Early threat experiences relate to reduced neural face discrimination in youth with emerging psychiatric symptoms: a frequency-tagging electroencephalography study

Abstract Studies linking childhood adversity with risk for psychopathology suggest a threat-related information processing bias in those exposed. We combined frequency-tagging electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking to assess automatic and implicit facial expression processing in youth aged 16–24 years with childhood adversity and emerging psychiatric symptoms (N = 52) as compared to healthy controls (N = 47). Neural discrimination of angry or happy faces from neutral faces was assessed via an EEG oddball paradigm. Neural responses and preferential looking towards angry versus neutral faces were quantified via an EEG multi-input paradigm with eye-tracking. Youth exposed to adversity showed reduced angry-neutral discrimination, which was specifically related to their threat but not neglect experiences and independent of concurrent psychiatric symptoms. When presenting angry and neutral faces simultaneously, controls showed higher neural responses to neutral faces but adversity exposed youth showed indistinct neural responses to both face categories. Furthermore, they showed increased neural responses for angry faces relative to controls. These results underscore the evidence of increased neural responses to angry faces in adversity as well as reduced neural threat-safety discrimination uniquely relating to threat experiences.