Development of affect processing and regulation: an electrocortical approach

情感的评价、调节和表达在人类行为的动机和交流方面发挥着重要作用，对人类的最佳发展至关重要。《精神疾病诊断与统计手册》（DSM-IV，美国精神病学协会，1994年）中描述的所有第二轴障碍，如抑郁症、焦虑症、品行障碍，都将无法调节负面情绪列为诊断标准。然而，就儿童情感处理和调节的发展而言，我们所知相对较少。了解儿童如何调节情绪的第一步是了解他们如何处理情绪。我的nserc资助的研究项目的主要目标是检查正常发育儿童在生命的头四年中情感处理和调节的发展。在最近一系列nserc资助的研究中，我们发现在婴儿和成人处理不同类型的情感听觉和视觉刺激时，额叶和自主神经活动的不同模式。拟议的NSERC拨款期将允许我们继续并扩展我们的工作，研究典型人类发展中的情感处理和调节的发展，包括年龄较大的儿童和年轻人。我们将：1)在我们的初步研究中，招募单独的年轻人队列，以完善我们的测量方法，并将我们之前的发展工作扩展到成年人；2)招募儿童早期发展时间点的横断面队列，并招募24个月大的儿童单独队列进行纵向跟踪，并在横断面队列的同一时间点进行测试，以完善发展图景；3)使用更密集的阵列（128个脑电图电极）来测量脑电图频率和连贯性，绘制区域大脑发育图，并将这些测量与不同年龄和不同时间的处理和调节联系起来；4)首次检查在整个发展过程中对其他感官刺激（如情绪的面部表现）做出反应时的大脑活动的时间改进测量[例如，事件相关脑反应（ERPs）]；5)利用密集脑电阵列测量儿童脑电信号的来源。

The appraisal, regulation, and expression of emotion play important roles in the motivational and communicative aspects of human behaviour and are critical to optimal human development. All of the Axis II disorders described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV, American Psychiatric Association, 1994, e.g., depression, anxiety, conduct disorder) list an inability to regulate negative affect as a criterion for diagnosis. We know, however, comparatively little in terms of the development of affect processing and regulation in children. A first step in understanding how children regulate emotion is to understand how they process emotion. The primary goal of my NSERC-funded research program is to examine the development of affect processing and regulation in typically developing children during the first four years of life. In a series of recent NSERC-funded studies, we found distinct patterns of frontal lobe and autonomic activity during the processing of different types of affective auditory and visual stimuli in human infants and adults. The proposed NSERC grant period will allow us to continue and extend our work examining the development of affect processing and regulation in typical human development to older children and young adults. We will: 1) in our initial studies, recruit separate cohorts of young adults in order to refine our measures and to extend our previous developmental work to adults, 2) recruit cross-sectional cohorts at developmental time points in early childhood, and recruit a separate cohort of 24-month-old children to follow longitudinally and test at the same time-points as the cross-sectional cohorts, in order to refine the developmental picture; 3) map regional brain development using a more dense array (128 EEG electrodes) to measure EEG frequency and coherence and relate these measures to affect processing and regulation at different ages and across time, 4) for the first time, examine temporally refined measures of brain activity [e.g., event-related brain responses (ERPs)] in response to other sensory stimuli (e.g.,facial displays of emotions) across development, and 5) measure the source of child EEG signals by using the dense EEG array.