Brain responses to an Emotional Movie across Development from Childhood through Adolescence

An important question that needs to be answered is how biases in emotional information processing and related symptoms of depression occur during development (Gruskin, Rosenberg, and Holmes, in press).

In this study, brain activation assessed with fMRI related to emotional movie viewing and depressive symptoms in children and adolescence was investigated. The children and adolescents watched an emotional videoclip while undergoing fMRI.

It was found that higher depressive symptoms were related to atypical brain activity during the emotional film clip in the group of adolescents. This effect was not found in children.

The results show that there is a developmental aspect associated with brain function and emotional processes that did reflect the severity of symptoms of depression associated with the developping brain. Brain regions affected were for example the orbitofrontal cortex, the precuneus, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Gruskin et al., in press).