Attachment Representations and Brain Asymmetry during the Processing of Autobiographical Emotional Memories in Late Adolescence

Abstract

Frontal and parietal asymmetries have repeatedly been shown to be related to specific functional mechanisms involved in emotion regulation. From a developmental perspective, attachment representations based on experiences with the caregiver are theorized to serve regulatory functions and influence how individuals deal with emotionally challenging situations throughout the life span. This study aimed to investigate neural substrates of emotion regulation by assessing state- and trait dependent EEG asymmetries in secure, insecure-dismissing and insecure-preoccupied subjects. The sample consisted of 40 late adolescents. The Adult Attachment Interview was administered and they were asked to report upon personally highly salient emotional memories related to anger, happiness and sadness. EEG was recorded at rest and during the retrieval of each of these emotional memories, and frontal and parietal hemispheric asymmetry were analyzed. We found attachment representations to differentially affect both the frontal and parietal organization of hemispheric asymmetry at rest and (for parietal region only) during the retrieval of emotional memories. During rest, insecure-dismissing subjects showed an elevated right-frontal brain activity and a reduced right-parietal brain activity. We interpret this finding in light of a disposition to use withdrawal strategies and low trait arousal in insecure-dismissing subjects. Emotional memory retrieval did not affect frontal asymmetry. However, both insecure groups showed an increase in right-sided parietal activity indicating increased arousal during the emotional task as compared to the resting state suggesting that their emotion regulation capability was especially challenged by the retrieval of emotional memories while securely attached subjects maintained a state of moderate arousal. The specific neurophysiological pattern of insecure-dismissing subjects is discussed with regard to a vulnerability to affective disorders.

Imbalance between Emotionally Negative and Positive Life Events Retrieval and the Associated Asymmetry of Brain Activity

“…The effect of regionally specific brain activation corresponds to the results of the emotional memory study, which showed that both the degree of such activation and its lateral features depend on the individual characteristics of memory strategies [26] and the psychometrically assessed self-confidence in the choice of behavior style [27]. EEG asymmetries are modulated by both the induction of certain emotions and individual affective dispositions [2].…”

“…Therefore, in the future, it is necessary to determine which personality traits (for example, a disposition to use approach/avoidance strategies, emotional intelligence, or neuroticism) make the most significant contribution to this effect of individual variability in EEG correlates of emotional autobiographical memory. Indeed, it was found that attachment representations differentially affect the parietal organization of hemispheric asymmetry during the retrieval of emotional memories [27].…”

“…Another reason for the imbalance between the subjective scores of emotions and their reflection in brain activity can be a positive mood shift during the experiment, which can weaken the emotional differences in the retrieval of affective states. As mentioned above, the intense variability in personality emotional experience and emotion induction [2,26,27] can also be the reason for the lack of significant EEG correlates of self-rating of emotional vividness.…”

Brain activity to transitional objects in patients with borderline personality disorder

“…Attachment-related processing involves prefrontal and orbito-frontal as well as occipital areas in both hemispheres 35 , 36 . Nevertheless, neural circuits in the right prefrontal and orbito-frontal cortex might be more important for emotional evaluation of attachment relevant stimuli compared with homologue areas in the left hemisphere as found in earlier work 37 – 40 explaining why correlations with attachment anxiety and valence were only significant for the right frontal ERP effect.…”

Questionnaire measures of adult attachment correlate with frontal hemispheric asymmetry in sleep spindle activity

“…Since lateralization of sleep spindles was found to correlate with asymmetric involvement of hemispheres during online information processing in case of memory tasks (Nishida & Walker, 2007), we assume that it can also apply to certain trait-like dispositions in cognitive-emotional functioning that appear to show specific lateralization patterns as well (Harmon-Jones & Gable, 2018;Herrington et al, 2009;Kungl et al, 2016;Moshirian Farahi et al, 2019). We hypothesize that relative left domination of frontal slow spindle lateralization correlates negatively with psychological traits that are argued to be related to enhanced right or reduced left hemispheric frontal activity, namely attachment anxiety and trait-like emotional reactivity indexed by neuroticism.…”