Parental bonding and gender influences adults’ neurological responses towards social situations : a near-infrared spectroscopy study.

Abstract

Early experience with caregivers have an enduring impact on one’s adaptive social perception and information processing, subsequently affecting responses to social situations. This study hypothesizes that positive parental bonding practices (high parental care and low parental overprotection) would be associated with brain activations indicative of higher responsivity towards human distressing vocalisations. Additionally, gender was postulated to give rise to differential levels of brain activation – the moderating effect of gender on brain activations to socially-related stimuli would also be examined. Parental Bonding Instrument was utilised to explore the extent of parental care and protection provided in participants’ early childhood. Subsequently, a functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy instrument was employed to measure prefrontal cortex responses towards various social vocalisations (infant laughter, infant cries, women cries, cat cries). Results revealed that brain activations were indiscriminate across the various vocalisations. Higher parental overprotection scores were related to a lower brain activation in middle frontal gyrus (MFG), intermediate frontal cortex, inferior frontal cortex and frontal eye fields, associated with language and semantic processing, coordination of actions, emotional and cognitive processing of language, and regulation of attention respectively. Subsequently, higher parental care scores were related to higher activation of anterior prefrontal cortex (APC) and lower rostrolateral prefrontal cortex activity, corresponding to higher intentions to act and lower certainty regarding the social situation. Males have higher activation in MFG and APC than females, implying higher emotional processing of stimuli. Interaction effects were observed – males are generally more susceptible to influences of parental bonding than females. Implications of this study were discussed.