Late positive potentials in affective picture processing during adolescence

► Adolescents assign higher emotional intensity to affective versus neutral pictures. ► Affective pictures elicit higher LPP amplitudes in adolescents than neutral ones. ► LPP visualizes developmental changes in picture processing during adolescence. Recent research in adults has determined that lat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuroscience letters 2012-02, Vol.510 (2), p.88-92
Main Authors: Zhang, Wenhai, Lu, Jiamei, Fang, Hailin, Pan, Xiaohong, Zhang, Junhua, Wang, Dahua
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescence
Adolescent
Affect
Affective pictures
Attention
Brain Mapping
Cerebrum - physiology
Child
Electroencephalography
Emotion
Emotions
Evoked Potentials, Visual
Female
Humans
Late positive potential (LPP)
Male
Reaction Time
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Summary:► Adolescents assign higher emotional intensity to affective versus neutral pictures. ► Affective pictures elicit higher LPP amplitudes in adolescents than neutral ones. ► LPP visualizes developmental changes in picture processing during adolescence. Recent research in adults has determined that late positive potential (LPP) is modulated by affective pictures. Here we investigated whether affective modulation of LPP reflects developmental changes during adolescence. Event-related potentials were recorded from 50 adolescents (11–17 years old) while they viewed 90 pictures of middle arousal level from the Chinese affective picture system. Consistent with previous studies in adults, affective pictures elicited larger LPP activities than neutral pictures over bilateral centroparietal sensors. Moreover, the LPP amplitudes varied as a function of age, increasing with age regardless of picture valence. These observations imply that adolescents exhibit affective modulation of LPP similar to adults, and undergo developmental changes in automatic attention to affective or non-affective pictures.
ISSN:0304-3940
1872-7972
DOI:10.1016/j.neulet.2012.01.008