Sponsored by the UCLA Brain Mapping Center Faculty
The focus of these talks is on advancing the use of brain mapping methods in neuroscience with an emphasis on contemporary issues of neuroplasticity, neurodevelopment, and biomarker development in neuropsychiatric disease.
Hosted By: Shantanu Joshi, PhD, Neurology, UCLA
Jennifer Silvers, PhD Assistant Professor, Psychology, UCLA |
The ability to regulate emotions and impulses is fundamental to mental health. While decades of developmental science has suggested that this skill develops across childhood and adolescence, only recently have neuroscientists begun to investigate the neural processes that support these developmental changes. In this talk, I will present data from my lab suggesting that steep age-related improvements in self-regulation occur during adolescence and are supported by maturing connections between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. I will build on these initial findings by presenting new results suggesting that regulatory success during adolescence is associated with prefrontal cortical specialization and greater modularity in prefrontal-subcortical networks. Together, these results point to the acquisition of self-regulation as a protracted, experience-dependent process that emerges in stages over the course of the adolescent period.