In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that common forms of psychopathology derive from complex interactions among neurobiological vulnerabilities and environmental adversities. These interactions can alter neurobehavioral development to yield progressively intractable forms of psychopathology across childhood and adolescence. This chapter focuses on neurobiological mechanisms of trait impulsivity, trait anxiety, stress reactivity, and emotion regulation/executive function. How these traits confer vulnerability to externalizing disorders, internalizing disorders, heterotypic comorbidity, and heterotypic continuity is described. Next, neurobiological mechanisms of treatment response are considered. Trait impulsivity and trait anxiety are highly heritable and derive initially from subcortical structures that mature early in life. In contrast, emotion regulation and executive function, which modulate trait impulsivity and trait anxiety, are more sensitive to environmental influence and derive from cortical structures that mature into young adulthood. Neurobiological mechanisms of psychosocial treatment response are represented largely in the cortex and its neuromodulatory connections with the subcortex.
Modulatory effects of dynamic fMRI-based neurofeedback on emotion regulation networks in adolescent females