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Investigating Pain-Related Avoidance Behavior using a Robotic Arm-Reaching Paradigm
Published on: October 3, 2020
Attachment avoidance modulates neural response to masked facial emotion
Thomas Suslow1, Harald Kugel, Astrid Veronika Rauch
1Department of Psychiatry, University of Münster, Münster, Germany. Thomas.Suslow@ukmuenster.de
Human Brain Mapping
|April 7, 2009
Summary
Adult attachment avoidance, a tendency to withdraw from relationships, is linked to reduced brain responses to sad facial emotions. This suggests lower spontaneous processing of negative social signals in individuals with high avoidance.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychology
- Social Psychology
Background:
- Adult attachment is characterized by avoidance, reflecting withdrawal from close relationships and reduced reliance on others.
- Early facial emotional interactions are crucial for developing attachment orientations.
- Humans possess an innate, rapid capacity for decoding facial emotional expressions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate brain reactivity differences to facial emotions based on attachment avoidance.
- To explore the neural correlates of withdrawal tendencies in adult attachment.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed on 51 healthy adults.
- Participants viewed masked images of sad and happy faces.
- Attachment avoidance was assessed using the Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ).
Main Results:
- Masked sad faces elicited activation in the amygdala, insula, occipito-temporal areas, and somatosensory cortices.
- Attachment avoidance showed an inverse relationship with primary somatosensory cortex (BA 3) responses to sad faces, independent of anxiety and depression.
- Lower spontaneous somatosensory cortex responsivity to negative faces was observed in individuals with higher attachment avoidance.
Conclusions:
- Reduced somatosensory cortex response to negative emotional signals may underlie the tendency to withdraw from close relationships.
- This finding aligns with the role of somatosensory cortices in emotional mimicry and social affiliation.
- Individuals high in attachment avoidance exhibit diminished spontaneous processing of negative interpersonal cues.
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