Evaluation Of Neurological Role Of Self Regulation

This is consistent with cognitive theories that suggest the use in this disorder of attempts to reduce the involvement of emotions with compensatory cognitive strategies.[11]

The article “Inside the Teen Brain’ by Marty Wolner, states that the human brain provides parents with shocking new evidence to possibly explain the sometimes irrational, illogical, and impulsive behavior of teenagers. Teenage years are radically more active and dynamic than they previously thought. So teenagers are left with most of the information reaching their brains being processed in the emotional part (limbic system). Information processed in the limbic system without benefit increases the processing in the prefrontal cortex. It may result in impulsive, egocentric, and maybe even risky behavior choices. The prefrontal cortex of the teenage brain does not excuse inappropriate or irresponsible behavior from the teen. The brain is not yet

The PFC is not fully developed until the mid-twenties of a person’s life. “It is considered the seat of the ‘rational’ brain, since its functions include high level reasoning, decision making, impulse control, assessment of consequences, forward planning behavior modification and priority setting.” Behaviors such as impulsivity, inflexibility, emotional volatility and risk taking by adolescents can be explained by the lack of development in the PFC. Adolescents are more likely to not make rational choices under the conditions of high emotions and intense pressure; “they are more likely to act impulsively or without full consideration of the consequences”

Many parents or adults wonder why adolescents act the way they do and want answers as to why. Numerous of these actions adolescents make are because of the prefrontal cortex(PFC). The PFC isn’t developed until the mid 20s which causes teenagers to lack on seeing the consequences before they make a risky or impulsive decision. In The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, he illustrates that adolescents show impulsivity, decision making, and risk taking.

The amygdala of psychopaths have has been found to be hypoactive during fear conditioning (Birbaumer et al., 2005), moral decision-making (Glenn, Raine, & Schug, 2009), and social cooperation (Rilling et al., 2007). As expected, studies have also found the amygdala to be hypoactive in response to fearful faces or other affect-related activity (e.g. Carré et al., 2013; Kiehl et al., 2001). Nevertheless, Müller et al. (2003) found that psychopaths had increased activation in the amygdala (in addition to increased prefrontal activation) when viewing negative content (e.g. pictures of threatening animals, wounded people) which they interpreted as reflecting abnormal prefrontal – amygdala communication.” (Umbach et al., 2015,

Studying parts of the brain that are involved in dealing with fear and stress also helps researchers understand possible causes of PTSD to begin formulating a plan to treat PTSD. The amygdala is known for its role in emotion, learning, and memory. The amygdala appears active in learning to fear an event as well as in the early stages of fear extinction. In storing extinction memories and dampening an existing fear the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in problem solving, decision making, and judgement, is seemingly

They did so because it gave more weight to the payoff” (Document D). This quote exemplifies that teenagers are less concerned about the risks involved in their actions, and rather linger on the outcome which they will eventually receive. In a recent study by Beatriz Luna, a professor of psychiatry, it was declared that,”This (use of more brain regions) lets the adults use a variety of brain resources and better resist temptation, while the teens used those areas less often and more readily gave in to the impulse to look at the flickering light- just as they’re more likely to look away from the road to read a text message” (Document D). The use of this quote helps portray the effect of the undeveloped prefrontal cortex on teenagers. As the prefrontal

In Chapter 8 “Where the Wild Things Are,” the author Le Doux looked at the how our brain regions and systems functioned during the development of anxiety disorders. He introduced many researchers’ ideas and theories such as Pavlovian conditioning and instrumental conditioning; then, he listed the brain regions that were associated with anxiety and fear conditioning such as hippocampus, amygdala, sympathetic nervous system, and various brain cortexes. He also explained how our brain became conditioned for different anxiety disorders.

