Extracurricular activities shape children's development, yet how the interaction between their modality (digital/physical) and social context (social/non-social) impact mental health and neurodevelopment remains unclear. This study examined these relationships and their bidirectionality, as well as mediation by brain structural changes. Using baseline and one-year follow-up data from 8230 children in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, we analyzed self-reported screen time for six digital activities (three social, three non-social), caregiver-reported participation in 28 extracurricular activities (11 social, 17 non-social), mental health via the Child Behavior Checklist and Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia, and gray matter volume using T1-weighted MRI. Distinct interaction patterns between modality and social context emerged. Physical-social activities were linked to fewer psychiatric symptoms, particularly withdrawn/depressed behaviors, and increased frontoparietal gray matter. In contrast, digital non-social activities were associated with higher psychiatric risk, especially rule-breaking behaviors, and reduced temporal gray matter. Physical non-social and digital-social activities demonstrated mixed effects on developmental measures. Longitudinal analyses revealed bidirectional activity-mental health associations, with brain volume changes mediating 3.7-5.0% of these relationships. These findings highlight the interactive role of activity modality and social context in children's development and provide neurobiological evidence informing guidelines for beneficial developmental outcomes.
The environment, especially social features, plays a key role in shaping the development of the brain, notably during adolescence. To better understand variation in brain-environment coupling and its associated outcomes, we identified 'social envirotypes', or different patterns of social environment experience, in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study by hierarchically clustering subjects. Two focal clusters, which accounted for 89.3% of all participants, differed significantly on eight out of nine youth-report social environment quality measures, representing almost perfect complements. We then applied tools from network neuroscience to show different social envirotypes are associated with different patterns of whole brain functional connectivity. Differences were distributed across the brain but were especially prominent in Default and Somatomotor Hand systems for these focal clusters. Finally, we examined how social envirotypes change over development and how these patterns of change are associated with a suite of outcomes. The resulting dynamic social envirotypes differed along dimensions of stability and quality, but outcomes diverged based on stability. Altogether, our findings represent significant contributions to both social developmental neuroscience and network neuroscience, emphasizing the variability and dynamicity of brain-environment coupling and its consequences.
Adolescence is a period characterized by social and biological changes that are associated with increases in sensation seeking and risk-taking behaviors. Unpredictable environments may influence neurocognitive development and are associated with increases in risky behaviors and poor social functioning. The majority of research linking adversity and risky behaviors has focused on negative risk taking; however, research has started to distinguish between negative and positive risk-taking across different domains. Thus, the current study used seven years of longitudinal data to examine how unpredictable life events are associated with positive social risk taking through changes in neural cognitive control in frontoparietal circuitry. Results of conditional growth curve modeling indicated that unpredictability predicted higher levels of frontoparietal activation in late adolescence, which, in turn, were associated with lower positive social risk taking. Significant indirect effects revealed that unpredictability was associated with lower positive social risk taking in young adulthood through higher frontoparietal activation during cognitive control in late adolescence. The findings have important implications for understanding the antecedents of risk-taking behaviors by highlighting the role of neurocognitive functioning in linking environmental unpredictability to positive social risk outcomes.
Empathy allows us to infer the affective state of another individual and resonate with it. Accumulating evidence suggests that on a neural level, empathizing relies on "shared neural representations", i.e. patterns of neural activation recruited both during the first-hand and the empathic experience of a specific affective state. Studies employing placebo analgesia have shown consistent reductions in behavioral ratings and neural activity for both firsthand and empathic pain. The mechanistic interpretation of such effects, however, remains elusive, as placebo analgesia could exert its effects on empathy either via pharmacological actions or via top-down cognitive processes on pain and empathy beliefs. To address this limitation, this double-blind placebo-controlled study (N = 35, 21 females) administered the opioid antagonist naltrexone and tested its effects on firsthand pain and affective and cognitive ratings of empathy for pain. While we predicted that naltrexone would increase both electrocutaneous and cold pain, as well as cognitive and affective aspects of empathy for pain, the results instead pointed in the other direction. While these hypo- rather than hyperalgesic effects were unexpected, the coherence in their directionality fits with previous findings and suggests the involvement of shared opioidergic mechanisms in the firsthand experience of pain and empathy for pain.
