Abstract
Adolescents exhibit difficulties in behavioral regulation that become more evident when emotional contexts are involved, since these may hinder the development of socially-adaptive behaviors. The objectives of the present study were: to examine the influence of emotional contexts on adolescents’ ability to inhibit a prepotent response, evaluated by ERPs, and to determine whether sex differences in response inhibition are observed in adolescents in those contexts. Participants performed a prepotent response inhibition task (Go-NoGo) under 3 background context conditions: neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant. While no differences in accuracy were observed, the presence of emotional contexts did prolong reaction times compared to the neutral context. Also, the unpleasant context caused an enhancement of N2 amplitudes compared to the neutral and pleasant contexts. Also, N2 and P3 latencies were longer in emotional contexts than in the neutral condition during both correct responses and correct inhibitions. No sex differences were found in amplitude, but females showed longer N2 and P3 latencies than males. These results confirm the idea that, in adolescents, unpleasant pictures receive preferential attention over neutral images and so generate greater difficulty in response inhibition. Finally, results demonstrate that sex differences in inhibition control in adolescence were observed only in relation to time-processing.
Highlights
Managing daily life situations, demands that individuals perceive multiple environmental stimuli, and entails exerting attentional control and inhibiting prepotent responses in order to produce socially-adaptive behavior
The N2Go component is interpreted as reflecting responses to novelty and attentional control, whereas the N2NoGo would be more closely related to conflict resolution and inhibition processes associated with the functioning of the frontal and anterior cingulate cortices[20,21,22,23,24]
It is our contention that studying and comparing female and male adolescents in relation to the effects that emotional contexts exert on response inhibition could reveal additional data on whether sex differences exist during this important period, when top-down control is maturing
Summary
Demands that individuals perceive multiple environmental stimuli, and entails exerting attentional control and inhibiting prepotent responses in order to produce socially-adaptive behavior. The first is engaged-in-response inhibition, which involves the frontoparietal network; the other is a cortico-limbic circuit related to the top-down regulation of emotional stimuli[14,15,16] In this regard, Brown et al.’s17 study with adults found higher activation of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFC) during inhibition trials compared to targets, and even higher levels when unpleasant pictures –instead of neutral ones– were presented as the background. Few ERP studies have addressed the disruptive effect of emotional information on attentional control In this regard, researchers have identified differences that are a function of emotional context valence; i.e., while larger P3 amplitudes were present in a positive context compared to a neutral one on NoGo trials, N2 showed higher responses in the negative context[38, 39]. It may be possible to relate such differences to behavioral and emotional regulation in social environments
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