Developmental trajectories of neural modules underlying emotion generation and regulation across childhood and adolescence

Abstract Emotional maturation involves a fundamental shift from the raw, somatic reactions during childhood to the precise, cognitively elaborated processes during adulthood. However, the neural dynamics that drive this developmental transition, especially the changing contributions of distributed neural modules, remain unclear. Leveraging principal component analysis of a large-scale fMRI dataset in conjunction with a sliding-window regression approach, we quantified age-varying contributions of neural modules to emotion generation and emotion regulation. During emotion generation, while frontotemporal modules are the predominant sources of activation, the limbic-salience module remains the core substrate contributing to negative affect across the entire age range. For emotion regulation via reappraisal, the lateral temporal module emerged as the sole positive contributor to regulatory success. Conversely, activation of the frontotemporal regions around age 8 and the occipital activation across the entire age range contributed to poorer regulation. Such modules further showed distinct linear and quadratic links to real-world emotion measures and cross-process coupling. Together, the work delineates a dynamic, non-linear reorganization of emotional architecture and underscores the need for stage-matched interventions.