Wendy Heller

Although the notion of "dignity of risk" has primarily been used in reference to adolescents with disabilities, this concept can be applied to all adolescents, as parents and guardians are challenged by how to balance adolescents' need for self-determination with the need for safety and supervision. In the context of maturing cognitive and emotional neural circuits, normative adolescent development involves temporal shifts in social and environmental factors that are inherently associated with both higher risk-taking and opportunities for growth and new learning. The challenge for parents of balancing risk and opportunity is influenced by social, cultural, and environmental factors, previous experience, personality, and the perceived capability of the adolescent. When perceived capability is lower, the challenge becomes even more acute, such as when an adolescent has a developmental, physical, or psychiatric disability that impacts cognitive, emotional, or adaptive functioning. This article reviews the literature on normative brain development from the perspective of balancing risk and self-determination in adolescence and discusses the implications for families and clinicians across a range of ability and disability. Potential approaches to fostering self-determination are discussed.

Few studies have investigated how attentional control is affected by transient affective states while taking individual differences in affective traits into consideration. In the present study, participants completed a color-word Stroop task immediately after undergoing a positive, neutral, or negative affective context manipulation (ACM). Behavioral performance was unaffected by any ACM considered in isolation. For individuals high in trait negative affect (NA), performance was impaired by the negative but not the positive or neutral ACM. Neuroimaging results indicate that activity in primarily top-down control regions of the brain (IFG, dACC) was suppressed in the presence of emotional arousal (both negative and positive ACMs). This effect appears to have been exacerbated or offset by co-occurring activity in other top-down control regions (parietal) and emotion processing regions (OFC, amygdala, NAc) as a function of the valence of state affect (positive or negative) and trait affect (trait NA or trait PA). Neuroimaging results are consistent with behavioral findings. In combination, they indicate both additive and interactive influences of trait and state affect on top-down control of attention.

Effective approach/avoidance goal pursuit is critical for attaining long-term health and well-being. Research on the neural correlates of key goal pursuit processes (e.g., motivation) has long been of interest, with lateralization in prefrontal cortex being a particularly fruitful target of investigation. However, this literature has often been limited by a lack of spatial specificity and has not delineated the precise aspects of approach/avoidance motivation involved. Additionally, the relationships among brain regions (i.e., network connectivity) vital to goal pursuit remain largely unexplored. Specificity in location, process, and network relationship is vital for moving beyond gross characterizations of function and identifying the precise cortical mechanisms involved in motivation. The present paper integrates research using more spatially specific methodologies (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging) with the rich psychological literature on approach/avoidance to propose an integrative network model that takes advantage of the strengths of each of these literatures.

Individual differences in inhibition-related functions have been implicated as risk factors for a broad range of psychopathology, including anxiety and depression. Delineating neural mechanisms of distinct inhibition-related functions may clarify their role in the development and maintenance of psychopathology. The present study tested the hypothesis that activity in common and distinct brain regions would be associated with an ecologically sensitive, self-report measure of inhibition and a laboratory performance measure of prepotent response inhibition. Results indicated that sub-regions of DLPFC distinguished measures of inhibition, whereas left inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral inferior parietal cortex were associated with both types of inhibition. Additionally, co-occurring anxiety and depression modulated neural activity in select brain regions associated with response inhibition. Results imply that specific combinations of anxiety and depression dimensions are associated with failure to implement top-down attentional control as reflected in inefficient recruitment of posterior DLPFC and increased activation in regions associated with threat (MTG) and worry (BA10). Present findings elucidate possible neural mechanisms of interference that could help explain executive control deficits in psychopathology.

Emotion-cognition and motivation-cognition relationships and related brain mechanisms are receiving increasing attention in the clinical research literature as a means of understanding diverse types of psychopathology and improving biological and psychological treatments. This paper reviews and integrates some of the growing evidence for cognitive biases and deficits in depression and anxiety, how these disruptions interact with emotional and motivational processes, and what brain mechanisms appear to be involved. This integration sets the stage for understanding the role of neuroplasticity in implementing change in cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes in psychopathology as a function of intervention.