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Updated: Sep 23, 2025

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
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Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood

Published on: February 11, 2017

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Prefrontal modulation of frustration-related physiology in preschool children ranging from low to severe irritability

Adam S Grabell1, Adrelys Mateo Santana1, Kari N Thomsen2

  • 1University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA.

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
|May 16, 2022
PubMed

Insights

Early brain development in children shows prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation helps regulate stress responses. Severe irritability in preschoolers disrupts this PFC-autonomic nervous system connection.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Psychophysiology

Background:

  • Limbic-prefrontal connectivity is crucial for emotional regulation and implicated in psychiatric disorders.
  • Studying this system in young children is challenging due to imaging limitations.
  • Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) offer potential insights into early emotion regulation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how frustration-related prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation influences psychophysiology in preschoolers.
  • To determine if irritability severity moderates the association between PFC activation and psychophysiology.
  • To explore early development of limbic-PFC interactions in emotion regulation.

Main Methods:

  • Simultaneous recording of lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC) activation using fNIRS and GSR in 73 children aged 3-5 years.
  • Children completed a frustration task to elicit emotional and physiological responses.
  • Participants exhibited a range of irritability, from low to severe.

Main Results:

  • lPFC activation increased, and GSR significantly decreased as children transitioned from frustration to rest.
  • Preschoolers with higher lPFC activation demonstrated a steeper recovery from frustration.
  • This association was moderated by irritability; severely irritable children showed no link between lPFC activation and GSR.

Conclusions:

  • Functional connections between the prefrontal and autonomic nervous systems are established early in life.
  • Evidence suggests lPFC plays a role in down-regulating frustration-induced stress, a process altered in early psychopathology.
  • Combining fNIRS and GSR presents a novel approach for studying limbic-PFC processes in early emotion regulation and psychopathology.

Keywords:
Emotion regulationFunctional Near-Infrared SpectroscopyIrritabilityLimbic-prefrontal connectivityPreschool

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