Neurophysiological Correlates of Emotion Regulation in Children and Adolescents

& Psychologists consider emotion regulation a critical devel-opmental acquisition. Yet, there has been very little research on the neural underpinnings of emotion regulation across childhood and adolescence. We selected two ERP compo-nents associated with inhibitory control—the frontal N2 and frontal P3. We recorded these components before, during, and after a negative emotion induction, and compared their am-plitude, latency, and source localization over age. Fifty-eight children 5–16 years of age engaged in a simple go/no-go pro-cedure in which points for successful performance earned a valued prize. The temporary loss of all points triggered negative emotions, as confirmed by self-report scales. Both the frontal N2 and frontal P3 decreased in amplitude and la-tency with age, consistent with the hypothesis of increasing cortical efficiency. Amplitudes were also greater following the emotion induction, only for adolescents for the N2 but across the age span for the frontal P3, suggesting different but overlapping profiles of emotion-related control mechanisms. No-go N2 amplitudes were greater than go N2 amplitudes following the emotion induction at all ages, suggesting a consistent effect of negative emotion on mechanisms of re-sponse inhibition. No-go P3 amplitudes were also greater than go P3 amplitudes and they decreased with age, whereas go P3 amplitudes remained low. Finally, source modeling in-dicated a developmental decline in central-posterior midline activity paralleled by increasing activity in frontal midline re-gions suggestive of the anterior cingulate cortex. Negative emotion induction corresponded with an additional right ven-tral prefrontal or temporal generator beginning in middle childhood. &amp

Emotion regulation in the brain: Conceptual issues and directions for developmental research

Emotion regulation cannot be temporally distinguished from emotion in the brain, but activation patterns in prefrontal cortex appear to mediate cognitive control during emotion episodes. Frontal event-related potentials (ERPs) can tap cognitive control hypothetically mediated by the anterior cingulate cortex, and developmentalists have used these to differentiate age, individual, and emotion-valence factors. Extending this approach, the present article outlines a research strategy for studying emotion regulation in children by combining emotion induction with a go/no-go task known to produce frontal ERPs. Preliminary results indicate that medial-frontal ERP amplitudes diminish with age but become more sensitive to anxiety, and internalizing children show higher amplitudes than noninternalizing children, especially when anxious. These results may reflect age and individual differences in the effortful regulation of negative emotion

Raw ERP with all subjects pooled together.

<p>Green traces correspond to the occipital lateral location displayed with a green circle in the inset while blue correspond to the central occipital location. Solid line correspond to the Control group and the dashed one to the ASD group. The red arrows show an 8ms delay between the minimum of the solid line to the minimum of the dashed one.</p

Time-frequency plots of ICOH for 9 different COI.

<p>Frequencies span only from 0 to 20: Control, right: ASD. Each row corresponds to a different COI, from top to bottom: bilateral (b), frontal-occipital (fo), left (l), right (r), ln (long), o (occipital), occipital temporal (ot), right frontal-parietal (rfp), right parietal-temporal (rpt). See each site description on <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0075941#pone-0075941-t001" target="_blank">table 1</a>.</p

Time-Frequency plots of ICOH values corresponding to control group (top panel), ASD (middle panel) and their difference (bottom panel).

<p>Channels, Tasks and Participants have been pooled together and averaged within each group.</p

ERP averages across groups (Control and ASD) for each scalp site.

<p>Values are interpolated for areas between electrodes. Frequencies and times are the same as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0075941#pone-0075941-g003" target="_blank">figure 3</a>.</p

. Topographic view of ICOH values. The average of ICOH values of a single channel is mapped to the position of the channel. Values are interpolated for areas between electrodes. Top panel displays the average head of each group for different time points at a fixed frequency (9.8 Hz). Bottom panel the frequency is then varied and the time fixed (196ms).

<p>. Topographic view of ICOH values. The average of ICOH values of a single channel is mapped to the position of the channel. Values are interpolated for areas between electrodes. Top panel displays the average head of each group for different time points at a fixed frequency (9.8 Hz). Bottom panel the frequency is then varied and the time fixed (196ms).</p

Results from a Mann–Whitney <i>U</i> test over 5 putative EEG frequency bands, 48 COI and 20 disjoint time windows of 64 ms each.

<p>There is one panel for each frequency band. Within each panel y-axis denotes time and x-axis COI. White corresponds to regions in which there is a significant difference between both groups where ASD is bigger in ICOH values than Control group. Black denotes significant differences where control is higher. Gray means there are not significant differences. Blue rectangles are shown only to organize the spatial information into 3 distinct anatomical, bilateral, left and right COI. Red rectangles are labeled with red uppercase letters and are used to highlight regions and frequencies that seem to contain a high frequency of significant values.</p

ICOH values are mapped to a line connecting the involved channels, the darker the line the higher the ICOH value.

<p>Frequencies and times are the same as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0075941#pone-0075941-g004" target="_blank">figure 4</a>. For clarity, only channels whose ICOH are more than ten standard deviations than the control baseline are shown.</p