Looking into troubled waters: Childhood emotional maltreatment modulates neural responses to prolonged gazing into one's own, but not others', eyes.

Autor: Wever MCM; Department of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, 2300 RB, Leiden, The Netherlands. m.c.m.wever@fsw.leidenuniv.nl.; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, the Netherlands. m.c.m.wever@fsw.leidenuniv.nl., van Houtum LAEM; Department of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, 2300 RB, Leiden, The Netherlands.; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, the Netherlands., Janssen LHC; Department of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, 2300 RB, Leiden, The Netherlands.; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, the Netherlands., Wentholt WGM; Department of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, 2300 RB, Leiden, The Netherlands.; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, the Netherlands., Spruit IM; Department of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, 2300 RB, Leiden, The Netherlands., Tollenaar MS; Department of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, 2300 RB, Leiden, The Netherlands.; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, the Netherlands., Will GJ; Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands., Elzinga BM; Department of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, 2300 RB, Leiden, The Netherlands.; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, the Netherlands.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience [Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci] 2023 Dec; Vol. 23 (6), pp. 1598-1609. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Oct 25.
DOI: 10.3758/s13415-023-01135-y
Abstrakt: One of the most prevalent nonverbal, social phenomena known to automatically elicit self- and other-referential processes is eye contact. By its negative effects on the perception of social safety and views about the self and others, childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM) may fundamentally affect these processes. To investigate whether the socioaffective consequences of CEM may become visible in response to (prolonged) eye gaze, 79 adult participants (mean [M] age = 49.87, standard deviation [SD] age = 4.62) viewed videos with direct and averted gaze of an unfamiliar other and themselves while we recorded self-reported mood, eye movements using eye-tracking, and markers of neural activity using fMRI. Participants who reported higher levels of CEM exhibited increased activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex to one's own, but not to others', direct gaze. Furthermore, in contrast to those who reported fewer of such experiences, they did not report a better mood in response to a direct gaze of self and others, despite equivalent amounts of time spent looking into their own and other peoples' eyes. The fact that CEM is associated with enhanced neural activation in a brain area that is crucially involved in self-referential processing (i.e., vmPFC) in response to one's own direct gaze is in line with the chronic negative impact of CEM on a person's self-views. Interventions that directly focus on targeting maladaptive self-views elicited during eye gaze to self may be clinically useful.
(© 2023. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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