In childhood and adolescence, functional brain networks go through different stages of development, and the levels of connectivity within and between these networks change with age. The developmental trajectory of these large-scale networks of the brain has been extensively investigated; however, many aspects of our social brain and its developmental patterns remain unclear. This study employed a cross-sectional design to investigate the brains of 753 children and adolescents (ages 5-15) while they watched a movie. This research investigates the functional distinctness and developmental synchronicity of brain areas implicated in social cognition, such as empathy and affective and cognitive theory of mind, across childhood and adolescence using generalized additive models and inter-region group analysis. Our findings suggest that social cognition components networks such as cognitive and affective theory of mind and empathy exhibit distinct developmental trajectories throughout childhood and adolescence. The findings support the theory that social cognitive networks are developmentally distinct from each other, even in the absence of task-specific paradigms.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathological processes begin decades before symptom onset. Early intervention in high-risk populations may be crucial for prevention. We investigated the effect of an intervention utilizing virtual reality (VR) cognitive-motor training on cerebral blood flow (CBF) and cognitive functioning in middle-aged adults at high AD risk due to parental history. In this randomized controlled trial, participants (n = 79) were randomly assigned to: VR cognitive-motor training while walking on a treadmill (VR+T, n = 24, treatment); VR cognitive training without treadmill (VR-T, n = 21, active control); treadmill walking while watching documentaries (TV+T, n = 20, active control); or no intervention (n = 14, passive control). Training consisted of 45-min sessions, twice weekly, for 12 weeks. CBF was measured at resting state using arterial spin labeling (ASL) at baseline, 3-month, and 6-month follow-up. Cognition was assessed using a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. We applied the intent-to-treat approach. All groups improved in executive functions and memory over time (all p-values < 0.05), with no consistent between-group differences at follow-up. CBF of the VR+T group significantly increased at 3 months in the superior (p = 0.013, middle (p = 0.014), and inferior (p = 0.003) frontal gyri compared to the passive control group, which showed a decline in CBF over the same period. No significant differences in frontal CBF change were observed between VR+T and the TV+T active control group. This increase was sustained for 6 months in the superior (p = 0.035) and middle (p = 0.028) frontal gyri. In contrast, in the middle temporal gyrus, the VR+T group had lower CBF at 3 months, compared to the VR-T (p = 0.033) and to the passive control groups (p = 0.004). Cognitive-motor VR training increased CBF in frontal regions susceptible to early AD-related changes in middle-aged adults at high AD risk. This intervention shows promise as a preventive approach and may be suitable for implementation as a home-based program for individuals at high risk.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD) both involve social-cognitive difficulties but may rely on opposite predictive mechanisms. Predictive-coding and diametrical accounts propose weak priors in ASD versus strong priors in SSD. We tested whether autistic and positive schizotypal traits differentially shape the use of social priors when interpreting ambiguous social cues. Two studies with non-clinical adults employed an adapted Animated Triangles Task (ATT) with three cueing conditions: Random-Uncued, Random-Cued, and ToM-Cued. Study 1 (n = 71) assessed behavior; Study 2 (n = 45) combined behavioral data with task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), including region-of-interest (ROI) and psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and cerebellar Crus II. Social-attribution ratings increased across conditions, confirming the cueing manipulation. At the uncorrected level, higher positive schizotypal traits were associated with greater social attribution without cues, whereas higher autistic traits were associated with lower intention ratings despite strong cues. ToM-Cued trials activated the mentalizing network. Both trait dimensions showed exploratory associations with reduced mentalizing-network connectivity. These preliminary findings suggest potentially shared neural patterns coupled with divergent behavioral responses across the autism-psychosis trait continuum, pending further validation with larger sample sizes and adjusted statistical analyses.
