Decreased Amygdala Reactivity to Parent Cues Protects Against Anxiety Following Early Adversity: An Examination Across 3 Years

Publication Date

7-2019

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Amygdala, Buffering, Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Parent, Parental deprivation, Previously institutionalized

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The human brain remains highly plastic for a protracted developmental period. Thus, although early caregiving adversities that alter amygdala development can result in enduring emotion regulation difficulties, these trajectories should respond to subsequent enriched caregiving. Exposure to high-quality parenting can regulate (i.e., decrease) children’s amygdala reactivity, a process that, over the long term, is hypothesized to enhance emotion regulation. We tested the hypothesis that even following adversity, the parent–child relationship would be associated with decreases in amygdala reactivity to parent cues, which would in turn predict lower future anxiety.

METHODS: Participants were 102 children (6–10 years of age) and adolescents (11–17 years of age), for whom data were collected at one or two time points and who either had experienced institutional care before adoption (n = 45) or had lived always with their biological parents (comparison; n = 57). We examined how amygdala reactivity to visual cues of the parent at time 1 predicted longitudinal change (from time 1 to time 2) in parent-reported child anxiety across 3 years.

RESULTS: At time 1, on average, amygdala reactivity decrements to parent cues were not seen in children who had received institutional care but were seen in children in the comparison group. However, some children who previously experienced institutional care did show decreased amygdala reactivity to parent cues (~40%), which was associated with greater child-reported feelings of security with their parent. Amygdala decreases at time 1 were followed by steeper anxiety reductions from time 1 to time 2 (i.e., 3 years).

CONCLUSIONS: These data provide a neurobiological mechanism by which the parent–child relationship can increase resilience, even in children at significant risk for anxiety symptoms.

Copyright Date

7-3-2019

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Publication Statement

Copyright held by Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Callaghan, B. L., Gee, D. G., Gabard-Durnam, L., Telzer, E. H., Humphreys, K. L., Goff, B., ..., & Tottenham, N. (2019). Decreased amygdala reactivity to parent cues protects against anxiety following early adversity: An examination across 3 years. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 4(7), 664-671. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2019.02.001

Accepted Manuscript is openly available through the "Link to Full Text" button.

The published Version of Record is available at libraries through Compass or Worldcat.

Rights Holder

Society of Biological Psychiatry

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

Language

English (eng)

Publication Title

Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging

Volume

4

Issue

7

First Page

664

Last Page

671

ISSN

2451-9030

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