Dataset Information

The temporal and spatial brain dynamics of automatic emotion regulation in children.

ABSTRACT: Mechanisms for automatic emotion regulation (AER) are essential during childhood as they offset the impact of unwanted or negative emotional responses without drawing on limited attentional resources. Despite the importance of AER in improving the efficiency and flexibility of self-regulation, few research studies have investigated the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. To fill this gap, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate AER-related brain processes in 25 children (?10 years old) who performed a go/no-go task that included an incidental exposure to faces containing socio-emotional cues. Whole brain results revealed that the inhibition of angry faces (compared with happy faces) was associated with a stronger recruitment of several brain regions from 100 to 425ms. These activations involved the right angular and occipital gyri from 100 to175ms, the right orbito-frontal gyrus (OFG) from 250 to 325ms (pcorr<0.05), and finally, the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) from 325 to 425ms. Our results suggest a specific involvement of these regions in the automatic regulation of negative emotional stimuli in children. In the future, this knowledge may help understand developmental conditions where inhibition impairments are exacerbated by an emotional context.

SUBMITTER: Urbain C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6987902 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The temporal and spatial brain dynamics of automatic emotion regulation in children.

Urbain Charline C Sato Julie J Pang Elizabeth W EW Taylor Margot J MJ

Developmental cognitive neuroscience 20170517

Mechanisms for automatic emotion regulation (AER) are essential during childhood as they offset the impact of unwanted or negative emotional responses without drawing on limited attentional resources. Despite the importance of AER in improving the efficiency and flexibility of self-regulation, few research studies have investigated the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. To fill this gap, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate AER-related brain processes in 25 children (∼10 ye ...[more]

PMID: 28527986

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Project description:Seamlessly extracting emotional information from voices is crucial for efficient interpersonal communication. However, it remains unclear how the brain categorizes vocal expressions of emotion beyond the processing of their acoustic features. In our study, we developed a new approach combining electroencephalographic recordings (EEG) in humans with a frequency-tagging paradigm to 'tag' automatic neural responses to specific categories of emotion expressions. Participants were presented with a periodic stream of heterogeneous non-verbal emotional vocalizations belonging to five emotion categories: anger, disgust, fear, happiness and sadness at 2.5 Hz (stimuli length of 350 ms with a 50 ms silent gap between stimuli). Importantly, unknown to the participant, a specific emotion category appeared at a target presentation rate of 0.83 Hz that would elicit an additional response in the EEG spectrum only if the brain discriminates the target emotion category from other emotion categories and generalizes across heterogeneous exemplars of the target emotion category. Stimuli were matched across emotion categories for harmonicity-to-noise ratio, spectral center of gravity and pitch. Additionally, participants were presented with a scrambled version of the stimuli with identical spectral content and periodicity but disrupted intelligibility. Both types of sequences had comparable envelopes and early auditory peripheral processing computed via the simulation of the cochlear response. We observed that in addition to the responses at the general presentation frequency (2.5 Hz) in both intact and scrambled sequences, a greater peak in the EEG spectrum at the target emotion presentation rate (0.83 Hz) and its harmonics emerged in the intact sequence in comparison to the scrambled sequence. The greater response at the target frequency in the intact sequence, together with our stimuli matching procedure, suggest that the categorical brain response elicited by a specific emotion is at least partially independent from the low-level acoustic features of the sounds. Moreover, responses at the fearful and happy vocalizations presentation rates elicited different topographies and different temporal dynamics, suggesting that different discrete emotions are represented differently in the brain. Our paradigm revealed the brain's ability to automatically categorize non-verbal vocal emotion expressions objectively (at a predefined frequency of interest), behavior-free, rapidly (in few minutes of recording time) and robustly (with a high signal-to-noise ratio), making it a useful tool to study vocal emotion processing and auditory categorization in general and in populations where behavioral assessments are more challenging.

Project description:Autism may be underdiagnosed in females because their social difficulties are often less noticeable. This study explored sex differences in automatic facial emotion processing in 45 adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (22 female, 23 male), age 10-16 years, performing active target detection task and Go/NoGo tasks where faces with positive and negative emotional expressions served as irrelevant distractors. The combined sample demonstrated more accurate performance on the target detection (response initiation) than the Go/NoGo task (response inhibition), replicating findings previously reported in typical participants. Females exhibited greater difficulty than males with response initiation in the target detection task, especially in the context of angry faces, while males found withholding a response in the Go/NoGo block with happy faces more challenging. Electrophysiological data revealed no sex differences or emotion discrimination effects during the early perceptual processing of faces indexed by the occipitotemporal N170. Autistic males demonstrated increased frontal N2 and parietal P3 amplitudes compared to females, suggesting greater neural resource allocation to automatic emotion regulation processes. The associations between standardized behavioral measures (autism severity, theory of mind skills) and brain responses also varied by sex: more adaptive social functioning was related to the speed of perceptual processing (N170 latency) in females and the extent of deliberate attention allocation (P3 amplitudes) in males. Together, these findings suggest that males and females with autism may rely on different strategies for social functioning and highlight the importance of considering sex differences in autism. LAY SUMMARY: Females with autism may exhibit less noticeable social difficulties than males. This study demonstrates that autistic females are more successful than males at inhibiting behavioral responses in emotional contexts, while males are more likely to initiate a response. At the neural level, social functioning in females is related to the speed of automatic perceptual processing of facial cues, and in males, to the extent of active attention allocation to the stimuli. These findings highlight the importance of considering sex differences in autism diagnosis and treatment selection.

Dataset Information

The temporal and spatial brain dynamics of automatic emotion regulation in children.

Publications

The temporal and spatial brain dynamics of automatic emotion regulation in children.

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