The role of attentional deployment during distancing in adolescents with major depression.

Individuals with major depression (MD) show deficits in cognitive reappraisal. It is yet unexplored how the act of directing visual attention away from/towards emotional aspects impacts on cognitive reappraisal in MD. Thus, we examined the role of attentional deployment during cognitive reappraisal (specifially during distancing) in adolescent MD. 36 MD adolescents and 37 healthy controls (12-18 years) performed a cognitive reappraisal task during which they a) down-regulated self-reported negative affective responses to negative pictures via distancing, or b) simply attended to the pictures. During the task, attentional focus was systematically varied by directing participants' gaze to emotional vs. non-emotional picture aspects. The validity of this experimental manipulation was checked by continuous eye-tracking during the task. Across groups and gaze focus conditions, distancing diminished negative affective responses to the pictures. Regulation success significantly differed between groups dependent on gaze focus: MD adolescents showed relatively less regulation success than controls in the emotional gaze focus condition, while the reverse was true for the non-emotional gaze focus condition. The results suggest that in MD adolescents, an emotional context might interfere with emotion regulatory aims. The findings can provide an important starting point for the development of innovative training regimes that target deficient reappraisal processes in adolescents suffering from MD.

Young adolescents with autism show abnormal joint attention network: A gaze contingent fMRI study.

Behavioral research has revealed deficits in the development of joint attention (JA) as one of the earliest signs of autism. While the neural basis of JA has been studied predominantly in adults, we recently demonstrated a protracted development of the brain networks supporting JA in typically developing children and adolescents. The present eye-tracking/fMRI study now extends these findings to adolescents with autism. Our results show that in adolescents with autism JA is subserved by abnormal activation patterns in brain areas related to social cognition abnormalities which are at the core of ASD including the STS and TPJ, despite behavioral maturation with no behavioral differences. Furthermore, in the autism group we observed increased neural activity in a network of social and emotional processing areas during interactions with their mother. Moreover, data indicated that less severely affected individuals with autism showed higher frontal activation associated with self-initiated interactions. Taken together, this study provides first-time data of JA in children/adolescents with autism incorporating the interactive character of JA, its reciprocity and motivational aspects. The observed functional differences in adolescents ASD suggest that persistent developmental differences in the neural processes underlying JA contribute to social interaction difficulties in ASD.

Look into my eyes: Investigating joint attention using interactive eye-tracking and fMRI in a developmental sample.

Joint attention, the shared attentional focus of at least two people on a third significant object, is one of the earliest steps in social development and an essential aspect of reciprocal interaction. However, the neural basis of joint attention (JA) in the course of development is completely unknown. The present study made use of an interactive eye-tracking paradigm in order to examine the developmental trajectories of JA and the influence of a familiar interaction partner during the social encounter. Our results show that across children and adolescents JA elicits a similar network of "social brain" areas as well as attention and motor control associated areas as in adults. While other-initiated JA particularly recruited visual, attention and social processing areas, self-initiated JA specifically activated areas related to social cognition, decision-making, emotions and motivational/reward processes highlighting the rewarding character of self-initiated JA. Activation was further enhanced during self-initiated JA with a familiar interaction partner. With respect to developmental effects, activation of the precuneus declined from childhood to adolescence and additionally shifted from a general involvement in JA towards a more specific involvement for self-initiated JA. Similarly, the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) was broadly involved in JA in children and more specialized for self-initiated JA in adolescents. Taken together, this study provides first-time data on the developmental trajectories of JA and the effect of a familiar interaction partner incorporating the interactive character of JA, its reciprocity and motivational aspects.

Development of neural correlates of empathy from childhood to early adulthood: an fMRI study in boys and adult men.

Although empathy is rooted early in life, the ability to understand and share the emotions of others continues to develop after childhood. Here, we aimed at exploring developmental changes in the neural mechanisms underlying empathy from childhood to early adulthood. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, 47 healthy male subjects aged 8-27 years were investigated during an explicit empathy task. Emotional faces were presented and participants were either asked to infer the emotional state from the face (other-task) or to judge their own emotional response to the face (self-task). A perceptual decision on the width of faces was used as a control condition. Age-related activity increases were observed in the fusiform gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus, depending on whether subjects attributed emotions to self or other. During the self-task, activity in the right precuneus and right intraparietal sulcus decreased as a function of age. No age-related differences were observed in behavioral performance measures. Increased activity in the fusiform gyrus and in the frontal component of the human mirror neuron system with increasing age may be explained by greater experience and expertise accumulated during socio-emotional interactions. Greater recruitment of right parietal structures in younger as compared to older subjects might reflect developmental differences in the cognitive strategies to infer one's own emotional response. This study is the first to show developmental changes in the neural mechanisms supporting empathy. Our findings may have important implications for the development of novel therapeutic interventions in clinical conditions characterized by empathy deficits, such as autism spectrum disorder.