Emotion Regulation Duringadolescence: An ERP And FMRI Study

Adolescence is a transitional period from childhood to adulthood. With the structural and functional changes of brain, adolescents experience the developmental unbalance between cognition and social emotions, and show heightened sensitivity to emotions. Emotion regulation (ER) is essential for adolescents to adapt to the social, and has attracted more and more concerns of researchers from education, psychology, and neuroscience. However, it is unclear about the neural mechanism of ER.Under the framework of Gross's model of ER process, this study adopted one-factor approach and separately used implicit emotional GO/NOGO and dual-task paradigms. In the rapid unfolding of emotional generation, the present study applied the brain imaging of ERP and fMRI to adolescents, investigating the electrophysiological characteristics and brain activation patterns, simultaneously recording behavioral data. This opens up new way to research ER in the generative process of emotion, and further advances the understanding and application of the neural mechanism relating to ER.The content in this study included five experiments: Chapter 3 and 4 focused on automatic ER; Chapter 5, 6, and 7 focused on attentional distracting strategies (here silent-counting and deep-breathing) of volitional ER. In particular, Chapter 3 used cued GO/NOGO of implicit emotional faces to have revealed ERP's components reflecting automatic attentional control and automatic response inhibition as well as the development of automatic ER during adolescence; Chapter 4 selected high- and low- score groups of harm avoidance to have revealed ERP difference in automatic response inhibition of emotion between the two groups; Chapter 5 applied dual-task paradigm to have revealed ERP differences in silent-counting and deep-breathing tasks of volitional ER as well as the development of volitional ER; Chapter 6 selected high- and low-score groups of harm avoidance to have revealed ERP differences in silent-counting and deep-breathing tasks as attentional distracting strategies; Chapter 7 utilzed fMRI mothod to have revealed the brain actional patterns of two attentional distrating strategies. The main conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) There are two processes of automatic ER in cued GO/NOGO of emotional faces with implicit gender judge task. The frontal GO N2 reflects automatic attention control of emotions in the executive process whereas the frontal NOGO P3 reflects automatic inhibition of emotional responses in the inhibitive process.(2) As attentional distracting strategies, silent-counting and deep-breathing can reduce the intensity of emotional feeling and show different temporal and spatial patterns during volitional ER. Silent-counting relies on frontal-parietal attentional system, shows the maximal activation in Inferior Parietal Lobule, and inhibits the visual processing of emotional information, with its effect emerging in the earlier P2 and continuing to N4. In contrast, deep-breathing mainly depends on the midbrain-limbic-cortical circuit and can modulate physiological responses, with its effect emerging in P3 and continuing to LPP.(3) Harm avoidance is referred to the tendency to respond intensely to signals of aversive stimuli and is an important temperament factor influencing automatic and intentional ER. High- and low-score groups of harm avoidance show dissociable attentional biases of affect. Low-score group is more sensitive to positive emotions whereas high-score group is more sensitive to negative emotions. Moreover, the two groups also show different effects of attentional distracting: Low-score group has better and earlier performances during silent-counting; high-score group has better and lasting performances during deep-breathing.(4) Both automatic and intentional ER are affected by age and present different developmental tracts. Automatic emotion regulation matures earlier and is modulated by emotional valence, with regulation of negative emotions maturing earliest and regulation of positive emotions latest. However, intentional emotion regulation (attentional distracting here) matures latter and more depends on the regulative functions of PFC with age decreasing. Therefore, the ability of ER during adolescence continues to improve with age increasing and 14 years old seems to be a sensitive period for the development of ER.