When Is an Adolescent an Adult? Assessing Cognitive Control in Emotional and Nonemotional Contexts

Abstract

An individual is typically considered an adult at age 18, although the age of adulthood varies for different legal and social policies. A key question is how cognitive capacities relevant to these policies change with development. The current study used an emotional go/no-go paradigm and functional neuroimaging to assess cognitive control under sustained states of negative and positive arousal in a community sample of one hundred ten 13- to 25-year-olds from New York City and Los Angeles. The results showed diminished cognitive performance under brief and prolonged negative emotional arousal in 18- to 21-year-olds relative to adults over 21. This reduction in performance was paralleled by decreased activity in fronto-parietal circuitry, implicated in cognitive control, and increased sustained activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, involved in emotional processes. The findings suggest a developmental shift in cognitive capacity in emotional situations that coincides with dynamic changes in prefrontal circuitry. These findings may inform age-related social policies.

Using Dual Process Models to Examine Impulsivity Throughout Neural Maturation

“…This is consistent with studies showing that adolescents have difficulty suppressing attention and actions toward emotional stimuli even when these are irrelevant to the task at hand (Grose-Fifer, Rodrigues, Hoover, & Zottoli, 2013). Since habituation of the subcortical regions (including amygdala and ventral striatum) appears to be coupled with VMPFC activity (Grimshaw & Carmel, 2014;Hare et al, 2008), it is possible that the increased impulsivity in response to emotional stimuli in adolescents is due to less mature prefrontal top-down regulation of these subcortical regions (Casey, 2015;Cohen et al, 2016).…”

“…Given that affective, bottom-up processes are often regulated by the top-down cognitive processes discussed above, it may be difficult to determine whether impulsive behaviors that appear in combination with affective/motivational impairments are in fact caused directly by the socioemotional system or indirectly, as a result of decreased regulation by the cognitive control system. However, as impulsive behaviors are known to occur when neuropsychological evidence of cognitive deficits is absent, it stands to reason that deficits in affective/motivational processes can directly trigger impulsive behaviors (Bechara, 2005;Casey, 2015;Cohen et al, 2016). This possibility is strengthened by neuroimaging studies (e.g., McClure, Laibson, Loewenstein, & Cohen, 2004) that link activity in the OFC, medial PFC, limbic and paralimbic cortical structures, but not DLPFC and parietal areas, specifically to impulsive choices.…”

“…An apparent sensitivity to environmental cues-positive and negative-leads to heightened reactivity and decreased regulation both behaviorally and neurally in adolescents relative to both children and adults (Casey, 2015;Shulman et al, 2016). Another recent study (Cohen et al, 2016) used an emotional Go/No-Go paradigm and functional neuroimaging to assess cognitive control under sustained states of negative and positive arousal in predefined age groups (adolescents ages 13-17 years; young adults 18-21 years; adults ages 22-25 years) and with age as a continuous variable. They found that the diminished cognitive control of adolescents and young adults in response to negative cues was paralleled by decreased activity in cognitive control circuitry.…”

The transition from childhood to adolescence is marked by a general decrease in amygdala reactivity and an affect-specific ventral-to-dorsal shift in medial prefrontal recruitment

“…A second reason to suspect that mPFC underlies negative affect-specific changes in development comes from prior work showing that mPFC responses to aversive stimuli change in qualitative and striking ways across development (Cohen et al, 2016). With regards to vmPFC, prior neuroimaging studies have revealed that vmPFC responses to aversive stimuli decrease during adolescence (McRae et al, 2012), and that functional connectivity between vmPFC and the amygdala in response to aversive stimuli is initially positive but becomes negative during the transition from childhood to adolescence (Gee et al, 2013; Silvers et al, in press).…”

“…Such work suggests that vmPFC responses to aversive stimuli generally decrease with age but also that the way in which vmPFC and the amygdala interact changes as well. In contrast to vmPFC, dmPFC responses to aversive stimuli increase steadily from early adolescence and into adulthood (Cohen et al, 2016; Williams et al, 2006). As such, we hypothesized that in the present study age would be associated with a simultaneous decrease in vmPFC recruitment and increase in dmPFC recruitment in response to aversive (but not neutral) stimuli.…”