Sex- and age-related changes in neural dynamics during a Go/No-Go task with affective modulation

Adolescence is a sensitive period of development wherein high-order cognitive brain networks undergo rapid maturation and refinement. In tandem, socially- and emotionally-salient cues, like affectively expressive faces, tend to increase in importance and can significantly capture attention even when irrelevant to ongoing cognitive processing. Research suggests that responses to emotional cues during cognitive processing changes across development both behaviorally and neurally, though developmental changes in neural oscillatory dynamics during these processes have yet to be characterized. In the current study, 73 adolescents (M = 14.99 ± 1.64 years; 53.4% male) completed an affective Go/No-Go task during magnetoencephalography. We quantified spatiotemporal dynamics during the task and examined age- and sex-related changes in oscillatory responses during correct No-Go trials during which fearful or happy facial expressions were presented. Notably, we identified widespread effects of age, sex, and their interaction on theta, alpha, beta, and gamma dynamics distributed throughout classical executive control and attention network hubs (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal, anterior insula, inferior parietal cortices), as well as in extended face and affective processing regions (e.g., fusiform, temporal, ventral prefrontal cortices). Female youth in particular tended to show increasing attentional capture in response to fearful face expressions as a function of increasing age. Overall, the data suggest unique allocation of attentional resources to emotional stimuli across age and elucidate possible evidence of functional network reorganization during this sensitive developmental period.