title: EEG Oscillation Evidences of Enhanced Susceptibility to Emotional Stimuli during Adolescence.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Our recent event-related potential (ERP) study showed that adolescents are more emotionally sensitive to negative events compared to adults, regardless of the valence strength of the events. The current work aimed to confirm this age-related difference in response to emotional stimuli of diverse intensities by examining Electroencephalography (EEG) oscillatory power in time-frequency analysis.
  
  
  METHODS
  Time-frequency analyses were performed on the EEG data recorded for highly negative (HN), moderately negative (MN) and Neutral pictures in 20 adolescents and 20 adults during a covert emotional task. The results showed a significant age by emotion interaction effect in the theta and beta oscillatory power during the 500-600 ms post stimulus.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Adolescents showed significantly less pronounced theta synchronization (ERS, 5.5-7.5 Hz) for HN stimuli, and larger beta desynchronization (ERD; 18-20 Hz) for both HN and MN stimuli, in comparison with neutral stimuli. By contrast, adults exhibited no significant emotion effects in theta and beta frequency bands. In addition, the analysis of the alpha spectral power (10.5-12 Hz; 850-950 ms) showed a main effect of emotion, while the emotion by age interaction was not significant. Irrespective of adolescents or adults, HN and MN stimuli elicited enhanced alpha suppression compared to Neutral stimuli, while the alpha power was similar across HN and MN conditions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results confirmed prior findings that adolescents are more sensitive to emotionally negative stimuli compared to adults, regardless of emotion intensity, possibly due to the developing prefrontal control system during adolescence.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology, Southwest UniversityChongqing, China; School of Education, Nanyang Normal UniversityNanyang, China.
authors.forename: Xianxin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.affiliation: School of Education, Nanyang Normal University Nanyang, China.
authors.forename: Wenwen
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: School of Education, Nanyang Normal University Nanyang, China.
authors.forename: Ling
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Xiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Sichuan Information Technology College Guangyuan, China.
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: School of Education, Nanyang Normal University Nanyang, China.
authors.forename: Xinsheng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: JiaJin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Jiemin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
keywords: adolescence; event-related desynchronization (ERD); event-related synchronization (ERS); negative stimuli; susceptibility; time-frequency analysis (TFA)