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  • Knowledge about the inhibitory brain

    2018-11-03

    Knowledge about the inhibitory GSK2656157 mechanisms, in children, that trigger emotion regulation, particularly those that allow adaptive functioning in the presence of socio-emotional cues (face expressions), is also limited. Thus far, a few ERP studies in children have highlighted the functional role of the N2, an inhibitory-related frontal component occurring 200–400ms after stimulus onset, in the regulation of socio-emotional cues (Lewis et al., 2007; Todd et al., 2008; Hum et al., 2013a,b). These studies used an emotional go/no–go task where participants responded to ‘go’ stimuli and withheld responses to ‘no–go’ stimuli in the context of happy, angry or fearful faces. Although the results are of interest, the protocols could be improved in several ways. Firstly, these studies compared go trials (containing a motor response) with no–go trials (containing no motor response), thus integrating a motor confound into the analysis (see discussion in Vidal et al., 2012). Secondly, previous ERP studies have used explicit socio-emotional cues during the emotional go/no–go task which required participants to directly respond to emotion (i.e., Happy/Angry/Fearful; (Hare et al., 2008)) or gender (Lewis et al., 2007; Hum et al., 2013a,b) of the stimulus. However, although emotion regulation is usually portrayed as a deliberate and explicit process (Gross, 2014), a growing body of research has shown that emotion regulation often operates on more implicit or automatic levels (Gyurak et al., 2011; Koole and Rothermund, 2011; see Koole et al., 2015, for a review). According to these models, automatic emotion regulation (AER) processes operate almost constantly in daily life and represent a powerful aid in keeping emotional context from interfering with one’s ongoing activities. Hence, investigating the impact of an incidental exposure to emotional stimuli on controlled behaviour provides a more a realistic measure of socio-behavioural interactions, where emotional cues are often incidental (Goldstein et al., 2007; Todd et al., 2008, 2012). The AER assists children in developing adaptive emotion regulation strategies by facilitating an implicit and rapid monitoring of whether an emotional response is appropriate or not (Hopp et al., 2011 and see Koole et al., 2015 for a recent review). For instance, by efficiently offsetting the impact of unwanted or negative emotional responses without drawing on limited attentional resources, the AER crucially contributes to resilience to stressful life events and to personal growth (Bonanno, 2004; Gross and Muñoz, 1995; Moore et al., 2008). Moreover, implicit emotion regulation has been associated with improved well being or social adjustment and reduced depressive symptoms (Bonanno, 2004; Hopp et al., 2011). Despite the importance of the AER in improving self-regulation in children, a clear understanding of AER-related neurophysiological mechanisms is still missing. To our knowledge, only one functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study has characterized the brain regions involved in AER regulation (i.e., incidental exposure to happy or angry faces during a go/no–go task) in children (Todd et al., 2012). Results showed that inhibition-related activity in the orbito-frontal cortex (OFC) was modulated by the emotional valence of the faces. In particular, whereas Happy faces triggered more activity in the left OFC, compared to Angry faces, in younger children (4.4–6.5 years), the emotion-related modulation of the OFC shifted to greater activation for Angry faces in older children (6.5–9.0 years; Todd et al., 2012). Although Todd et al. (2012)’s fMRI study showed the specific contribution of the OFC in socio-emotional regulation processes in children, and possibly its crucial importance during development, the poor temporal resolution of fMRI precludes an understanding of the brain dynamics that regulate inhibition and emotion interaction.