TY - JOUR
T1 - Emotional reactivity and its impact on neural circuitry for attention-emotion interaction in childhood and adolescence
AU - Perlman, Susan B.
AU - Hein, Tyler C.
AU - Stepp, Stephanie D.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health grants K01 MH094467 (Susan Perlman, University of Pittsburgh ), K01 MH086713 (Stephanie Stepp, University of Pittsburgh ), 2R01 MH73953-06A1 (Boris Birmaher and Mary Phillips, University of Pittsburgh ), 2R01 MH73816-06A1 (Scott Holland, Robert Kowatch, Children's Hospital Medical Center Cincinnati), 2R01 MH73967-06A1 (Robert Findling, Case Western Reserve University), 2R01 MH73801-06A1 (Mary Fristad, Ohio State University), and P50 MH084053 (David Lewis, University of Pittsburgh)
PY - 2014/4
Y1 - 2014/4
N2 - Attention modulation when confronted with emotional stimuli is considered a critical aspect of executive function, yet rarely studied during childhood and adolescence, a developmental period marked with changes in these processes. We employed a novel, and child-friendly fMRI task that used emotional faces to investigate the neural underpinnings of the attention-emotion interaction in a child and adolescent sample (n = 23, age M = 13.46, SD = 2.86, range = 8.05-16.93 years). Results implied modulation of activation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) due to emotional distractor valence, which marginally correlated with participant age. Additionally, parent-reported emotional reactivity predicted the trajectory of BOLD signal increase for fearful emotional face distractors such that participants low in emotional reactivity had a steeper latency to peak activation. Results imply that the use of the OFC to modulate attention in the face of social/emotional stimuli may mature with age and may be tightly coupled with adaptive emotional functioning. Findings are discussed in the context of risk for the development of psychiatric disorders, where increased emotional reactivity is particularly apparent.
AB - Attention modulation when confronted with emotional stimuli is considered a critical aspect of executive function, yet rarely studied during childhood and adolescence, a developmental period marked with changes in these processes. We employed a novel, and child-friendly fMRI task that used emotional faces to investigate the neural underpinnings of the attention-emotion interaction in a child and adolescent sample (n = 23, age M = 13.46, SD = 2.86, range = 8.05-16.93 years). Results implied modulation of activation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) due to emotional distractor valence, which marginally correlated with participant age. Additionally, parent-reported emotional reactivity predicted the trajectory of BOLD signal increase for fearful emotional face distractors such that participants low in emotional reactivity had a steeper latency to peak activation. Results imply that the use of the OFC to modulate attention in the face of social/emotional stimuli may mature with age and may be tightly coupled with adaptive emotional functioning. Findings are discussed in the context of risk for the development of psychiatric disorders, where increased emotional reactivity is particularly apparent.
KW - Adolescence
KW - Attention
KW - Development
KW - Emotion
KW - Emotional reactivity
KW - Orbitofrontal cortex
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84897109696&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.dcn.2013.08.005
DO - 10.1016/j.dcn.2013.08.005
M3 - Article
C2 - 24055416
AN - SCOPUS:84897109696
VL - 8
SP - 100
EP - 109
JO - Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
JF - Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
SN - 1878-9293
ER -