image: Modular structure of emotion identification circuits view more
Credit: Zhang et al., JNeurosci 2019
Several brain circuits that identify emotions are solidified early in development and include diverse regions beyond the amygdala, according to new research in children, adolescents, and young adults published in JNeurosci.
Previous studies of emotional development have produced conflicting results due to small sample sizes and often focused only on the amygdala, ignoring other potential regions of interest. To rectify this, Vinod Menon and colleagues at the Stanford University School of Medicine analyzed fMRI data from 1,445 individuals aged eight to 21 from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort. During the fMRI session, participants were shown images of faces and were asked to categorize the emotion - either fearful, angry, sad, happy, or neutral - they conveyed.
The research team identified distributed brain areas and circuits involved in identifying emotions and used network stability analysis to disentangle aspects of emotion-related brain circuitry that were stable over development and those that changed with age. They also discovered multiple brain circuits that differ between emotion categories but do not change with age.
These results reveal the power of large sample sizes in the study of emotional development, help to explain inconsistencies in previous small-sample experiments, and highlight the need to examine brain regions and circuits beyond the amygdala.
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Manuscript title: Development of Human Emotion Circuits Investigated Using a Big-Data Analytic Approach: Stability, Reliability, and Robustness
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About JNeurosci
JNeurosci, the Society for Neuroscience's first journal, was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship.
About The Society for Neuroscience
The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 37,000 members in more than 90 countries and over 130 chapters worldwide.