Developmental Neuroscience Perspectives on Emotion Regulation

Because individual differences in. emotion regulation. are associated with risk for childhood behavioral problems, multidisciplinary investigation of the genetic and neural underpinnings of emotion regulation should be a research priority. This article summarizes research findings front 3 independent laboratories to demonstrate the ways in which a variety of developmental human, neuroscience-based approaches can address critical conceptual issues in the emergence of emotion, regulation. To do so, the authors present 3 perspectives on how developmental neurobiology constrains and enriches theories of emotion regulation. The 3 perspectives of (a) genetics, (b) brain structure and function, and (c) plasticity of development are illustrated with empirical results derived from both typical and atypical samples of children and adults. These perspectives are complementary and sometimes represent different levels of analysis of the same question.