Emotion processing is believed to dominate over other brain functions during adolescence, including inhibitory control. However, few studies have examined the neural underpinnings of affective states during cognitive control. Here, we characterized the brain in an affective state by cross-sectionally assessing age-related changes in amygdala background connectivity during an affective inhibitory control task. Participants completed an antisaccade (AS) fMRI task while affective auditory stimuli were presented, and a 5-minute resting state scan. Results showed that while adolescents reported similar arousal levels across emotional conditions, adults perceived negative sounds to be more “arousing” and performed better than adolescents in negative trials. Amygdala background connectivity showed age-related increases with brain regions related to attention and executive control, which were not evident during resting state. Together, results suggest that amygdala connectivity within an affective context is fairly low in mid-adolescence but much stronger in adulthood, supporting age-related improvements in inhibitory control within an affective state. These findings suggest limitations during adolescence in differentiating between the arousing effects of various emotions, potentially undermining the ability to optimally engage inhibitory control. Furthermore, the age-related fMRI findings suggest that low amygdala connectivity to brain areas involved in executive control may underlie these limited abilities during adolescence.

人们认为，在青春期，包括抑制控制在内，情绪处理将主导其他大脑功能。但是，很少有研究检查认知控制过程中情感状态的神经基础。在这里，我们通过截面评估情感抑制控制任务期间杏仁核背景连接的年龄相关变化来表征大脑处于情感状态。参与者完成了抗扫视（as）fMRI任务，同时呈现了情感听觉刺激，并进行了5分钟的静息状态扫描。结果表明，虽然青少年在情绪条件下的唤醒水平相似，但在阴性试验中，成年人感觉到负面声音更能“激怒”并且表现出比青少年更好的表现。杏仁核的背景连通性显示与年龄有关的增加与注意力和执行控制有关的大脑区域，在静止状态下不明显。总之，结果表明，在情感语境中杏仁核的连通性在青春期中期相当低，而在成年期则强得多，这支持了与年龄有关的情感状态抑制控制方面的改善。这些发现表明，青春期期间在区分各种情绪的诱发作用方面存在局限性，这有可能破坏最佳地发挥抑制性控制的能力。此外，与年龄相关的功能磁共振成像研究结果表明，杏仁核与执行控制涉及的大脑区域的连通性较低，可能是青春期这些能力有限的基础。