The neuroscience of emotion regulation development: implications for education

In the paper

“Similarly, in the reward domain, the presence of a caregiver during a risky decision task decreased risky choices and increased activation in control regions including vlPFC and mPFC, and decreased ventral striatum and amygdala activation in adolescents [50].”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Discussion reports significantly less risky behavior when mothers were present. The Decisions section reports greater VLPFC and MPFC activation during safe decisions, while the Discussion reports decreased ventral striatum and amygdala activation following risky decisions. These effects occurred at different points in the task, as the source specifies. (LLM, conf=0.92)

  cites [50] Telzer EH Ichien NT Qu Y Mothers know best: redirecting adolescent reward sensitivity toward safe behavior during risk taking. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci 2015 10 1383 1391 This study found that in the presence of their mothers, adolescents were more likely to activate prefrontal control regions during a risky decision making task compared to when they were alone. 25759470 PMC4590537 source

In the paper

“Chief among them is the amgydala, a subcortical structure important for signaling the presence, and modulating the encoding, of affect-relevant stimuli [11].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [11] Phelps EA LeDoux JE Contributions of the Amygdala to Emotion Processing: From Animal Models to Human Behavior. Neuron 2005 48 175 187 16242399 source

In the paper

“Finally, mPFC and ACC are commonly activated in tasks involving selection among competing responses, and may help in identifying when regulation is needed [17].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [17] Shenhav A Botvinick MM Cohen JD The Expected Value of Control: An Integrative Theory of Anterior Cingulate Cortex Function. Neuron 2013 79 217 240 23889930 PMC3767969 source

In the paper

“and the insula, a cortical region representing information about the body states associated with affective responses [13].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [13] Uddin LQ Kinnison J Pessoa L Anderson ML Beyond the Tripartite Cognition–Emotion–Interoception Model of the Human Insular Cortex. J. Cogn. Neurosci 2013 26 16 27 23937691 PMC4074004

In the paper

“A popular theory is that prefrontal control regions like dlPFC and vlPFC mature at a slower rate relative to affective response regions like the amygdala and ventral striatum [18,19].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [18] Tamnes CK Walhovd KB Dale AM Østby Y Grydeland H Richardson G Westlye LT Roddey JC Hagler DJ Jr Due-Tønnessen P Brain development and aging: Overlapping and unique patterns of change. NeuroImage 2013 68 63 74 23246860 PMC5378867 source
• Not checked yetcites [19] Gogtay N Giedd JN Lusk L Hayashi KM Greenstein D Vaituzis AC Nugent TF Herman DH Clasen LS Toga AW Dynamic mapping of human cortical development during childhood through early adulthood. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A 2004 101 8174 8179 15148381 PMC419576 source

In the paper

“The dlPFC is commonly active during selective attention and working memory tasks, which may aid in holding emotion-regulation strategies in mind [15].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [15] Wager TD Smith EE Neuroimaging studies of working memory Cogn. Affect. Behav. Neurosci 2003 3 255 274 15040547 source

In the paper

“Emotion regulation is a critical life skill that can facilitate learning and improve educational outcomes.”

In the paper

“Also impacted by reappraisal is the ventral striatum, another subcortical structure implicated in signaling the reward value of stimuli [12]”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [12] Haber SN Knutson B The Reward Circuit: Linking Primate Anatomy and Human Imaging. Neuropsychopharmacology 2009 35 4 26 PMC3055449 19812543 source

In the paper

“vlPFC is commonly active during response selection and inhibition, which may help with selecting an appropriate reappraisal tactic [16].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [16] Aron AR Robbins TW Poldrack RA Inhibition and the right inferior frontal cortex. Trends Cogn. Sci 2004 8 170 177 15050513 source

In the paper

“For example, emotions can promote learning by capturing and holding attention as well as deepening encoding [1–3].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [1] Clore GL Huntsinger JR How emotions inform judgment and regulate thought. Trends Cogn. Sci 2007 11 393 399 17698405 PMC2483304 source
• Not checked yetcites [2] Talmi D Enhanced Emotional Memory Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci 2013 22 430 436 source
• Not checked yetcites [3] Yiend J The effects of emotion on attention: A review of attentional processing of emotional information. Cogn. Emot 2010 24 3 47 source

In the paper

“Growing up in conditions of poverty also can have a negative effect on the developing brain and one's ability to regulate emotions.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [31] Kim P Evans GW Angstadt M Ho SS Sripada CS Swain JE Liberzon I Phan KL Effects of childhood poverty and chronic stress on emotion regulatory brain function in adulthood. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci 2013 110 18442 18447 24145409 PMC3831978 source

In the paper

“In sum, these findings suggest that while all ages are able to regulate positive emotions successfully, younger individuals may be especially responsive to positive rewards and feedback and therefore might need to deploy regulation more often.”

