New insights into brain activity patterns linked to emotional processing in adolescents with self-injury

A recent study reveals distinctive neural response patterns in adolescents with non-suicidal self-injury, highlighting altered emotional processing that may influence decision-making under stress.

Adolescents with non-suicidal self-injury show different patterns of brain activity when processing negative facial expressions, according to a Frontiers in Psychology study that paired an emotional version of the Iowa Gambling Task with EEG recordings. The researchers compared 32 adolescents with NSSI and 34 adolescents with depression, finding that the self-injury group made poorer long-term choices overall and showed a sharper behavioural drop under anger cues. The authors say this points to a link between emotional threat processing and impaired decision-making in young people with self-injury.

The study’s more striking result came from the timing of brain responses. In the earlier processing window, the depression group showed a stronger neural response to fear, while the NSSI group did not clearly distinguish between negative emotions. In the later window, the NSSI group showed a heightened response to fearful faces compared with neutral ones, suggesting that attention may become more strongly drawn to threat at a later stage. The authors describe this as a split between weaker early differentiation and stronger late bias, rather than a single uniform deficit.

That pattern fits with earlier work. A PubMed-indexed study in depressed adolescents with NSSI reported impaired response inhibition to negative emotional stimuli, while a 2024 Journal of Affective Disorders paper found altered neural responses to gains and losses in young adults with NSSI, linked to greater impulsivity. Other recent studies have also pointed to changes in emotion-related EEG signals in adolescents with self-injury and to weaker inhibition under interpersonal stress, strengthening the case that emotional cues can disrupt control processes in this group.

The new paper has limits. The sample was relatively small, both groups were taking stable antidepressant treatment, and there was no healthy control group, so the findings cannot show whether the brain patterns are specific to NSSI or tied more broadly to depression. Even so, the authors argue the results add to growing evidence that NSSI is associated with atypical emotional processing that may affect judgement in stressful situations, especially when social threat is involved.