It is believed that a mutation in the prefrontal cortex predisposes some people to violence. The frontal lobe is what we use to make decisions and, when fully developed, allows us to think carefully about our actions before we take them. An alteration in the prefrontal cortex may make us susceptible to impulsive and rash behaviors. For example, teens tend to be more reckless than adults. The teen frontal lobe is not fully formed, which is the reason for this outcome. Teens also tend to rely on their amygdalas to make decision. The amygdala is the center for powerful emotions, such as anger, jealousy, and guilt. For example, psychopaths have been found to be void of guilt and regret as a result of “the amygdala [being] less activated when they

This will be shown in their processing and reaction to fearful community situations. Adolescents will be grouped in their community violence exposure to determine if different groups show different amygdala response, and thus are desensitized if community violence exposure and amygdala activation in a fearful situation is negatively correlated. The Balloon Analogue Risk Task has been shown to correlate with real-life risky behaviors in adolescents such as drug use and sexual promiscuity (Bornovalova et al., 2009; Lejuez, Aklin, Zvolensky, & Pedulla, 2003). That task will show us if there is a behavioral and neurocognitive difference in risk taking for adolescents that are desentized to community violence and those that are not desensitized. The go/no-go task has been used in other studies to test adolescents cognitive control and ability to override a “go” response (Tezler et al., 2013), which could indicate their ability to self-control and think when making decisions. That task will show us if there is a behavioral and neurocognitive difference in cognitive control for adolescents that are desentized to community violence and those that are not

The limbic system was first recognized due to Franz Josef Gall (LeDoux, J., 1996). Franz Joseph Gall developed the idea of “phrenology” that focused on the study of the different variations of bumps on the human skull to be related to differences in behavioral and emotional functioning. The limbic system’s main function in the brain is to control emotional behaviors and certain forms of memories that are infused with emotion (amygdala). The amygdala is a part of the brain that forms the tail end of the basal ganglia within the rostral temporal lobe and is located near the hippocampus (Lambert, K.G. & Kinsley, C .H., 2005). The amygdala, as defined by the text, is an almond-shaped structure that functions as a part of the limbic system involved in regulation of emotion and sexual urges (Lambert, K.G. & Kinsley, C .H., 2005). In addition, the amygdala is comprised of a dozen or more sub regions that are not all involved in fear conditioning (LeDoux, J., 1996).

Furthermore, greater examples of this comparison can be seen with analysis of studies performed particularly with children; in one example, it was seen that all ADHD children, which all previously showed deficiencies in executive function- and thus had problems with cognitive impulsivity, did not all show problems when it came to emotional regulation, rather only the subset with specific aggression problems did. Not only this, but it was proven that effortful control is known to be used increasingly with age, and primarily in girls rather than boys; this is due to the fact that effortful control is parallel with developmental and neurological changes in the prefrontal cortex, which girls experience quicker than boys. Another great determination of children using effortful control is regarded back to their very own personality traits. Studies show that the personality trait most associated with effortful control is consciousness; this is due to the fact that it allows one to control their short-term pleasure seeking impulses, and rather focus on attaining long-term goals; for example, when a child chooses to finish their homework, say prior to watching TV. On the other hand children who do not posses a great sense of consciousness, are rather known to have anti-social, reward-seeking, risk taking, delinquent behavior which is purely due to, as mentioned in the former, under development of prefrontal mechanisms which thus entail greater externalizing behaviors. Children with the latter personality traits are more known to show problems of antisocial personality disorder, poor behavior in not only the school setting, but home as well, overall depression, and even early drug use.

According to Morgan (2015), the neuroscience of depression has an emotional impact on many areas of the brain. The stressors in the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis initiate the release of the

Chapter 2 is centered on the early attempts to identify the brain’s components of emotions. Key researchers that are discussed are a Cornell neuroanatomist, James Papez, and aforementioned physician and neuroscientist Paul MacLean, who worked at Yale and the National Institutes of Mental Health. Together, this pair of researchers conducted seminal medial temporal lobe lesion experiments. The resulting idea was that the emotional brain is composed of a set of interconnected structures in the core of the brain. MacLean dubbed these structures as the “limbic system”. The function of the limbic system and it relationship to emotion was widely debated by many researchers.

In the next paragraphs I will consider some theories, factors and evidence on cognitive controlling of emotion in terms of