title: Enhanced brain susceptibility to negative stimuli in adolescents: ERP evidences.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Previous studies investigated neural substrates of emotional face processing in adolescents and its comparison with adults. As emotional faces elicit more of emotional expression recognition rather than direct emotional responding, it remains undetermined how adolescents are different from adults in brain susceptibility to emotionally stressful stimuli.
  
  
  METHODS
  Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded for highly negative (HN), moderately negative (MN), and neutral pictures in 20 adolescents and 20 adults while subjects performed a standard/deviant distinction task by pressing different keys, irrespective of the emotionality of deviant stimuli.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Adolescents exhibited more negative amplitudes for HN vs. neutral pictures in N1 (100-150 ms), P2 (130-190 ms), N2 (210-290 ms), and P3 (360-440 ms) components. In addition, adolescents showed more negative amplitudes for MN compared to neutral pictures in N1, P2, and N2 components. By contrast, adults exhibited significant emotion effects for HN stimuli in N2 and P3 amplitudes but not in N1 and P2 amplitudes, and they did not exhibit a significant emotion effect for MN stimuli at all these components. In the 210-290 ms time interval, the emotion effect for HN stimuli was significant across frontal and central regions in adolescents, while this emotion effect was noticeable only in the central region for adults.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Adolescents are more emotionally sensitive to negative stimuli compared to adults, regardless of the emotional intensity of the stimuli, possibly due to the immature prefrontal control system over the limbic emotional inputs during adolescence.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality of Ministry of Education, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Jiajin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Psychology in Shaanxi Province, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University Xi'an, China.
authors.forename: Enxia
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ju
authors.affiliation: School of Education, Nanyang Normal College Nanyang, China.
authors.forename: Xianxin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Psychology in Shaanxi Province, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University Xi'an, China.
authors.forename: Xuhai
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality of Ministry of Education, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Siyu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality of Ministry of Education, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University Chongqing, China ; Postdoctoral research station of mathematics, Southwest University Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Jiemin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Research Centre for Brain Function and Psychological Science, Shenzhen University Shenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
keywords: Event-Related Potentials (ERPs); adolescence; emotion intensity; emotional susceptibility; negative pictures