Researchers from China have identified a distinct developmental shift in how the prefrontal cortex manages emotional interference as individuals transition from adolescence to young adulthood. Published in Behavioral and Brain Functions, the study utilized functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to map hemodynamic changes in the brain while participants performed an emotional Flanker task. The findings suggest that adolescents rely on a more focused, right-lateralized pattern of activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, whereas young adults exhibit a more distributed, bilateral engagement of the same neural networks. This shift appears to occur even though both age groups demonstrate comparable behavioral performance in suppressing emotional distractions, indicating that the underlying neural mechanisms for emotional inhibitory control continue to reorganize well into early adulthood.
The study addressed a gap in understanding the neural maturation of emotional inhibitory control, a core executive function that allows individuals to focus on goal-relevant information while suppressing distracting emotional inputs. While the developmental trajectory of “cool” inhibitory control in neutral contexts is well-documented, the maturation of “hot” inhibitory control in emotionally salient contexts remains theoretically unresolved. Previous models have proposed either a linear improvement or a non-linear, U-shaped trajectory for these skills. By integrating behavioral measures with fNIRS indices of prefrontal activation, the researchers aimed to determine whether age-related improvements in emotional control are accompanied by systematic changes in the recruitment of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region critically involved in both cognitive and emotional regulation.
To investigate these neural dynamics, the study recruited 26 adolescents aged 13 to 16 and 30 young adults aged 18 to 22. Participants were selected from secondary schools and universities in Beijing, with demographic variables such as IQ, gender, and socioeconomic status balanced across the two groups. All participants were native Chinese speakers with normal or corrected-to-normal vision and no history of psychiatric or neurological conditions. The experimental design required participants to complete a modified emotional Flanker task, which integrated emotional face stimuli with the classic Flanker paradigm. This task was designed to elicit interference under affectively salient conditions, thereby engaging both executive control and emotional regulation processes simultaneously.
During the task, participants viewed a central target face flanked by two distractor faces and were instructed to judge whether the emotion displayed on the central face was congruent with the emotions shown on the flanking faces. The stimuli included happy, fearful, and neutral expressions, creating both congruent and incongruent trial conditions. While participants performed this task, an eight-channel continuous-wave fNIRS system recorded changes in the optical density of oxygenated hemoglobin (O2Hb) and deoxygenated hemoglobin (HHb) across the bilateral prefrontal cortex. The fNIRS system utilized dual-wavelength laser light to measure hemodynamic activity, providing a non-invasive and motion-tolerant method for assessing neural activation in developmental populations.
Behaviorally, both adolescents and young adults exhibited a robust emotional Flanker effect, characterized by slower reaction times and lower accuracy on incongruent trials compared to congruent trials. The analysis revealed a significant main effect of congruency, with mean reaction times for congruent trials at 898 milliseconds and 966 milliseconds for incongruent trials. Although the magnitude of this effect did not differ significantly between the two age groups, the presence of a robust interference cost in both cohorts suggests that the basic mechanisms supporting emotional conflict detection and resolution are already established by adolescence. This behavioral continuity highlights that the challenge of emotional regulation is not necessarily one of performance deficit in adolescents, but rather of the neural resources required to achieve that performance.
At the neural level, the fNIRS data revealed distinct age-related differences in prefrontal recruitment patterns. The analysis focused on O2Hb signals, which demonstrated greater sensitivity to changes in cerebral blood flow and higher signal-to-noise ratios compared to HHb signals. A three-way mixed-design repeated-measures ANOVA identified a significant interaction between group, congruency, and channel, prompting post-hoc contrasts to examine the effects of congruency at each measurement point. In the adolescent group, significant differences between incongruent and congruent conditions were observed primarily in the right hemisphere, specifically at channels corresponding to the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In contrast, no significant differences were observed in the left hemisphere for adolescents, indicating a pronounced right-lateralized response to emotional conflict.
Young adults, however, exhibited a more bilateral pattern of activation. Significant differences between incongruent and congruent conditions were found at measurement points in both the right and left hemispheres, including channels corresponding to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This bilateral engagement suggests that young adults recruit a broader prefrontal network to manage emotional interference. The study further defined regions of interest based on Brodmann areas, specifically BA46 for the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and BA11 for the orbitofrontal cortex. Post-hoc t-tests confirmed that adolescents exhibited greater right-lateralized activation within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, whereas young adults showed a more balanced, bilateral activation pattern across both hemispheres.
