Neurophysiological Correlates of Emotional Processing Following Early Adversity: Evidence from Resting-State and Task-Based EEG in Healthy Subjects

Early life adversities (ELA), referred to as severe adverse experiences that differ markedly from the expected developmental environment, occur during childhood and adolescence and require substantial psychological and biological adaptation, exert long-lasting effects on the neural systems and on the functioning of emotion regulation and cognitive control. Although not all individuals exposed to adversity develop psychopathology, early stress may induce subtle neurophysiological adaptations that increase vulnerability to emotional dysregulation later in life. This doctoral dissertation investigates how ELA influences both tonic and phasic aspects of emotion regulation and its brain functioning—examining resting-state and task-based EEG measures in healthy participants. In Study 1, emotional face processing was assessed through event-related potentials (ERPs) in a sample of healthy young adults. Results revealed that higher levels of emotional neglect were associated with altered amplitudes in P100 and LPP components, indicating enhanced perceptual vigilance to threat-related cues and reduced regulatory control during emotional evaluation. In Study 2, resting-state EEG data from the Healthy Brain Network were analyzed to explore associations between negative life events, cortical oscillations (alpha power, theta/beta ratio, and frontal alpha asymmetry), and the moderating roles of parenting style and coping strategies. Although findings showed that greater exposure to negative life events was not linked to alpha power, theta/beta ratio or frontal alpha asymmetry per sé, however, significant effects emerged when parenting quality and coping strategies were considered as interacting factors with negative life events in predicting neurophysiological outcomes, underscoring the moderating role of proximal environmental factors Integrating results across studies, this thesis supports the Latent Vulnerability Theory, which posits that early adversity calibrates emotional and attentional systems toward hypervigilance and regulatory inefficiency. By combining dimensional models of adversity, resting-state oscillatory markers, and ERP indices of emotion processing, the present work highlights how early stress is biologically embedded in neural dynamics even among psychologically healthy individuals. These findings contribute to developmental affective neuroscience by identifying EEG-based markers of latent vulnerability and by emphasizing modifiable environmental factors that foster emotional resilience.