Poster #15 - Dyadic Effects of Parent and Adolescent Mental Health Symptoms on Brain Activation During Error Processing.

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Integrative Statement

Emotion regulation (ER) is developed within a dyadic parent-child context (Morris et al., 2018). Even during adolescence, the parent and adolescent work together to regulate the adolescent’s emotions (i.e., co-regulation; Morris et al., 2018). Throughout the development of ER, but particularly during periods of co-regulation, symptoms of anxiety and depression likely influence a parent-adolescent dyad’s ER.

One feature of ER is the ability to regulate reactions to costly mistakes (i.e., error processing), a construct examined extensively in the cognitive neuroscience literature. Symptoms of anxiety and depression are associated with maladaptive error processing (Olvet et al., 2008), which may be due to poor ER strategies such as rumination and negative self-focus. In fact, anxious and depressed individuals show hyperactivation in self-referential brain regions, i.e., the default mode network (DMN; Whitfield-Gabrieli et al., 2012). Specific DMN regions are also considered important for emotion regulation and social cognition including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and precuneus (Li et al., 2014; Otti al., 2010). Thus, these DMN regions may be critical in the development of ER, especially during co-regulation. However, it remains unclear as to how DMN activity during error processing relates to anxiety and mood symptoms within parent-adolescent dyads.

To investigate this, we used hyperscanning fMRI with parents and their adolescent children. The cohort included 25 parents (mean age = 43, 92% female) and 27 adolescents (mean age = 15, 56% female), with 17 complete dyads. All subjects were psychiatrically healthy and right-handed. To assess symptoms of anxiety and depression, parents completed the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale and Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology. Adolescents completed the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders and the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire. During simultaneous fMRI scans, dyads completed a cooperative task with feigned error conditions in which it appears the other person made a mistake, costing the dyad five dollars. We used AFNI’s 3dttest++ (Cox et al., 1995) to examine adolescents’ and parents’ BOLD activation during feigned error conditions and how this related to the other dyad-member’s mental health symptoms. Analyses focused on the mPFC, PCC, and precuneus (voxelwise p < 0.005).

Increased parent mPFC, PCC, and precuneus activity was associated with lower adolescent anxiety. Similarly, increased parent PCC and precuneus activity was related to lower adolescent depression (Figure 1). Greater adolescent PCC and precuneus activity was associated with higher parent depression (Figure 2). Anxiety and depression measures were not significantly correlated between parents and adolescents (p > .05).

These findings support that ER is developed within a dyadic context and is influenced by symptoms of anxiety and depression. Parental activation of self-relevant or emotion regulation regions when confronted with their child’s error may represent an adaptive response that contributes to decreased adolescent anxiety and depression. In contrast, adolescents with more anxious or depressed parents exhibit increased activation in similar regions when confronted with their parents’ errors, potentially as a compensatory response to parent ER disruptions. Future longitudinal investigations are warranted to identify causal relationships between parent-child neural responsivity and dyadic ER.

Authors

• Kelly T Cosgrove, Laureate Institute for Brain Research
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer Silk, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kara L. Kerr, Oklahoma State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Danielle Deville, Laureate Institute for Brain Research
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erin L. Ratliff, Oklahoma State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kaiping Burrows, Laureate Institute for Brain Research
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andrew J Moore, Laureate Institute for Brain Research
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Tapert, University of California San Diego
  Non-Presenting Author

• Masaya Misaki, Laureate Institute for Brain Research
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jerzy Bodurka, Laureate Institute for Brain Research
  Non-Presenting Author

• Robin Aupperle, Laureate Institute for Brain Research
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda Sheffield Morris, Oklahoma State University
  Non-Presenting Author