Our research suggests that there are age-related changes in neural response to emotional faces and voices, in regions and networks involved in the processing of social information. We also investigate how the neural representation of these socio-emotional cues may differ in youth with chronic health conditions that are associated with social cognitive deficits, such as epilepsy.
Morningstar, M., & Burns, J.A. (2025). Probing puberty as a source of developmental change in neural response to emotional faces in early adolescence. Developmental Psychobiology, 67(2), e70037. doi: 10.1002/dev.70037
Morningstar, M., Billetdeaux, K.A., Mattson, W.I., Gilbert, A.C., Nelson, E.E., & Hoskinson, K.R. (2024). Neural response to vocal emotional intensity in youth. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 25, 454-470. doi: 10.3758/s13415-024-01224-6
Morningstar, M., Hughes, C., French, R.C., Grannis, C., Mattson, W.I., & Nelson, E.E. (2024). Functional connectivity during facial and vocal emotion recognition: Preliminary evidence for dissociations in developmental change by nonverbal modality. Neuropsychologia, 202, 108946. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2024.108946
Morningstar, M., Mattson, W.I., & Nelson, E.E. (2022). Longitudinal change in neural response to vocal emotion in adolescence. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 17(10), 890-903. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsac021
Morningstar, M., Mattson, W.I., Singer, Jr., S., Venticinque, J., & Nelson, E.E. (2020). Children and adolescents’ neural response to emotional faces and voices: Age-related changes in common regions of activation. Social Neuroscience. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2020.1832572
Morningstar, M., Grannis, C., Mattson, W.I., & Nelson, E.E. (2019). Associations between adolescents’ social re-orientation towards peers over caregivers and neural response to teenage faces. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 13(108). doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00108
Morningstar, M., Mattson, W.I., Venticinque, J., Singer, Jr., S., Selvaraj, B., Hu, H.H., & Nelson, E.E. (2019). Age-related differences in neural activation and functional connectivity during the processing of vocal prosody in adolescence. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience. doi: 10.3758/s13415-019-00742-y
Morningstar, M., Grannis, C., Mattson, W.I., & Nelson, E.E. (2022). Functional patterns of neural activation during vocal emotion recognition in youth with and without refractory epilepsy. NeuroImage: Clinical, 34, 102966. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2022.102966
Morningstar, M., French, R.C., Mattson, W.I., Englot, D.J., & Nelson, E.E. (2021). Social brain networks: Resting-state and task-based connectivity in youth with and without epilepsy. Neuropsychologia, 157, 107882. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107882
Morningstar, M., Hung, A., Grannis, C., French, R.C., Mattson, W.I., Ostendorf, A.P., Gedela, S., Englot, D.J., & Nelson, E.E. (2020). Blunted neural response to emotional faces in the fusiform and superior temporal gyrus may be marker of emotion recognition deficits in youth with epilepsy. Epilepsy & Behavior, 112, 107432. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2020.107432
Morningstar, M., Hung, A., Mattson, W.I., Gedela, S., Ostendorf, A.P., & Nelson, E.E. (2020). Internalizing symptoms in intractable pediatric epilepsy: Structural and functional brain correlates. Epilepsy & Behavior, 103, 1-11. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2019.106845