PURPOSE: Disturbances of emotional regulation and social
difficulties are common in children and adolescents with traumatic brain
injury (TBI). Recent research suggests that developments within
``socio-emotional'' brain systems during early adolescence and more
protracted development of ``cognitive control'' systems have implications
for emotional and behavioral regulation during adolescence. However, few
functional neuroimaging studies have directly examined the interaction of
these neuropsychological processes in adolescents with TBI. The current
study examined how affective processing might modulate inhibitory processing
in an Emotional Go/NoGo paradigm.
METHOD: The study uses a cross-sectional, age, gender, and maternal
education matched design.
A response inhibition paradigm (i.e., the Go/NoGo task with emotional faces)
was used to examine emotional-cognition interaction in 11 adolescents with
complicated mild to moderate TBI, at least 12 months post injury, and 14
typically-developing (TD) adolescents using functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI). Participants saw adult facial expressions of emotions
(happy, sad, fearful, and angry) and were instructed to respond (``go'') on
all expressions other than angry (``no-go'').
RESULTS: Preliminary results (p= 0.001 uncorrected, cluster size =
50) showed higher levels of inhibition-related activation in TD adolescents
than in adolescents with TBI in several brain regions including anterior
cingulate and motor/premotor regions.
CONCLUSION: These results suggest that TBI in adolescence might
alter brain activation patterns and interrupt the development of brain
networks governing emotion-cognition interactions.
