The goal of this study was to examine the relation between real-world socio-emotional measures and neural activation to parental criticism, a salient form of social threat for adolescents. This work could help us understand why heightened neural reactivity to social threat consistently emerges as a risk factor for internalizing psychopathology in youth. We predicted that youth with higher reactivity to parental criticism (vs neutral comments) in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), amygdala and anterior insula would experience (i) less happiness in daily positive interpersonal situations and (ii) more sadness and anger in daily negative interpersonal situations. Participants (44 youth aged 11–16 years with a history of anxiety) completed a 10-day ecological momentary assessment protocol and a neuroimaging task in which they listened to audio clips of their parents’ criticism and neutral comments. Mixed-effects models tested associations between neural activation to critical (vs neutral) feedback and emotions in interpersonal situations. Youth who exhibited higher activation in the sgACC to parental criticism reported less happiness during daily positive interpersonal situations. No significant neural predictors of negative emotions (e.g. sadness and anger) emerged. These findings provide evidence of real-world correlates of neural reactivity to social threat that may have important clinical implications.
This content will become publicly available on August 9, 2025
Parents’ alcohol use may influence adolescent substance use and substance use intentions. Prior research has linked adolescents’ emotion reactivity with parental drinking behaviors and adolescent substance use. The present study investigated whether sub-clinical maternal alcohol use relates to adolescent neural emotion reactivity and substance use intentions in early adolescence. Early adolescents ( N = 70) viewed emotional images during a fMRI scan and completed a questionnaire about substance use intentions. Their mothers reported past 30-day alcohol use. Results showed that greater frequency of maternal alcohol use predicted adolescents’ substance use intentions. In addition, maternal alcohol use predicted adolescent blunted responses to positive emotional images in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and bilateral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). There was no relationship between neural emotion reactivity and adolescent substance use intentions. Findings suggest that parental alcohol use may relate to adolescent’s development of reward and positive emotion processing systems, even at sub-clinical levels of drinking.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1922598
- PAR ID:
- 10541572
- Publisher / Repository:
- Sage Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Journal of Early Adolescence
- ISSN:
- 0272-4316
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
Abstract -
Abstract This study explored the neural correlates of emotion regulation and emotional reactivity in early to mid‐childhood. A sample of 96 children (70% White, mid‐to‐high socioeconomic status) aged 3–8 years provided structural neuroimaging data and caregivers reported on emotion regulation and emotional reactivity. The amygdala, insula, inferior frontal gyrus, anterior cingulate cortex, and medial orbitofrontal cortex were explored as a priori regions of interest (ROIs). ROI analyses revealed that emotion regulation was positively associated with cortical thickness in the insula, whereas emotional reactivity was negatively associated with cortical thickness in the inferior frontal gyrus. Exploratory whole‐brain analyses suggested positive associations between emotion regulation and both left superior temporal thickness and right inferior temporal thickness, as well as negative associations between emotional reactivity and left superior temporal thickness. There were no significant associations between emotional regulation or reactivity and amygdala volume or cortical surface area. These findings support the notion that surface area and cortical thickness are distinct measures of brain maturation. In sum, these findings suggest that children may rely on a wider set of neural regions for emotion regulation and reactivity than adults, which is consistent with theories of interactive specialization across the life span.
-
Models of the etiology of adolescent antisocial behavior suggest that externalizing problems may reflect a susceptibility to crime exposure and a diminished capacity for emotion introspection. In this study, adolescents of Mexican origin completed a neuroimaging task that involved rating their subjective feelings of sadness in response to emotional facial expressions or a nonemotional aspect of each face. At lower levels of neural activity during sadness introspection in posterior cingulate and left temporoparietal junction, and in left amygdala, brain regions involved in mentalizing and emotion, respectively, a stronger positive association between community crime exposure and externalizing problems was found. The specification of emotion introspection as a psychological process showing neural variation may help inform targeted interventions to positively affect adolescent behavior.
-
null (Ed.)Emotion-driven impulse control difficulties are associated with negative psychological outcomes. Extant research suggests that high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) may be indicative of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties and potentially moderated by negative emotion. In the current study, 248 eleven- to 14-year-olds and their parent engaged in a negatively emotionally arousing conflict task at Time 1. Adolescents’ HF-HRV and negative emotional expression and experience were assessed before, during, and/or after the task. Adolescents reported on their levels of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties at Time 1 and one year later. Results revealed that higher levels of HF-HRV reactivity (i.e., higher HF-HRV augmentation) predicted higher levels of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties 1 year later among adolescents who experienced higher negative emotion. These findings suggest that negative emotional context should be considered when examining HF-HRV reactivity as a risk factor for emotion-driven impulse control difficulties and associated outcomes.more » « less
-
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound but incompletely understood adverse effects on youth. To elucidate the role of brain circuits in how adolescents responded to the pandemic’s stressors, we investigated their prepandemic organization as a predictor of mental/emotional health in the first ~15 months of the pandemic. We analyzed resting-state networks from n = 2,641 adolescents [median age (interquartile range) = 144.0 (13.0) months, 47.7% females] in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, and longitudinal assessments of mental health, stress, sadness, and positive affect, collected every 2 to 3 months from May 2020 to May 2021. Topological resilience and/or network strength predicted overall mental health, stress and sadness (but not positive affect), at multiple time points, but primarily in December 2020 and May 2021. Higher resilience of the salience network predicted better mental health in December 2020 (β = 0.19, 95% CI = [0.06, 0.31], P = 0.01). Lower connectivity of left salience, reward, limbic, and prefrontal cortex and its thalamic, striatal, amygdala connections, predicted higher stress (β = −0.46 to −0.20, CI = [−0.72, −0.07], P < 0.03). Lower bilateral robustness (higher fragility) and/or connectivity of these networks predicted higher sadness in December 2020 and May 2021 (β = −0.514 to −0.19, CI = [−0.81, −0.05], P < 0.04). These findings suggest that the organization of brain circuits may have played a critical role in adolescent stress and mental/emotional health during the pandemic.