ABSTRACT
The advent of in vivo human neuroimaging methods, namely functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has afforded scientists unprecedented insight into how the biological fabric of emotion regulation is tailored across development. Neuroimaging research has informed the field’s understanding of how the neural bases of emotion generation and regulation develop during youth and adolescence, on both short (over the course of seconds, minutes) and protracted time scales (over the course of years). In this chapter, we review developmental neuroimaging studies that link functional brain development to emotion regulation behavior, focusing on developmental change over time within individuals. We begin by briefly introducing key brain regions involved in emotion generation as well as implicit (reflexive, nonconscious) and explicit (effortful, conscious) emotion regulation. We subsequently characterize how these individual regions dynamically interact in circuits and change across development. We follow this with a brief discussion of how early experiences can shape neural circuits underlying emotion regulation. Finally, we conclude by outlining future directions for continued investigation of the neural bases of emotion regulation in the developing brain.
