Negative Overgeneralization is Associated with Pattern Completion in Peripubertal Youth

Negative overgeneralization is a dimension of anxiety whereby responses to one aversive situation (e.g., severe weather) spread to others that share contextual features (e.g., breezy day). We aim to sharpen mechanistic understanding of negative overgeneralization. In peripuberty, a time when changes in neurodevelopment potentiate generalization of salient experiences, these mechanisms may shape behavior and contribute to emotional health. In an emotional mnemonic similarity task conducted with youth, negative, relative to neutral, scene images were generalized more frequently. Negative overgeneralization was related to both greater and more similar patterns of activation in the CA1 hippocampal subfield and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) for negative relative to neutral stimuli. At encoding, the amygdala increased functional coupling with CA1 and mPFC during negative items that were later generalized. Negative overgeneralization is rooted in mechanisms of modulation at encoding and pattern completion at retrieval. Targeting these mechanisms during peripuberty could positively shape emotional health.