Pascal Vrticka, PhD

This blog post first appeared on www.huffingtonpost.com on July 31, 2014.

Adolescence is a critical time period during human social-emotional development. It is generally associated with changes in teenagers’ brain structure and function, as well as behavior. There is, however, also a major environmental change occurring during adolescence that is less frequently mentioned in this context, namely the separation of adolescents from their family. During teenage years, time spent with family members drops while time spent with people outside the family context (e.g., peers, work colleagues, romantic partners, etc.) increases. This social-adaptation process requires adolescents not only to integrate new and diverse experiences in relation to the world and themselves but to resolve many disagreements and interpersonal conflicts. In a nutshell, one of the central developmental tasks teenagers are confronted with is the establishment of an accurate understanding of their changing social environment.

Being a social neuroscientist particularly interested in human attachment behavior and attachment style, one of my research goals is to better understand the neural underpinnings of the above-described social-adaptation process in adolescents from an attachment-theory perspective. In other words, I am asking the question of whether a teenager’s attachment orientation (or attachment style) — which is established early in life through interactions between children and their primary caregiver(s) — could potentially explain individual differences in how adolescents’ brains process social-emotional information. Despite the fact that we already know quite a bit about the neural signature of attachment insecurity in adults, it still remains largely unknown what a neural signature of attachment insecurity may look like in teenagers. Together with a group of researchers from the University of Geneva — including David Sander, Brittany Anderson, Deborah Badoud, Stephan Eliez and Martin Debbane — we therefore measured social-emotional brain activity in 33 healthy adolescents ages 12 to 19 by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and also obtained measures of their attachment style. The corresponding paper has just been published and is freely available here.

The adolescents’ task in the fMRI scanner consisted of rapidly detecting on which side of a white line there were more dots (see figure, part a). More important, however, was the feedback adolescents obtained after each trial (see figure, part b). The latter feedback was composed of a word (either “won” in case of a correct answer, or “lost” in case of an incorrect answer) and an emotional facial expression (either smiling or angry). While two feedback combinations were congruent (smiling face and word “won,” angry face and word “lost”), two feedback combinations were incongruent (smiling face and word “lost,” angry face and word “won”). This setup allowed us to investigate adolescents’ brain responses while they were integrating objective performance feedback (personal success vs. failure) with the social evaluation of their performance (emotional faces representing social support vs. disapproval). We refer to this integration as social-feedback processing.

Our main findings indicate that attachment insecurities in adolescents may be associated with individual differences in brain activation during social-feedback processing. Furthermore, such individual differences appear to be distinct as a function of avoidant vs. anxious attachment orientations. We found that attachment avoidance was linked to increased brain activity during congruent social feedback processing. In other words, avoidantly attached adolescents appeared to preferentially process social feedback confirming their objective task performance. Conversely, we found that attachment anxiety was associated with increased brain activity during incongruent social-feedback processing. The higher adolescents scored on attachment anxiety, the more they seemed to focus on social feedback that did not match their objective task performance.

During adolescence, adaptively responding to one’s (changing) social context appears to involve a certain sensitivity and openness to socially conflicting information. Our new fMRI data suggests that, on a neural level, teenagers with an insecure attachment style may process social conflict differently from their securely attached peers. In the case of attachment avoidance, our data indicate that social conflict may be given less attention (i.e., social conflict is avoided). In turn, in the case of attachment anxiety, social conflict may be given too much attention (i.e., social conflict is overrepresented). Both of these social-conflict processing strategies have the potential to interfere with successful interpersonal-conflict resolution and social learning.

High levels of perceived social conflict are consistently associated with children, adolescents, and young adults manifesting psychological distress and maladjustment. We therefore believe that confirming and extending our findings is of high potential (clinical) relevance. Future investigations should also address the question of how such altered social-emotional brain-activation patterns as a function of attachment insecurity in adolescents are related to the neural signature of attachment insecurity emerging in adults. Combining such knowledge will hopefully support the development of new (early) detection and intervention strategies in the context of attachment insecurity.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby first described a developmental psychological framework related to social interactions that has since become known as attachment theory. It states that, in order to survive, infants form a strong bond to their primary caregiver(s); they become attached. As infants grow older, this attachment evolves from a primarily biologically driven “survival instinct” into a sophisticated “cognitive-emotional social relationship processor.” A person’s mode of attachment, also called attachment style, determines what he/she will expect from social interactions, and how she/he will use cognitive and emotional resources for self-regulation during times of social emotional stress.