Social exclusion threatens belongingness, triggering adaptive reward processing changes. It remains unknown whether exclusion selectively alters social (vs. monetary) reward processing via hypervigilance or compensatory affiliation mechanisms. To address this, we recruited 61 participants to complete a Cyberball-based social exclusion or inclusion induction, with an electroencephalogram recorded during subsequent social and monetary reward tasks. Results revealed that positive versus negative feedback elicited stronger reward positivity in the social inclusion condition, while such an effect was eliminated by social exclusion. However, this interaction effect was absent for P300 during the consummatory stage or the stimulus preceding negativity during the anticipation stage. Meanwhile, social exclusion reduced the delta power, enhanced positive social evaluations, and led to a dissociation between this positive evaluation and the delta power in response to others' social feedback. In contrast, for monetary reward processing, no effects of social exclusion were found. This domain-specific effect was further validated by cross-task comparison. These results suggest that social exclusion selectively attenuates the initial cognitive processing of social rewards, disrupts the association between neural feedback and behavior, and may trigger a dual coping mechanism involving withdrawal self-protective neuroadaptations, and approach-driven prosocial behavioral tendencies.
For a long time, from the nineteenth century to most of the twentieth century, the cerebellum was thought to be an organ that regulates movement. Towards the end of the twentieth century, the brain functions associated with the cerebellum began to extend beyond motor control. Now, there is a consensus that the cerebellum is involved not only in motor functions but also in the most basic autonomic functions and the most complex cognitive and emotional functions, with a focus on predictions and internal models. A new functional model of the cerebellum is needed to explain all layers of brain functions by extending predictive computations in the cerebellum. On the other hand, the cerebellum and the basal ganglia were believed to be independent and complementary motor centers that lacked direct neural connections. For example, in neurophysiology classes in the 1980s, the characteristics of cerebellar ataxia were summarized as hyperkinetic and hypotonia, while the characteristics of Parkinson's disease (traditionally classified as "basal ganglia disorder") were summarized as hypokinetic and hypertonia, and therefore their functions were assumed at opposite poles, without interactions between the two main subcortical systems. The cerebellum and the basal ganglia were also assigned contrasting models regarding their learning mechanisms. Namely, the cerebellum was assumed to employ supervised learning with error signals, while the basal ganglia were assumed to employ reinforcement learning with reward prediction errors. However, recent neuroanatomical studies have demonstrated a number of novel connections between them, questioning their independence. Moreover, recent single-neuron recording and inactivation studies provided evidence that the cerebellum may also be involved in reinforcement learning. The cerebellum is neither independent of the basal ganglia nor exclusively specialized for supervised learning. We now need a new, general model to explain the contradiction between the known uniformity of the cerebellar cortex's structure and the newly added diversity of brain functions to which the cerebellum contributes. This consensus paper summarizes many of the seeds of such a new theory. The panel of experts (1) highlights the importance of the anatomical connectivity between cerebellar circuitry and basal ganglia, (2) points out that the anatomy of the cerebellum is unique and allows predictive computations in motor and extra-motor domains such as cognition, affect, social interactions and reward processes, (3) underlines the need to further elucidate the nature of interactions between cerebellar cortex and cerebellar nuclei to better understand cerebellar and psychiatric disorders and (4) suggests that common operations may underlie the motor and non-motor functions of the cerebellar circuitry. Cerebellar models remain a major topic of research to improve our understanding of the numerous cerebellar activities and to better understand the complexity of cerebellar disorders.
Health care workers face numerous occupational stressors that place them at heightened risk for burnout and poor mental health. Internet-delivered interventions have shown promise in reducing stress and related symptoms, yet adherence is often low, and users do not complete programs. Abbreviated interventions may help address engagement barriers such as high workload, limited time, and varying user preferences. There is a need to evaluate brief, accessible formats of internet-delivered programs for this population. This study aimed to examine the initial outcomes, usability, and acceptability of a 4-week abbreviated internet-delivered stress recovery intervention for health care workers. Specifically, it evaluated changes in stress recovery, perceived stress, depression and anxiety symptoms, and psychological well-being. The study also sought to understand participants' experiences with the brief format to determine whether it meets their needs. This single-arm pre-post study examined a 4-week abbreviated version of the online guided cognitive behavioral therapy-based stress recovery program FOREST among self-enrolled health care workers recruited through professional networks (N=52; mean age 39.31, SD 11.31 years; 49/52, 94.2% women). Outcomes included stress recovery (the Recovery Experience Questionnaire), perceived stress (the Perceived Stress Scale-4), depression and anxiety symptoms (the Patient Health Questionnaire-4), psychological well-being (the World Health Organization Well-being Index), and usability and acceptability ratings. We found that after the abbreviated version of the FOREST intervention participants showed moderate improvements in stress recovery (d=0.54, 95% CI 0.25-0.83); reductions in stress (d=-0.43, 95% CI -0.72 to -0.14), anxiety and depression symptoms (d=-0.51, 95% CI -0.80 to -0.22); and increase in psychological well-being (d=0.39, 95% CI 0.08-0.70). The majority (37/52, 71.2%) accessed all 6 modules. Users reported high satisfaction with the abbreviated program. While preliminary and limited by the pre-post design, these findings indicate that abbreviated internet-based stress recovery programs are a promising and practical tool for supporting the mental health of health care workers. Future research should examine the long-term effects, compare the abbreviated and standard versions, and explore implementation in routine practice.
