Emotional Modulation of Response Inhibition in Adolescents During Acute Suicidal Crisis: Event-Related Potentials in an Emotional Go/NoGo Task

Abstract

Objectives. Suicide is the second leading cause of adolescent deaths and may be linked to difficulties with inhibitory and emotional processing. This study assessed the neural correlates of cognitive inhibition during emotional processing in adolescents hospitalized for a suicidal crisis. Methods. Event-related potentials were recorded during an emotional Go/NoGo task in 12 adolescents who attempted suicide and 12 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Results. Compared to the control group, the suicidal group showed significantly reduced positivity at the time of the P3d (difference waveform reflecting NoGo minus Go trials) in response to happy and neutral, but not sad stimuli. For happy stimuli, this group difference was restricted to the right hemisphere. Further analyses indicated that the suicidal group had a reversed pattern of P3 amplitude in response to inhibition, with lower amplitudes in the NoGo compared to the Go conditions. Suicidal symptoms severity strongly correlated with lower amplitude of the P3d in response to neutral faces. Conclusions. These findings provide more insight into inhibition difficulties in adolescents with acute suicidal risk. Interactions between emotional and inhibition processing should be considered when treating acutely suicidal youths.

Sleep architecture and emotional inhibition processing in adolescents hospitalized during a suicidal crisis

“…The adolescent brain undergoes significant developmental changes (59) affecting emotional regulation (60-62) and executive functions such as inhibitory control (63-66). As observed in the current subsample, our previous report revealed that adolescents in suicidal crisis take longer time and make more mistakes when processing negative compared to positive emotional stimuli (40), a finding consistent with those reported in another similar study (67). In other words, it may be especially difficult for suicidal adolescents to inhibit inadequate responses when confronted with information with a negative emotional tone, a factor likely to contribute to increased impulsivity (27) in emotionally charged contexts.…”

“…It is thus possible that the extent of neural resources dedicated to the inhibition of negative stimuli was not sufficient to maintain performance levels similar to those observed for positive and neutral stimuli. Overall, the subsample included in the current report had similar performance and ERP profiles than the larger sample of suicidal adolescents included in our previous report (40).…”

“…The effects of inhibition and emotional valence on performance indices and ERPs were presented in a previous report based on the larger sample (40). Performance and ERP profiles on the specific subset of participants included in the current report are provided in Supplementary materials.…”

Electrophysiological Changes Between Patients With Suicidal Ideation and Suicide Attempts: An Event-Related Potential Study

“…However, there are difficulties with enrolling patients experiencing first time SI. Therefore, previous EEG or brain imaging studies which sought to classify and distinguish SI from SA did not consider patients' past psychiatric diagnoses, SA, and SI history ( 5 , 25 , 62 – 65 ). Thus, we attempted to exclude this confounding variable, we enrolled drug naïve participants and included them in the SA or SI groups.…”

“…Despite a plausible relationship between no-go ERP and SA, the relationship between no-go ERP amplitude and SA has not been investigated to date ( 25 ). Although one previous study has evaluated the association between no-go ERP and SA, the study had a small sample size of patients taking psychiatric medications.…”