title: Enduring influence of early temperament on neural mechanisms mediating attention-emotion conflict in adults.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Behavioral inhibition, a temperament identified in early childhood, is often associated with dysregulated attention and affective processing, particularly in response to threat. Longitudinal studies find that the manifestation of perturbed attention and affective processing often dissipates with age. Yet, childhood behavioral inhibition continues to predict perturbed brain function into adulthood. This suggests that adults with childhood behavioral inhibition may engage compensatory processes to effectively regulate emotion-related attention. However, it is unknown whether perturbations in brain function reflect compensation for attention bias to emotional stimuli generally, or to threatening contexts more specifically. The present study tests these possibilities.
  
  
  METHODS
  Adults with and without a history of stable childhood behavioral inhibition completed an attention-control task in the context of threatening and nonthreatening stimuli while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants were asked to identify the gender of fearful (threatening) and happy (nonthreatening) faces, while ignoring both the face emotion and overlaid congruent (low attention control, LAC) or incongruent (high attention control, HAC) gender words.
  
  
  RESULTS
  When fearful faces were present, adults with stable childhood behavioral inhibition exhibited more activity in striatum, cingulate, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for HAC trials compared with LAC trials, relative to those without behavioral inhibition. When happy faces were present, the opposite activation pattern emerged. No group differences in behavior were observed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Among adults, stable childhood behavioral inhibition predicts neural, but not behavioral, responding when attention control is engaged in discrete emotional contexts. This suggests a mechanism by which adults may compensate for the behavioral manifestation of threat-based attention biases.
authors.affiliation: Section on Developmental and Affective Neuroscience, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
authors.forename: Johanna M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Jarcho
authors.forename: Nathan A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Fox
authors.forename: Daniel S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Pine
authors.forename: Ellen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Leibenluft
authors.forename: Tomer
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shechner
authors.forename: Kathryn A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Degnan
authors.forename: Koraly
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Perez-Edgar
authors.forename: Monique
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ernst
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D017072:Neostriatum; D013694:Temperament / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: anxiety; attention; emotions; magnetic resonance imaging; personality; risk factor