A central unresolved issue in affective neuroscience is whether human emotions have unique biological signatures in the brain and body. Despite decades of debate, a consensus is lacking on whether emotions are patterned (similar across contexts and characterized by distinct features) or flexible (variable across contexts and lacking distinct features). Studies in other species have revealed the ubiquity of autonomic and motor patterns, and these investigations have elucidated the biology of central pattern generation at the levels of networks, neurons, and synapses. Here, we integrate the knowledge gained from this research and introduce the Dynamic Emotion Fabric Theory (DEFT), a new model of emotions biology. DEFT proposes that, just as fabrics are comprised of both patterns and textures, emotions are accompanied by stereotyped responses that are distinct and recognizable, yet also nuanced and malleable. A neurobiological system that is both automatic-generating patterned reactions essential for survival-and flexible-texturizing each response in context-is equipped to produce the spectrum of human emotions. DEFT provides new insights into the biological basis of emotions and identifies novel areas that warrant further study in humans and other species. This framework has implications for basic affective neuroscience and clinical studies of affective symptoms.
Hierarchical cognitive control supports flexible behavior guided by abstract goals; however, how emotional information modulates the underlying neural dynamics across hierarchy levels remains unclear. To fill this gap, we designed emotional and non-emotional hierarchical cognitive control paradigms, with hierarchical demands manipulated by varying abstraction levels of task rules. Forty-one participants performed the experiment, with electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking data simultaneously recorded. By aligning EEG with eye-tracking data through time-locked analyses, we characterized oscillatory dynamics of each hierarchy level, integrating single-frequency (power spectral density, PSD) and cross-frequency (phase-amplitude coupling, PAC) features. Results showed that increasing hierarchical demands enhanced PSD across multiple frequency bands in both emotional and non-emotional contexts. Both contexts also exhibited enhanced narrowband delta-beta PAC with increasing abstraction. Importantly, emotional hierarchical demands additionally elicited PAC patterns beyond those in non-emotional contexts, such as delta-alpha and alpha-beta couplings. Topographical clustering revealed that emotion-related PAC activity predominated in fronto-parietal and temporo-occipital regions. These findings suggest that while the brain utilizes general neural dynamics for processing abstract goals, emotional demands recruit additional neural resources to support it. Beyond elucidating how the brain integrates affect with abstract cognitive events, this study offers potential neurodynamic signatures and intervention targets for affective and cognitive disorders.
Perceivers' beliefs are critical to form social judgments. However, it remains unclear how the strength of these beliefs or predictions shapes social perception. Here, we investigated how the representation of social perceptions (trustworthiness and likeability ratings) and bodily responses [skin conductance response (SCR)] are modulated by prediction strength, using representational similarity analysis. In two samples of university students, stronger predictions led participants to judge identities as more trustworthy and likeable when identities' facial reactions conformed to their predictions compared to when they were violated. Furthermore, the representational structure of social judgments and SCR were associated with models of prediction fulfillment/violation. More importantly, the similarity between social judgments, SCR representations, and models of prediction violation was positively linked to predictions strength. These results demonstrate that predictions strength modulates how fulfilled/violated predictions influence social judgments and bodily responses, providing new insights into the mechanisms underlying social perception.
