Department of Clinical Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, the Netherlands.
Department of Clinical Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, the Netherlands.
Neuroimage. 2022 Oct 15;260:119463. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119463. Epub 2022 Jul 10.
Eye contact is crucial for the formation and maintenance of social relationships, and plays a key role in facilitating a strong parent-child bond. However, the precise neural and affective mechanisms through which eye contact impacts on parent-child relationships remain elusive. We introduce a task to assess parents' neural and affective responses to prolonged direct and averted gaze coming from their own child, and an unfamiliar child and adult. While in the scanner, 79 parents (n = 44 mothers and n = 35 fathers) were presented with prolonged (16-38 s) videos of their own child, an unfamiliar child, an unfamiliar adult, and themselves (i.e., targets), facing the camera with a direct or an averted gaze. We measured BOLD-responses, tracked parents' eye movements during the videos, and asked them to report on their mood and feelings of connectedness with the targets after each video. Parents reported improved mood and increased feelings of connectedness after prolonged exposure to direct versus averted gaze and these effects were amplified for unfamiliar targets compared to their own child, due to high affect and connectedness ratings after videos of their own child. Neuroimaging results showed that the sight of one's own child was associated with increased activity in middle occipital gyrus, fusiform gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus relative to seeing an unfamiliar child or adult. While we found no robust evidence of specific neural correlates of eye contact (i.e., contrast direct > averted gaze), an exploratory parametric analysis showed that dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) activity increased linearly with duration of eye contact (collapsed across all "other" targets). Eye contact-related dmPFC activity correlated positively with increases in feelings of connectedness, suggesting that this region may drive feelings of connectedness during prolonged eye contact with others. These results underline the importance of prolonged eye contact for affiliative processes and provide first insights into its neural correlates. This may pave the way for new research in individuals or pairs in whom affiliative processes are disrupted.
眼神交流对于社会关系的形成和维持至关重要，对于促进强烈的亲子关系起着关键作用。然而，眼神交流影响亲子关系的确切神经和情感机制仍不清楚。我们引入了一项任务来评估父母对来自自己孩子、陌生孩子和陌生成人的长时间直接和回避注视的神经和情感反应。在扫描仪中，79 名父母（n=44 名母亲和 n=35 名父亲）观看了自己孩子、陌生孩子、陌生成人和自己（即目标）的长时间（16-38 秒）视频，这些目标直面或回避镜头。我们测量了 BOLD 反应，跟踪了父母在视频中的眼球运动，并在每个视频后要求他们报告自己的情绪和与目标的连接感。父母报告说，长时间直接注视比长时间回避注视会改善情绪并增加与目标的连接感，而且对于陌生目标，这些效果比自己的孩子更明显，因为自己孩子的视频后情绪和连接感评分更高。神经影像学结果表明，与看到陌生孩子或成人相比，看到自己的孩子会引起中枕叶回、梭状回和下额回的活动增加。虽然我们没有发现与眼神接触有特定神经关联的有力证据（即对比直接注视>回避注视），但探索性参数分析表明，背内侧前额叶皮层（dmPFC）的活动随注视时间的延长而线性增加（跨所有“其他”目标）。与眼神接触相关的 dmPFC 活动与连接感的增加呈正相关，这表明该区域可能在与他人进行长时间眼神接触时驱动连接感。这些结果强调了长时间眼神交流对于亲和过程的重要性，并为其神经关联提供了初步见解。这可能为亲和过程受损的个体或对开辟新的研究途径。