Central to the understanding of the concept of attachment is the assumption that all infants will become attached, but that such attachment can be either secure (i.e., “good”) or insecure (i.e., “bad”). It all depends on how the primary caregiver(s) respond to the infant’s attempts to establish a close social connection. Ideally, the caregiver(s) are available, responsive and caring in times of need. Infants consequently learn to trust in others and their own social emotional abilities; they can establish a secure attachment style. Unfortunately, such scenario does not always happen, allowing for the formation of an insecure attachment style in infants. If the primary caregiver(s) react in an unpredictable or inconsistent manner to the infant’s social approach signals, an anxious attachment style is bound to emerge. The latter is characterized by a constant fear of abandonment and need for reconfirmation due to a very low self-esteem. In turn, if the primary caregiver(s) is/are unavailable or unresponsive in times of need, infants will develop an avoidant attachment style. They learn to expect social rejection and fail to associate social interactions with positive experiences. Interacting with others may even be seen as futile or dangerous. Consequences are social-emotional closure and the denial for the need of social relationships. Some more information can also be found in blogs by Lisa Firestone (for example here).

Although the foundations of a person’s (secure versus insecure) attachment style are laid early in life, this process can have a strong influence on social emotional abilities and well-being throughout the lifespan, and even affect future generations. This comes from the fact that an individual’s attachment style is thought to remain rather stable from childhood to adolescence and adulthood, and may be transmitted from one generation to the next. Given that at least one third of people are believed to have an insecure attachment style and attachment insecurity is a known risk factor for the emergence of psychopathology (e.g., social anxiety disorder, or borderline personality disorder), attachment insecurity has a high potential for causing considerable problems in society.

In order to develop new detection, prevention and intervention strategies for social emotional difficulties associated with attachment insecurity, researchers have recently begun to investigate the neural basis of attachment style in humans. The main goal of such approach is to find neural markers of attachment insecurity in the human brain, allowing for understanding what may cause people to react with avoidance or anxiety to social emotional signals. Because it is easiest to establish such brain-behavior associations in adults, initial research has focused on adult populations.

Let’s first consider attachment anxiety. Converging evidence from adults suggest that this insecure attachment style is characterized by hyper-sensitivity to social emotional information in general, particularly so if negative. Anxiously attached individuals show high activity in brain areas that normally process social rejection and conflict, as well as maintain high arousal and negative emotionality. It looks as if anxiously attached people’s brains are constantly in a high alert state, monitoring the environment for potential signs of social emotional threats. Even if there are none.

Attachment avoidance, in turn, seems to considerably lower the brain’s responsiveness to social emotional information, especially so if positive. Avoidantly attached individuals show low activity in brain areas that usually process reward and prosocial motivation. This even appears to hold true for mothers seeing pictures of their own smiling infants, normally representing very potent inducers of reward-related social brain activity. It appears as if avoidantly attached individuals do not feel good when interacting with others. Even if these interactions are mutual.

Although admittedly reductionist (see here for more details), the above simplified description of the neural basis of attachment anxiety and avoidance nicely illustrates the strong influence the environment within which a person grows up in can have on social emotional brain responses during adulthood. These findings in humans furthermore nicely accord with data from animal studies (see here and here), the latter suggesting that such environmental effects can even override potential genetic predispositions for attachment insecurity.

The practical implications of the above-mentioned brain activations associated with attachment anxiety and avoidance are manifold. Firstly, we should be strongly aware of the fact that our behavior towards infants (as well as children and adolescents) can crucially influence their social emotional brain development, shaping how they themselves will behave during adulthood. Key elements of such awareness should be the maintenance of a stable, predictable and responsive environment within which children grow up in. Second, and associated with the first point, we should be more aware of our own attachment style to better understand our own reactions in the course of social interactions. This can help us to proactively change our social emotional behavior, or at least disengage from interactions early enough to prevent damage. And third, knowing more about the brain basis of attachment anxiety and avoidance, we can start developing new prevention and intervention strategies specifically targeting affected social emotional reward and threat behaviors and underlying brain circuits.

Ongoing research on the neural basis of attachment insecurity in adolescents and children will hopefully soon add more information, allowing for an early detection and prevention of, and/or intervention in the case of social emotional problems associated with attachment insecurity. The sooner we can act, the better.