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Updated: May 4, 2026

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
Eric E Nelson1, Jennifer Y F Lau2, Johanna M Jarcho1
1Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda MD, USA.
Abstract:
The nervous system promotes adaptive responding to myriad environmental stimuli by ascribing emotion to specific stimulus domains. This affects the salience of different stimuli, facilitates learning, and likely involves the amygdala. Recent studies suggest a strong homology between adaptive responses that result from learning and those that emerge during development. As in motivated learning, developmental studies have found the salience of different classes of stimulus (e.g., peers) undergoes marked fluctuation across maturation and may involve differential amygdala engagement. In this review, by highlighting the importance of particular stimulus categories during sensitive periods of development, we suggest that variability in amygdala response to different stimulus domains has an active and functional role in shaping emerging cortical circuits across development.
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