Poster #68 - Does Parental Attachment Predict Neural Responses to Exclusion by Own Offspring: An fMRI Cyberball Study

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

Ample work offers insights into the neural correlates of parenthood. Yet few studies consider brain activation during real-time parent-offspring interaction. In this fMRI study, we therefore sampled brain activation of preschool children’s parents during a novel event-related adaptation of the virtual ball-tossing Cyberball paradigm (Williams, Cheung & Choi, 2000), for the first time including both fathers (n=48) and mothers (n=40). 
As part of a research project assessing the neurobiology of caregiver-child relationships, parents were scanned playing Cyberball supposedly with their own child and an unrelated child (3T Siemens Skyra, 32-channel head coil, T2*-weighted GE-EPI sequence with multiband acceleration factor 3). The event-related Cyberball consisted of three main conditions as game phases where parents were included, excluded, and (newly) re-included respectively by two children. In separate sessions, parents participated in the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985) and filled out the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR; Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998) and the Caregiving Experiences Questionnaire (CEQ; Brennan, George, & Solomon, 2013).
In whole brain-group level analyses, we found that social exclusion in parents primarily activated brain areas involved in emotion processing and mentalizing (e.g., posterior cingulate cortex, posterior and anterior insula, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex), rather than regions originally linked to “social pain” (in line with recent meta-analytic evidence; Vijayakumar et al., 2017; Mwilambwe-Tshilobo & Spreng, 2021). 
Moreover, parent gender emerged as a variable driving the response to social inclusion and exclusion in our analyses of individual factors. Compared to one another, mothers activated putamen and precuneus more during inclusion, whereas posterior cingulate cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex were activated more by fathers during exclusion. These findings point out that the neural processing of inclusion and exclusion may take different routes for fathers and mothers, as they seem to recruit saliency- and mentalizing-related circuits during different events. 
In order to interpret these findings more confidently, we are currently extending our analyses by AAI, ECR, and CEQ to tap into the parent’s attachment representations and parenting behaviors. We expect that the categorical classification of attachment (secure, dismissing, preoccupied & disorganized) as well as the dimensional measure of coherence will be associated with the activation of specific key brain regions during inclusion and exclusion. We therefore hypothesized that neural responses to social exclusion will be stronger in brain regions associated with aversion/saliency in parents classified as insecure vs secure and particularly in parents classified as preoccupied. In addition, we expect that social exclusion will be associated with stronger bold responses in areas associated with emotion regulation and mental state representation in parents classified as insecure vs secure and particularly in those classified as dismissing.

Authors

• Dorukhan Açıl, Leipzig University
  Presenting Author

• Lara Puhlmann, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

• Lars Otto White, Leipzig University

• Pascal Vrtička, University of Essex