS - 1
ER -