Abstract

The present study investigated age-related differences in the amygdala and other nodes of face-processing networks in response to facial expression and familiarity. fMRI data were analyzed from 31 children (3.5–8.5 years) and 14 young adults (18–33 years) who viewed pictures of familiar (mothers) and unfamiliar emotional faces. Results showed that amygdala activation for faces over a scrambled image baseline increased with age. Children, but not adults, showed greater amygdala activation to happy than angry faces; in addition, amygdala activation for angry faces increased with age. In keeping with growing evidence of a positivity bias in young children, our data suggest that children find happy faces to be more salient or meaningful than angry faces. Both children and adults showed preferential activation to mothers’ over strangers’ faces in a region of rostral anterior cingulate cortex associated with self-evaluation, suggesting that some nodes in frontal evaluative networks are active early in development. This study presents novel data on neural correlates of face processing in childhood and indicates that preferential amygdala activation for emotional expressions changes with age.

Details

Title
The changing face of emotion: age-related patterns of amygdala activation to salient faces
Author
Todd, Rebecca M 1 ; Evans, Jennifer W 1 ; Morris, Drew 2 ; Lewis, Marc D 2 ; Taylor, Margot J 3 

 Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 2 Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre, 3 Institute for Medical Sciences, University of Toronto, 4 Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and 5 Human Development and Applied Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 2 Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre, 3 Institute for Medical Sciences, University of Toronto, 4 Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and 5 Human Development and Applied Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada 
 Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 2 Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre, 3 Institute for Medical Sciences, University of Toronto, 4 Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and 5 Human Development and Applied Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada 
 Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 2 Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre, 3 Institute for Medical Sciences, University of Toronto, 4 Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and 5 Human Development and Applied Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 2 Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre, 3 Institute for Medical Sciences, University of Toronto, 4 Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and 5 Human Development and Applied Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 2 Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre, 3 Institute for Medical Sciences, University of Toronto, 4 Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and 5 Human Development and Applied Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada 
Pages
12-23
Publication year
2011
Publication date
Jan 2011
Publisher
Oxford University Press
ISSN
17495016
e-ISSN
17495024
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3171552959
Copyright
© The Author(s) (2010). Published by Oxford University Press. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.