Altered Neural Connectivity and Cognitive Control to Peer Faces: Links to Internalizing Symptoms in Adolescence

• In Event: 1-016 - Neural Systems Underlying Processing of Social Threat and Reward in Adolescence: Implications for Affective Disorders

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Adolescence is a time of unique sensitivity to social cues, particularly in a peer context. Overlapping with this change in social sensitivity is a social reorientation of the brain—a period of neural growth and plasticity triggered at the onset of puberty that gears processing toward socially salient aspects of the environment (Nelson et al., 2005, 2016). When salient cues are present, poorer employment of emotion regulation strategies (i.e. ‘hot’ cognition) and reduced behavioral inhibition are likely to follow. In the current studies, we examined how social cues affect individuals’ emotion regulation in the presence of appetitive (i.e., positive peer faces) and aversive (i.e., angry peer faces) contexts.
Methods: In Study 1, we tested for age-related behavioral differences in inhibitory failure rates in adolescents and adults. In Study 2, we used fMRI to examine just in adolescents how appetitive and aversive peer faces impacts neural connectivity in the amygdala and ventral striatum (VS), given these regions are particularly sensitive to salient cues and show altered activation in the face of inhibitory failures to social cues in adolescence (Perino, Miernicki, & Telzer, 2016). Study 1. Participants included 51 adults (Mage=43.71 years, SD=6.76 years; 41 female) and 53 adolescents (Mage=13.37 years, SD=0.61 years; 27 female) who completed a social stop signal task, during which they were instructed to inhibit a motor response in the presence of happy, angry, and neutral faces. Results revealed a significant age x condition interaction, F(2,204)=6.60, p=.002. Adolescents showed more false alarms to happy (t(52)=4.37, p<.0001) and angry faces (t(52)=2.63, p=.01) than neutral faces, and more false alarms to happy than angry faces (t(52)=2.29, p=.02). Adults did not show any significant differences across conditions. Study 2. To examine the neural processes underlying these cognitive control deficits in adolescents, we conducted a follow-up fMRI study with an independent sample of 51 adolescents (Mage = 13.98 years, SD = 1.24 years, range = 12.03-15.94 years; 25 female).
Results: We found a significant effect of condition, F(2,116)=3.4, p=.036, corroborating the findings from Study 1, such that adolescents made significantly more false alarms to happy than angry faces (t(58)=2.71, p=.009). At the neural level, adolescents who made more false alarms to happy relative to angry faces exhibited greater amygdala-ventral striatum (VS) functional connectivity to happy relative to angry faces (t(50)=3.68, xyz=-24, -4, -14, k=29, p<.005). To examine the implications of behavioral and neural biases implicated in failed inhibition to happy relative to angry faces, we examined links to internalizing symptoms. Differences in false alarm rates (r(50)=.33, p<.05) and greater amygdala-VS functional connectivity (r(50)=.39, p<.005) were associated with greater internalizing symptoms. Moreover, the link between false alarm rates and internalizing symptoms was mediated by amygdala-VS functional connectivity (indirect effect: B=.09, SE=.05 95% CI [.02, .22]).
Discussion: Together, our findings suggest that adolescents may show cognitive disinhibition because they are hyper-attuned to positive social cues from peers. This heightened salience of positive peer cues places them at risk for higher internalizing symptoms.

Authors

• Eva H. Telzer, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Susannah Ivory, Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ethan M. McCormick, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author