The impact of early neglect on defensive and appetitive physiology during the pubertal transition: A study of startle and postauricular reflexes

Abstract

Objective This study tested the effect of early neglect on defensive and appetitive physiology during puberty. Method Emotion-modulated reflexes, eye-blink startle (defensive) and postauricular (appetitive), were measured in 12-to-13-year-old internationally adopted youth (from foster care or from institutional settings) and compared to non-adopted US born controls. Results Startle Reflex: adopted youth displayed lower overall startle amplitude across all valences and startle potentiation to negative images was negatively related to severity of pre-adoption neglect. Postauricular reflex (PAR): adopted youth showed larger PAR magnitude across all valences. Puberty: adopted youth showed diminished PAR potentiation to positive images and startle potentiation during mid/late puberty versus the opposite pattern in not-adopted. Conclusions Early neglect was associated with blunted fast defensive reflexes and heightened fast appetitive reflexes. After puberty, early neglected youth showed physiological hyporeactivity to threatening and appetitive stimuli versus heightened reactivity in not adopted youth. Behavioral correlates in this sample and possible neurodevelopmental mechanisms of psychophysiological differences are discussed.

Generalization of fear in post‐traumatic stress disorder

“…Beyond alterations in fear generalization, PTSD patients reported in general a higher threat expectancy and a reduced emotional differentiation between safety and danger cue indicated by a blunted startle response to the danger cue during fear conditioning. While this is in contrast to findings of deficits in fear inhibition with a higher FPS to the safety signal (e.g., Jovanovic et al, 2010), it has been shown that a higher frequency of trauma experiences and adverse childhood experiences may result in reduced startle amplitudes and a diminished startle potentiation in response to aversive events (e.g., Quevedo et al, 2015;Reichmann-Decker, DePrince, & McIntosh, 2009).…”

Postauricular reflexes elicited by soft acoustic clicks and loud noise probes: Reliability, prepulse facilitation, and sensitivity to picture contents

“…This is consistent with other studies reporting that adventure scenes do not modulate postauricular reflexes (Benning, 2011; Quevedo et al, 2009; Sandt et al, 2009; cf. Quevedo et al, 2015). …”

Characterizing the course of non-suicidal self-injury: A cognitive neuroscience perspective

“…Another study, albeit with a small college sample, has observed cessation of a physically aversive stimulus to be associated with a positive affective response and a reduced negative affective response, as indexed by the post-auricular reflex (PAR; Franklin et al, 2013a; Hebert et al, 2015; Quevedo et al, 2015) and startle eye-blink reflex, respectively (Franklin et al, 2013a). These findings were replicated in another study that included participants with NSSI (Franklin et al, 2013b).…”

“…One potential approach for future research in this area may be to evaluate how the self-reinforcing properties of NSSI change over the trajectory of chronic NSSI by assessing whether this trajectory is associated with an increase in PAR (response to appetitive stimuli; Franklin et al, 2013a; Hebert et al, 2015; Quevedo et al, 2015) specifically to self-harm stimuli over time. Another promising possibility may be to examine how phasic shifts in eye-blink rate (EBR) may change across the course of NSSI.…”