The research, published in JAMA Network Open, found that combining two kinds of brain scans can better predict which teens are likely to experience greater anxiety as they get older. The work sheds new light on how the adolescent brain responds to mistakes and why those responses vary from person to person.<\/p>\n
The teens were part of a rare, decades-long study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, which has followed participants from infancy through adolescence to explore how early temperament influences brain development and mental health. Many had been identified early in life as having what psychologists call a \u201cfearful temperament\u201d \u2014 a tendency to react shyly or cautiously to new people and situations. While this temperament is known to raise the risk of anxiety later in life, not all kids with it develop anxiety.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to know why some kids develop anxiety while others don\u2019t, even when they share similar early life traits,\u201d said Emilio Valadez<\/a>, assistant professor of psychology<\/a> at USC Dornsife and the study\u2019s lead author. \u201cBy looking at how the brain processes mistakes, we hoped to find clues about who\u2019s more likely to struggle with anxiety as they grow.\u201d<\/p>\n Scanning teen brains to forecast anxiety risk<\/p>\n To find those clues, the researchers asked the teens to complete a simple computer test designed to provoke small mistakes \u2014 pressing the wrong button in response to a quick series of arrows. While they worked, the teens\u2019 brain activity was measured using two technologies: electroencephalography (EEG), which tracks brain activity over time, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which shows where that activity happens in the brain.<\/p>\n Each method captures part of the picture. EEG is lightning-fast but fuzzy on location, while fMRI is slow but pinpoint precise.<\/p>\n The team scanned the teens twice, once at age 13 and again at 15, and developed a novel technique to fuse the data from the two imaging methods. This \u201cEEG-fMRI fusion\u201d gave a much clearer view of how the brain responds to mistakes and how those patterns change over time.<\/p>\n It\u2019s like using both your eyes together to get depth perception,\u201d Valadez explained. \u201cSuddenly, the brain\u2019s activity comes into much clearer focus.\u201d<\/p>\n Combined teen brain data that\u2019s greater than the sum of its parts <\/p>\n When the researchers analyzed the data, they discovered that EEG or fMRI alone didn\u2019t do much to predict changes in anxiety. But when they combined the two, the results were striking.<\/p>\n The fused data explained about 25% of the differences in how teens\u2019 anxiety levels changed between ages 13 and 15, allowing much stronger predictions than could be made solely from their early temperament, age, gender and initial anxiety levels.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was honestly a surprise,\u201d Valadez said. \u201cWe expected maybe five or 10%. But 25% is a big leap. I actually thought I had made an error at first.\u201d<\/p>\n The study also found that a teen\u2019s early temperament changed how certain brain areas were linked to later anxiety. For teens who were very shy or cautious as babies, more activity in one region \u2014 the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which helps the brain detect mistakes and potential threats \u2014 predicted greater anxiety later on. But another region, the posterior cingulate cortex, seemed to have a protective effect: Teens with fearful temperaments who showed more growth in this region\u2019s activity over time tended to be less likely to become anxious.<\/p>\n In simpler terms, how the brain responds to mistakes \u2014 and how that response evolves during a key window in adolescence \u2014 appears to shape whether anxiety gets better or worse.<\/p>\n Dual imaging could mean earlier help for anxious teens<\/p>\n The findings suggest that scientists may one day use brain imaging to better identify which teens are most at risk for anxiety disorders before symptoms fully appear. That could open the door to earlier, more personalized treatments.<\/p>\n \u201cThis study doesn\u2019t have immediate day-to-day implications for families,\u201d Valadez said. \u201cBut it\u2019s a step toward being able to predict anxiety risk earlier, which could eventually help us prevent mental health problems before they start.\u201d<\/p>\n The research also underscores the value of combining different brain imaging tools.<\/p>\n \u201cNo single tool can tell the whole story,\u201d Valadez said. \u201cWhen we integrate data across methods, we can get a more complete understanding of how the brain supports mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking ahead, Valadez and his team plan to explore whether similar predictions can be made even earlier in development \u2014 perhaps when children are as young as 8 or 9 years old \u2014 and whether other brain functions, like memory or attention, might help explain anxiety risk.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ultimate goal,\u201d Valadez said, \u201cis to read the brain\u2019s story early enough to know which kids might need extra support, and to give them that support before anxiety becomes a lifelong struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n About the study<\/p>\n In addition to Valadez, study authors include Santiago Morales of USC Dornsife; Yi Feng of UCLA; Stefania Conte of Binghamton University; John Richards of the University of South Carolina; Lucrezia Liuzzi and Daniel Pine of the National Institute of Mental Health; Marco McSweeney and Nathan Fox of the University of Maryland, College Park; Enda Tan of the University of British Columbia; George Buzzell of Florida International University and the Center for Children and Families; Anderson Winkler of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley; Elise Cardinale of The Catholic University of America; and Lauren White of the Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine.<\/p>\n Funding was provided by National Institute of Mental Health grants K23MH130751 and U01MH093349, and National Institutes of Health Intramural Research Program grant ZIAMH002782.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Potential for early detection: The findings could help scientists identify at-risk youth sooner, paving the way for earlier,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[84,103,61,60,87,413],"class_list":["post-100285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-brain","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-neuroscience","tag-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Scientific](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/valadez-teen-anxiety-instory.jpg\")
Scientists scanned the brains of teens at age 13 and again at 15 using EEG and fMRI, then combined EEG and fMRI scans to produce a more meaningful picture of brain activity at each age. (Image: Courtesy of Emilio Valadez.)<\/p>\n