In the paper

“At the neural level, children in the eight to nine year old age group demonstrated greater brain activation during positive feedback compared to negative feedback, particularly in dlPFC and parietal regions, whereas adults showed the reverse trend, activating similar regions more than the other age groups when receiving negative compared to positive feedback.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [42] Duijvenvoorde ACK van Zanolie K Rombouts SARB Raijmakers MEJ Crone EA Evaluating the Negative or Valuing the Positive? Neural Mechanisms Supporting Feedback-Based Learning across Development. J. Neurosci 2008 28 9495 9503 This study is the first to examine neural systems supporting feedback learning during across development and found that younger age groups have more activation in lateral prefrontal regions than adolescents and adults to positive feedback compared to negative feedback. In contrast adults had more activation in frontoparietal regions than children and adolescents to negative f source

In the paper

“While negative emotions are thought to focus attention on and promote encoding of potential threats, positive emotions are believed to broaden one's attentional scope which can then facilitate enhanced learning and memory [37].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [37] Fredrickson BL Branigan C Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought action repertoires. Cogn. Emot 2005 19 313 332 21852891 PMC3156609 source

In the paper

“Although our emotions are experienced individually, any parent or teacher knows that they can be heavily influenced by the words and actions of other people.”

In the paper

“A study by Duijvenvoorde et al. comparing responses to positive and negative feedback across age found that all age groups performed better on a rule learning task when they received positive feedback compared to negative feedback, and this trend was the largest for eight to nine year olds [42].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [42] Duijvenvoorde ACK van Zanolie K Rombouts SARB Raijmakers MEJ Crone EA Evaluating the Negative or Valuing the Positive? Neural Mechanisms Supporting Feedback-Based Learning across Development. J. Neurosci 2008 28 9495 9503 This study is the first to examine neural systems supporting feedback learning during across development and found that younger age groups have more activation in lateral prefrontal regions than adolescents and adults to positive feedback compared to negative feedback. In contrast adults had more activation in frontoparietal regions than children and adolescents to negative f source

In the paper

“Data suggest that the behavioral ability to down-regulate negative emotion, decrease amygdala activation [25] and increase activity in lateral prefrontal regions tracks with age [26,27].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [25] Stephanou K Davey CG Kerestes R Whittle S Pujol J Yücel M Fornito A López-Solà M Harrison BJ Brain functional correlates of emotion regulation across adolescence and young adulthood. Hum. Brain Mapp 2015 PMC6867496 26596970 source
• Not checked yetcites [26] McRae K Gross JJ Weber J Robertson ER Sokol-Hessner P Ray RD Gabrieli JDE Ochsner KN The development of emotion regulation: an fMRI study of cognitive reappraisal in children, adolescents and young adults. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci 2012 7 11 22 22228751 PMC3252634 source
• Not checked yetcites [27] Silvers JA Shu J Hubbard AD Weber J Ochsner KN Concurrent and lasting effects of emotion regulation on amygdala response in adolescence and young adulthood. Dev. Sci 2014 doi:10.1111/desc.12260 PMC4459932 25439326 source

In the paper

“Together these studies, though only a subset in a larger, more complex body of literature on reward processing, suggest that in certain positive domains, children's reward circuitry may be especially responsive to rewards and positive emotions, although they can successfully attempt to down-regulate these responses when desired.”

In the paper

“For example, one study found that adolescents who were maltreated demonstrated more reactivity to negative emotional scenes in the amygdala and insula and greater recruitment of dlPFC and ACC regions when reappraising those scenes, suggesting more reactivity and more effortful regulation [32].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [32] McLaughlin KA Peverill M Gold AL Alves S Sheridan MA Child Maltreatment and Neural Systems Underlying Emotion Regulation. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry 2015 54 753 762 26299297 PMC4548288

In the paper

“Similarly, in a belief-updating task on good and bad news by Moutsiana et al., children were more likely to update accurately for good news compared to bad news, and with age, the differences in updating between good news and bad news decreased and lost significance in adulthood [43].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [43] Moutsiana C Garrett N Clarke RC Lotto RB Blakemore S-J Sharot T Human development of the ability to learn from bad news. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci 2013 110 16396 16401 24019466 PMC3799330 source

In the paper

“However, acute stress (e.g. test anxiety) and outside factors contributing to chronic stress (e.g. poverty) can have deleterious effects on one's cognitive abilities [4,30,31].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [4] Lupien SJ McEwen BS Gunnar MR Heim C Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition. Nat. Rev. Neurosci 2009 10 434 445 19401723 source
• Not checked yetcites [30] Supekar K Iuculano T Chen L Menon V Remediation of Childhood Math Anxiety and Associated Neural Circuits through Cognitive Tutoring. J. Neurosci 2015 35 12574 12583 26354922 PMC4563039 source
• Not checked yetcites [31] Kim P Evans GW Angstadt M Ho SS Sripada CS Swain JE Liberzon I Phan KL Effects of childhood poverty and chronic stress on emotion regulatory brain function in adulthood. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci 2013 110 18442 18447 24145409 PMC3831978 source

