Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, United States; Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh, United States.
Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, United States; Ordaz Psychological Health Inc., Menlo Park, United States.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2020 Oct;45:100836. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100836. Epub 2020 Aug 14.
Emotion processing is believed to dominate over other brain functions during adolescence, including inhibitory control. However, few studies have examined the neural underpinnings of affective states during cognitive control. Here, we characterized the brain in an affective state by cross-sectionally assessing age-related changes in amygdala background connectivity during an affective inhibitory control task. Participants completed an antisaccade (AS) fMRI task while affective auditory stimuli were presented, and a 5-minute resting state scan. Results showed that while adolescents reported similar arousal levels across emotional conditions, adults perceived negative sounds to be more "arousing" and performed better than adolescents in negative trials. Amygdala background connectivity showed age-related increases with brain regions related to attention and executive control, which were not evident during resting state. Together, results suggest that amygdala connectivity within an affective context is fairly low in mid-adolescence but much stronger in adulthood, supporting age-related improvements in inhibitory control within an affective state. These findings suggest limitations during adolescence in differentiating between the arousing effects of various emotions, potentially undermining the ability to optimally engage inhibitory control. Furthermore, the age-related fMRI findings suggest that low amygdala connectivity to brain areas involved in executive control may underlie these limited abilities during adolescence.
情绪处理被认为在青春期主导着其他大脑功能，包括抑制控制。然而，很少有研究探讨认知控制期间情感状态的神经基础。在这里，我们通过在情感抑制控制任务中横截面对杏仁核背景连通性的年龄相关变化进行评估，来描述情感状态下的大脑。参与者在进行反扫视（AS）fMRI 任务时同时接受情感听觉刺激，以及进行 5 分钟的静息状态扫描。结果表明，尽管青少年在不同的情绪条件下报告了相似的唤醒水平，但成年人认为负面声音更“令人兴奋”，并且在负面试验中表现优于青少年。杏仁核背景连通性与与注意力和执行控制相关的大脑区域随年龄增长而增加，而在静息状态下则没有这种增加。总的来说，结果表明，在情感背景下，青少年的杏仁核连通性相当低，但在成年期则要强得多，这支持了在情感状态下抑制控制的年龄相关改善。这些发现表明，青少年在区分各种情绪的唤醒效应方面存在局限性，这可能会削弱他们最佳参与抑制控制的能力。此外，与执行控制相关的大脑区域的杏仁核连通性较低，这可能是青春期这些能力有限的原因。