The researchers interpreted these findings as consistent with a linear developmental model of hot inhibitory control, where core behavioral abilities are established by adolescence but the underlying prefrontal networks continue to mature and become more integrated. The shift from focal, right-lateralized engagement in adolescents to distributed bilateral recruitment in young adults may reflect changes in cognitive strategies alongside the ongoing maturation of prefrontal networks. The authors noted that localized right-sided activation in adolescents might support behavioral performance through compensatory engagement, while bilateral recruitment in young adults reflects greater network integration and neural efficiency. This suggests that as the brain matures, it becomes capable of coordinating emotional and executive processes more seamlessly across distributed regions.
Several physiological and neurobiological mechanisms may contribute to this developmental shift. The authors acknowledged that fNIRS signals depend on neurovascular coupling, and evidence suggests that vascular responses differ between adolescents and adults. Adolescents have been shown to exhibit more pronounced vasoconstrictive responses in emotionally salient contexts, which could partially attenuate the expected task-related increase in oxyhemoglobin in certain regions. Beyond vascular factors, the study points to the protracted maturation of the prefrontal cortex, including synaptic pruning and myelination, which enhance the coherence and efficiency of prefrontal circuitry. Additionally, maturational alterations in the prefrontal dopamine system, particularly the increasing involvement of D2 receptor signaling in late adolescence, may support the more precise and flexible adaptation to task demands observed in young adults.
The study also highlighted the importance of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in emotional regulation, citing converging evidence from neuroimaging and brain stimulation studies. Causal evidence from repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation targeting the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has shown that disrupting this region impairs the inhibition of negative emotional stimuli and reduces the efficiency of emotional reappraisal. This underscores the critical role of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in top-down control under high regulatory demands. The findings from the present study align with these causal insights, demonstrating that this region is heavily engaged during emotional conflict processing, particularly in adolescents who may rely on it more heavily to maintain behavioral performance despite the ongoing immaturity of distributed control networks.
Correlation analyses further linked neural activation to behavioral performance, revealing significant positive associations between the difference in reaction times for incongruent and congruent trials and the difference in O2Hb beta-values at specific channels. In adolescents, these correlations were significant in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, while in young adults, they were significant in both the right and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results indicate that the degree of neural recruitment in these regions is associated with the magnitude of the behavioral interference cost. The asymmetric pattern of correlations reinforces the idea that the neural substrates supporting emotional inhibitory control become more bilateral and integrated as individuals mature, reflecting a developmental refinement of the brain’s capacity to handle socioaffective challenges.
Despite these insights, the study has several limitations that should be considered when interpreting the findings. The spatial localization of fNIRS channels was estimated using a probabilistic registration approach based on the international 10-20 system rather than individual MRI scans, which introduces a degree of spatial uncertainty in mapping channels to specific cortical regions. Additionally, the fNIRS recordings were limited to the bilateral prefrontal cortex using an eight-channel configuration, which constrained the ability to capture neural activity and functional connectivity with other emotion-related regions, such as the limbic system.
Future research could address these limitations by employing wider cortical and subcortical coverage and integrating individual structural MRI or 3D digitization of optode locations to allow for more accurate cortical localization. Including children in future studies would also help clarify whether the observed patterns of prefrontal recruitment reflect a gradual developmental progression or a nonlinear shift across developmental stages.
Subject of Research: Developmental changes in prefrontal activation during emotional inhibitory control
Article Title: Developmental trajectories of prefrontal activation underlying emotional inhibitory control from adolescence to young adulthood: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study
Article References: Chen, T., Jiang, L., Wen, R., & Jiang, C. (2026). Developmental trajectories of prefrontal activation underlying emotional inhibitory control from adolescence to young adulthood: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 22(1), Article 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12993-026-00339-9
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1186/s12993-026-00339-9
Keywords: fNIRS, emotional inhibitory control, prefrontal cortex, adolescence, young adulthood, neurodevelopment, Flanker task, brain maturation, Developmental, trajectories, prefrontal, activation
News Source: Cassandra Pierce. (November 13, 2026). Brain Scans Show Prefrontal Shift in Emotional Control. Scienmag.