In the paper

“Responses to positive feedback activate different neural circuitry than responses to negative feedback and may follow different neurodevelopmental trajectories, which may explain why children learn better from positive feedback [44].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [44] van den Bos W Güroğlu B van den Bulk BG Rombouts SARB Crone EA Better than expected or as bad as you thought? The neurocognitive development of probabilistic feedback processing. Front. Hum. Neurosci 2009 3 52 20140268 PMC2816174

In the paper

“The role of ventral striatum in response to rewards across development is complex and in some cases conflicting, with some studies finding increases in activation in this region peaking during adolescence, whereas others find attenuations [20,23,38].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [20] Casey BJ Beyond Simple Models of Self-Control to Circuit-Based Accounts of Adolescent Behavior. Annu. Rev. Psychol 2015 66 295 319 Comprehensive recent review of developmental imaging studies related to self-control. Self-control for incentives and threats are discussed. 25089362 source
• Not checked yetcites [23] Telzer EH Dopaminergic reward sensitivity can promote adolescent health: A new perspective on the mechanism of ventral striatum activation. Dev. Cogn. Neurosci 2016 17 57 67 26708774 PMC4727991 source
• Not checked yetcites [38] Richards JM Plate RC Ernst M A systematic review of fMRI reward paradigms used in studies of adolescents vs. adults: The impact of task design and implications for understanding neurodevelopment. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev 2013 37 976 991 23518270 PMC3809756 source

In the paper

“While negative emotions are thought to focus attention on and promote encoding of potential threats, positive emotions are believed to broaden one's attentional scope which can then facilitate enhanced learning and memory [37].”

In the paper

“in one reward domain - appetitive reactivity to foods -several studies found that application of reappraisal strategies led to decreased craving for rewarding foods and decreased activation in ventral striatum”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [39] Silvers JA Insel C Powers A Franz P Weber J Mischel W Casey BJ Ochsner KN Curbing Craving Behavioral and Brain Evidence That Children Regulate Craving When Instructed to Do So but Have Higher Baseline Craving Than Adults. Psychol. Sci 2014 doi:10.1177/0956797614546001 PMC4268877 25193941 source
• Not checked yetcites [40] Giuliani NR Pfeifer JH Age-related changes in reappraisal of appetitive cravings during adolescence. NeuroImage 2015 108 173 181 25536500 PMC4817999 source

In the paper

“In both studies, the groups who had experienced greater adversity demonstrated greater neural reactivity to negative images in amygdala and different patterns of activation in prefrontal cortex compared to the groups experiencing less adversity.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [31] Kim P Evans GW Angstadt M Ho SS Sripada CS Swain JE Liberzon I Phan KL Effects of childhood poverty and chronic stress on emotion regulatory brain function in adulthood. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci 2013 110 18442 18447 24145409 PMC3831978 source
• Not checked yetcites [32] McLaughlin KA Peverill M Gold AL Alves S Sheridan MA Child Maltreatment and Neural Systems Underlying Emotion Regulation. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry 2015 54 753 762 26299297 PMC4548288 source

In the paper

“Since brain regions associated with cognitive control structures – such as prefrontal cortex – may have a slower maturational trajectory relative to structures associated with emotional responding – like the amygdala and ventral striatum – children and adolescents may have a harder time regulating their emotions.”

In the paper

“Emotion regulation is a type of emotion-cognition interaction where cognitive control systems are believed to aid in dampening or enhancing negative and positive emotions (Figure 1).”

In the paper

“Attention, executive functioning, memory and learning are all cognitive constructs critical in understanding how to improve learning and teaching, however, often before any of these cognitive functions can happen, they have to pass through the filter of an individual's emotional experience.”

In the paper

“While we know that educators and caregivers can help reduce negative emotions in children – and adolescents may be especially sensitive to the influence of their peers – little is known about how such behavioral effects relate to the development of underlying neural systems.”

In the paper

“In contrast to the role of parents, however, the presence of a similarly aged peer may increase risky decision making as well as ventral striatum and vlPFC activation in adolescents [51,52].”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [51] Chein J Albert D O'Brien L Uckert K Steinberg L Peers increase adolescent risk taking by enhancing activity in the brain's reward circuitry. Dev. Sci 2011 14 F1 F10 21499511 PMC3075496 source
• Not checked yetcites [52] Smith AR Steinberg L Strang N Chein J Age differences in the impact of peers on adolescents’ and adults’ neural response to reward. Dev. Cogn. Neurosci 2014 doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2014.08.010 PMC4324356 25280778 source

In the paper

“Of course, dispositional factors such as depression and anxiety and situational factors outside the classroom such as stress or abuse can enhance emotional reactivity or impair prefrontal function, either of which may make emotion regulation more effortful.”

In the paper

“For example, because positive emotions, feedback, and rewards may facilitate better learning, using regulation strategies to enhance positive emotions could be an effective approach in educational settings.”