Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles.
Department of Psychology, Harvard University.
Dev Psychol. 2019 Sep;55(9):1921-1937. doi: 10.1037/dev0000687.
Variability is a fundamental feature of human brain activity that is particularly pronounced during development. However, developmental neuroimaging research has only recently begun to move beyond characterizing brain function exclusively in terms of magnitude of neural activation to incorporate estimates of variability. No prior neuroimaging study has done so in the domain of emotion regulation. We investigated how age and affective experiences relate to spatial and temporal variability in neural activity during emotion regulation. In the current study, 70 typically developing youth aged 8 to 17 years completed a cognitive reappraisal task of emotion regulation while undergoing functional MRI. Estimates of spatial and temporal variability during regulation were calculated across a network of brain regions, defined a priori, and were then related to age and affective experiences. Results showed that increasing age was associated with reduced spatial and temporal variability in a set of frontoparietal regions (e.g., dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, superior parietal lobule) known to be involved in effortful emotion regulation. In addition, youth who reported less negative affect during regulation had less spatial variability in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which has previously been linked to cognitive reappraisal. We interpret age-related reductions in spatial and temporal variability as implying neural specialization. These results suggest that the development of emotion regulation is undergirded by a process of neural specialization and open a host of possibilities for incorporating neural variability into the study of emotion regulation development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
变异性是人类大脑活动的一个基本特征，在发育过程中尤为明显。然而，发展神经影像学研究直到最近才开始超越仅从神经激活的幅度来描述大脑功能，而是纳入对变异性的估计。以前没有神经影像学研究在情绪调节领域这样做过。我们研究了年龄和情感体验如何与情绪调节过程中神经活动的空间和时间变异性相关。在当前的研究中，70 名年龄在 8 至 17 岁之间的典型发展青少年在进行功能磁共振成像时完成了情绪调节的认知重评任务。在一组预先定义的大脑区域网络中计算了调节过程中的空间和时间变异性，然后将其与年龄和情感体验联系起来。结果表明，年龄的增加与一组额顶区域（例如背内侧前额叶皮层、顶叶上回）的空间和时间变异性降低有关，这些区域已知与努力的情绪调节有关。此外，在调节过程中报告负面情绪较少的青少年在与认知重评相关的腹外侧前额叶皮层中的空间变异性较小。我们将空间和时间变异性的年龄相关性降低解释为暗示神经专业化。这些结果表明，情绪调节的发展是由神经专业化过程支撑的，并为将神经变异性纳入情绪调节发展的研究开辟了许多可能性。（PsycINFO 数据库记录（c）2019 APA，保留所有权利）。