Vasopressin, a key molecular regulator of social behavior, is implicated in promoting self-protective responses to threats against physical safety and resources. However, its role in defending against self-view threats-common in social interactions and critical to well-being-remains unclear. This study investigates the neural mechanisms through which vasopressin modulates self-protective responses to spontaneous social comparison. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled neuroimaging study, 48 healthy male participants were randomized to receive intranasal vasopressin or placebo. Participants then underwent fMRI while rating their satisfaction with social evaluations and monetary outcomes assigned to a stranger, friend, or themselves. Compared to placebo, vasopressin selectively intensified contrastive emotional responses to social evaluations of the stranger, decreasing satisfaction with positive evaluations and increasing satisfaction with negative evaluations, relative to those of the self or friend. At the neural level, vasopressin reduced the neural distinction between the stranger and the self/friend in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), an effect that was stronger in more socially dominant individuals. Complementing this regional effect, vasopressin attenuated whole-brain multivariate differentiation and reduced functional connectivity from ventral mPFC to the temporoparietal junction and precuneus. Together, these converging neuroimaging findings suggest that vasopressin may increase the psychological salience of strangers and thereby modulate their neural representations, potentially engaging self-protective affective processes. Our findings elucidate novel neuropsychological mechanisms through which vasopressin amplifies emotional defense against social threats and offer insights into potential clinical applications for psychiatric conditions characterized by impaired self-protection.
Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying the impact of psychedelics on social perception and cognition may be instrumental to unravel their therapeutic potential. We conducted a pharmacoimaging study to examine ayahuasca's effects on a key theory of mind region, at the core of the third visual pathway (TVP)-the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), which is involved in facial emotion recognition and social perception. Twelve healthy participants (mean age: 40 ± 6.6 years; four females) completed a crossover design with three conditions: 0.5 mg/kg N, N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), 0.8 mg/kg DMT, and placebo, with 1-2 months washout intervals. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to assess pSTS functional and effective connectivity. The highest dose significantly increased right pSTS connectivity and directed modulation from visual (primary and extrastriate cortices) and mirror neuron regions (supplementary motor cortex; SMC). Subjectively, this enhanced social cognitive states, with a strong positive correlation between pSTS-SMC connectivity and perspective-taking experiences. Additionally, ayahuasca produced positive psychological effects, including improved perceived social relationships, at 1-week follow-up despite minimal acute effects. Our findings reveal a novel mechanism of action of psychedelics at early stages of social information processing, with enhanced integration of the TVP and mirror neuron systems. The pSTS emerged as a critical hub supported by top-down and bottom-up evidence, providing a basis for understanding ayahuasca's prosocial therapeutic effects.
Fairness is essential for balancing interests and mitigating social conflict. People's rejection of unfairness is influenced by contextual factors (e.g. empathic concern) and individual traits including social value orientation (SVO). This study examines how individuals with different SVOs make trade-offs between empathic concern and fairness without involving their own interests. Participants played a modified ultimatum game, in which they made decisions on behalf of either a beneficiary of a public welfare project (empathy) or a stranger (non-empathy), choosing whether to accept or reject allocation offers. Results showed that empathy increased participants' tolerance for unfair offers, particularly among prosocials, who accepted more disadvantageous offers than proselfs did. EEG results showed that proselfs exhibited reduced N1 amplitudes in empathic conditions, reflecting attentional avoidance. Moreover, in the empathy condition, an unfairness-related MFN was observed only in proselfs. The absence of this typical MFN response in prosocials provides neural evidence for their active downregulation of unfairness aversion to prioritize the interests of empathic targets. In addition, prosocials showed stronger parietal-occipital alpha suppression and reduced P3 amplitude in empathy contexts, indicating heightened attentional arousal and greater allocation of cognitive resources. These findings highlight the crucial role of empathic concern and SVO in fairness decision-making.
The same dataset can be analysed in different justifiable ways to answer the same research question, potentially challenging the robustness of empirical science1-3. In this crowd initiative, we investigated the degree to which research findings in the social and behavioural sciences are contingent on analysts' choices. We examined a stratified random sample of 100 studies published between 2009 and 2018, in which, for one claim per study, at least five reanalysts independently reanalysed the original data. The statistical appropriateness of the reanalyses was assessed in peer evaluations, and the robustness indicators were inspected along a range of research characteristics and study designs. We found that 34% of the independent reanalyses yielded the same result (within a tolerance region of ±0.05 Cohen's d) as the original report; with a four times broader tolerance region, this indicator increased to 57%. Of the reanalyses conducted, 74% reached the same conclusion as the original investigation, 24% yielded no effects or inconclusive results and 2% reported the opposite effect. This exploratory study indicates that the common single-path analyses in social and behavioural research should not be simply assumed to be robust to alternative analyses4. Therefore, we recommend the development and use of practices to explore and communicate this neglected source of uncertainty.
