Abstract
The parent-child relationship and family context influence the development of emotion regulation (ER) brain circuitry and related skills in children and adolescents. Although both parents’ and children’s ER neurocircuitry simultaneously affect how they interact with one another, neuroimaging studies of parent-child relationships typically include only one member of the dyad in brain imaging procedures. The current study examined brain activation related to parenting and ER in parent-adolescent dyads during concurrent fMRI scanning with a novel task – the Testing Emotional Attunement and Mutuality (TEAM) task. The TEAM task includes feedback trials indicating the other dyad member made an error, resulting in a monetary loss for both participants. Results indicate that positive parenting practices as reported by the adolescent were positively correlated with parents’ hemodynamic activation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region related to empathy, during these error trials. Additionally, during feedback conditions both parents and adolescents exhibited fMRI activation in ER-related regions, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior insula, fusiform gyrus, thalamus, caudate, precuneus, and superior parietal lobule. Adolescents had higher left amygdala activation than parents during the feedback condition. These findings demonstrate the utility of dyadic fMRI scanning for investigating relational processes, particularly in the parent-child relationship.
Highlights
Emotion regulation (ER) involves emotional processes and influences on the expression and experience of emotions (Gross, 1998)
With regard to associations with parenting practices, one brain region – the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) – had a statistically significant correlation between parents’ activation and positive parenting practices as measured by the APQ-Pos scale after corrections for multiple comparisons (Figure 3). This indicates that parents whom adolescents rated as exhibiting the most positive parenting practices in daily life had the highest vmPFC activity when receiving feedback that their adolescent child made a costly error
Results revealed how parenting behaviors relate to brain activation in response to an adolescent’s error: positive parenting practices, as perceived by the adolescent, correlated with greater activation in the parents’ vmPFC, a key region involved in empathy and emotion regulation (ER) and emotion processing
Summary
Emotion regulation (ER) involves emotional processes and influences on the expression and experience of emotions (Gross, 1998). This is done in service of a goal, whether this is a behavioral goal or the goal of feeling less (or more) intense emotions (Gross, 2015). Rates of major depressive disorder sharply increase between the ages of 15 and 18 (Hankin et al, 1998), and difficulties in ER have been linked with adolescent depression (Silk et al, 2003; Fowler et al, 2017). A detailed understanding of the neurobiological processes involved in ER during adolescence is critical for the development of prevention and treatment for both internalizing and externalizing disorders
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