br Background In psychologist Stanley G Hall first character

Background In 1904, psychologist Stanley G. Hall first characterized adolescence as a time of “storm and strife,” effectively laying the foundation for the popular conception of this period that persists to this day (Hall, 1904). Scores of popular books and movies depict teenagers as emotional, volatile, highly influenced by their social circle, and prone to risky behavior and poor decision-making. In contrast to this image, most researchers who study adolescence reject the notion that adolescence is a fundamentally tumultuous time, highlighting both strengths and difficulties during this developmental stage. From this line of research, new knowledge continues to emerge about the similarities and differences between adolescents and the adults that they ultimately become. A core idea underlying the notion of “storm and strife” is that adolescents experience mood disruptions in daily life that differ from adults, particularly with regards to strong and volatile emotional experiences (Arnett, 1999). This is perhaps one of the most ubiquitously noted characteristics of adolescence and is a challenge to many parents and teachers. Furthermore, adolescence is a period of vulnerability for the initial onset of numerous mental illnesses, particularly illnesses that have emotion dysregulation as a core feature (Kessler et al., 2005). The societal cost of mental illnesses is significant (Murray and Lopez, 1996); therefore, research exploring adolescent emotion processing a vital and urgent priority. Despite the clear importance of understanding emotions and emotion regulation during this developmental stage, the nature of emotional changes during adolescence, particularly in terms of underlying biological mechanisms, remains poorly understood. We conducted a systematic review of neuroimaging research on emotion in the adolescent Exendin-3 (9-39) amide and sought to better characterize: (1) what components of emotion processing have been found to differ during adolescence from other developmental stages; (2) what trajectories of change have been theorized and empirically tested; (3) what questions remain unaddressed; and (4) what might be promising directions for future research.
Selection of studies Studies were identified from searches of the literature through December 2015 using PsycINFO, Google Scholar and PubMed using the following terms: “adolescence,” “adolescent,” “development,” “MRI,” “fMRI,” “neuroimaging”, “functional neuroimaging ” “emotion,” “emotion regulation,” and “emotional reactivity.” We also examined those studies included in the reference lists of other studies gathered using the above methods. A summary of the search process for the reviewed articles is presented in Fig. 2.
Findings of emotion processing fMRI studies in adolescence Twenty-four studies met the inclusion criteria for uninucleate review and are summarized in Table 1. Their sample sizes ranged from 16 to 242. All studies in this review included adolescents, but other participants ranged in age from as young as 4 years (Gee et al., 2013) to as old as 79 years (Williams et al., 2006). Of the 24 studies, nine included an emotional reactivity paradigm, nine studies employed an emotion regulation paradigm using concentration as an attentional deployment strategy, nine studies included an emotion regulation paradigm using distraction as an attentional deployment strategy, and three studies required participants to actively engage in emotion regulation using a cognitive change strategy. Several studies included conditions from multiple categories. Specifically, all three cognitive change studies also included an emotional reactivity condition, one distraction study also included an emotional reactivity condition, and a second distraction study included a concentration condition.
Expanding directions for adolescent emotion processing research