Does Neural Response to Parental Criticism Mediate the Association Between Parental Warmth and Adolescent Depression
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: The risk for depression rises during adolescence, particularly in adolescents with a history of anxiety. Prior studies have shown that parenting factors, including warmth, indirectly affect depressive outcomes through their influence on adolescent development of emotion processing and regulation. Yet, it is not known whether the influences of parental warmth on depression are attributed to the effects of warmth on the functioning of underlying neural networks implicated in emotion processing and depression. Using a longitudinal and ecologically valid design, this study assessed whether the functioning of neural emotion processing and regulation networks in response to personalized parental criticism mediates the relationship between parental warmth and depressive symptoms in adolescents with a history of clinical anxiety. Parental criticism is considered a salient negative and socially relevant stimulus for adolescents, given the increased parent-child conflict during this period. 47 adolescents (M=13.43, SD=1.37) participated in a study assessing the effects of child anxiety treatment on the subsequent development of depressive symptoms. Immediately following anxiety treatment, adolescents and their parent participated in a worry discussion task. Observed positive and supportive parental affect was coded by trained observers. Adolescents also reported on perceptions of parental acceptance. Two years later, adolescents completed a functional neuroimaging assessment. During the neuroimaging task, adolescents were presented with auditory stimuli of pre-recorded parental criticism. Neutral, non-personalized statements were also presented. One year later, adolescents reported on depressive symptoms. Neither parental warmth assessed behaviorally nor using self-report were related to adolescent depressive symptoms three years later. After controlling for multiple comparisons, higher adolescent-reported perceptions of parental warmth predicted lower neural activation in response to criticism, compared to neutral statements, in the left amygdala, bilateral insula, subgenual anterior cingulate, dorsal anterior cingulate, and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Mediation hypotheses were not supported. Findings suggest that when adolescents perceive their parents as warmer, their brains are less activated in response to criticism two years later, in both affective salience and emotion regulation networks. These results may indicate that warm and accepting parenting behavior plays a key role in shaping how the adolescent brain perceives threat within interpersonal contexts and regulates associated emotion.
Author: Rosalind D. Elliott
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2804300029