Neuroticism is significantly associated with various psychiatric disorders. Individuals exhibiting high levels of neuroticism are more susceptible to experiencing anxiety, depression, and other negative emotional responses. Research on the differences in macroscopic functional connectivity gradients among neuroticism levels and their associations with microscopic transcriptomics remains scarce. This study explores the associations between functional gradient and transcriptional expression in neuroticism across 109 individuals with low neuroticism (LNG) and 210 with medium-high neuroticism (MHNG). We analyzed functional gradient alterations in MHNG and their correlations with neurotransmitters, meta-analytic cognitive terms, and transcriptional patterns using partial least squares regression (PLS), involving similarity with major psychiatric disorders, functional enrichments, developmental stages, cortical layers, and specific cell types. MHNG exhibited functional gradient changes within the default, limbic, and visual networks, which correlated with higher-order cognitive terms and alterations in several neurotransmitters. We identified significant overlaps between PLS1 weighted genes and those dysregulated in schizophrenia and autism. Genes linked with gradient alterations were enriched in synaptic signaling, infection and metabolism, astrocytes, specific cortical layers, and developmental phases from early fetal to young adulthood. These findings offer a critical theoretical foundation for understanding the complex relationship between macroscopic functional gradients and microscopic transcriptional patterns across various neuroticism levels.
Human beings live in social groups, and processing group emotions is crucial for interacting with and understanding others' behaviors and feelings. This study investigated the cognitive and neural mechanisms of processing group versus individual emotional voices within the auditory modality. We examined ERP responses of 34 participants to group and individual voices across three emotional valences (negative, neutral, positive). Behavioral results revealed a significant interaction: group voices yielded shorter reaction times for neutral and positive emotions but longer for negative ones, alongside more positive overall emotional reactions. Electrophysiologically, group voices elicited more positive N1 and larger P2 amplitudes, with shorter latencies. More specifically, for negative and positive voices, group voices elicited larger P2 amplitudes than individual voices, while no significant difference between group and individual voices emerged for neutral voices. Furthermore, P2 amplitudes elicited by group voices were negatively correlated with participants' trait cognitive empathy. These results suggest that group voices elicit stronger early neural responses driven by an interplay of acoustic and social salience. Importantly, rather than demonstrating a direct empathy-specific neural mechanism, the observed negative correlation suggests that trait empathy may play a role in modulating the early sensory detection and attentional processing of complex, emotional group empathy.
Socioemotional skills emerge from coordinated behavioral, autonomic, and neural processes that continue to reorganize across development, yet how these systems jointly support emotion processing and mental health remains unclear. Using a naturalistic movie-watching paradigm, we integrated behavioral, cardiac, and fMRI measures in children (6-14 years) and adults (18-29 years), alongside independent ratings of experienced valence and arousal. Across age groups, positive and negative emotional content elicited changes in subjective experience, heart rate, and corticolimbic activity, including the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex. Despite these shared patterns, group differences emerged. Children reported more positive affect, showed larger heart-rate deceleration, and exhibited stronger recruitment of thalamic and lateral prefrontal regions, areas previously linked to sensory integration and cognitive control. Adults, in contrast, showed greater activation in hippocampal and posterior midline regions, which have previously been associated with memory and self-referential appraisal. During negative emotional content specifically, children preferentially engaged medial prefrontal regions, whereas adults engaged lateral prefrontal regions. Importantly, in adults but not children, models combining behavioral, cardiac, and neural indices explained substantially more variance in internalizing symptoms than any single modality alone. Together, these findings demonstrate that socioemotional experiences evoke coordinated behavioral, autonomic, and neural responses across development, while also revealing age-group differences in their organization and associations with mental well-being.