title: Mid-adolescent neurocognitive development of ignoring and attending emotional stimuli.
abstract: Appropriate reactions toward emotional stimuli depend on the distribution of prefrontal attentional resources. In mid-adolescence, prefrontal top-down control systems are less engaged, while subcortical bottom-up emotional systems are more engaged. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to follow the neural development of attentional distribution, i.e. attending versus ignoring emotional stimuli, in adolescence. 144 healthy adolescents were studied longitudinally at age 14 and 16 while performing a perceptual discrimination task. Participants viewed two pairs of stimuli--one emotional, one abstract--and reported on one pair whether the items were the same or different, while ignoring the other pair. Hence, two experimental conditions were created: "attending emotion/ignoring abstract" and "ignoring emotion/attending abstract". Emotional valence varied between negative, positive, and neutral. Across conditions, reaction times and error rates decreased and activation in the anterior cingulate and inferior frontal gyrus increased from age 14 to 16. In contrast, subcortical regions showed no developmental effect. Activation of the anterior insula increased across ages for attending positive and ignoring negative emotions. Results suggest an ongoing development of prefrontal top-down resources elicited by emotional attention from age 14 to 16 while activity of subcortical regions representing bottom-up processing remains stable.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Neuroimaging Center, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. Electronic address: nora.vetter@tu-dresden.de.
authors.forename: Nora C
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Vetter
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Neuroimaging Center, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Maximilian
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pilhatsch
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Weigelt
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Neuroimaging Center, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ripke
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Neuroimaging Center, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. Electronic address: michael.smolka@tu-dresden.de.
authors.forename: Michael N
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Smolka
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D041923:Adolescent Development; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology; D000679:Amygdala / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology
keywords: Adolescence; Attention; Development; Emotional distractors; Ignoring emotion; fMRI