Psychophysiological and Neural Support for Enhanced Emotional Reactivity in Female Adolescents With Nonsuicidal Self-injury

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is prevalent in adolescent populations worldwide. Emotion dysregulation believed to contribute NSSI, but underlying mechanisms are less known. We combined psychophysiological and neural data with subjective self-report close temporal proximity examine the emotion processing adolescents NSSI relative control without a psychiatric diagnosis. Thirty female 30 age-matched subjects were included this case-control study. Participants presented negative affective pictures during functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. In separate facial electromyography session, same participants shown positive images also provided ratings of valence arousal. responded greater (e.g., zygomatic) corrugator) reactivity. found no differences self-reported affect response images. Analyses picture-viewing showed significant correlation between anterior insula averaged magnitude not subjects. Adolescents show enhanced emotional reactivity that associated responding, abnormalities affect. This discrepancy objective measures potentially indicates suppression reaction NSSI. Moreover, current suggest potential targets for novel therapeutic approaches can be existing clinical treatment, such as real-time electromyography-based biofeedback focusing on awareness, labeling, expressing experiences.