Abstract
Attachment styles hold important downstream consequences for mental health through their contribution to the emergence of self-criticism. To date, no work has extended our understanding of the influence of attachment styles on self-criticism at a neurobiological level. Herein we investigate the relationship between self-reported attachment styles and neural markers of self-criticism using fMRI. A correlation network analysis revealed lingual gyrus activation during self-criticism, a marker of visual mental imagery, correlated with amygdala activity (threat response). It also identified that secure attachment positively correlated with lingual gyrus activation, whilst avoidant attachment was negatively correlated with lingual gyrus activation. Further, at greater levels of amygdala response, more securely attached individuals showed greater lingual gyrus activation, and more avoidantly attached individuals showed less lingual gyrus activation. Our data provide the first evidence that attachment mechanisms may modulate threat responses and mental imagery when engaging in self-criticism, which have important clinical and broader social implications.
Highlights
Attachment styles hold important downstream consequences for mental health through their contribution to the emergence of self-criticism
Peak neural responses from the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC), Medial Pre-frontal Cortex (MPFC), PCC and the lingual gyrus were extracted from the whole-brain contrast as reported above and in the previous paper
Each region of interest (ROI) is reported in XYZ coordinates in a standard space (Montreal Neurological Institute) with coordinates as follows: MPFC (2 46 36), ACC (0 14 36), PCC (4 52 36), left amygdala (− 28 − 4 − 12), left anterior insula (AI) (− 26 10 − 14), and middle lingual gyrus (0 − 68 6)
Summary
Attachment styles hold important downstream consequences for mental health through their contribution to the emergence of self-criticism. A review of this fMRI literature has shown that the effects of self-critical processes such as rumination recruit areas of the brain which span the medialprefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices[7], regions associated with mentalizing and processing salient negative events[8]. Previous research has explored neurophysiological (fMRI) responses in subjects who recalled high and low criticism from their m others[18] Participants who recalled their mother as critical showed greater amygdala activation and less activation of areas associated with emotional regulation, as compared with subjects who recalled low perceived criticism. This is important because how others ( primary attachment figures) relate to you can significantly impact how one learns to relate to oneself. We anticipate our findings may provide insight into the coupling of neural markers of criticism, attachment styles and psychopathology, mechanisms that may be encoded during early childhood and could influence upon day-to-day self-relating styles and neural function during adulthood
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