Decreased Amygdala Reactivity to Parent Cues Protects Against Anxiety Following Early Adversity: An Examination Across 3 Years
The human brain remains highly plastic for a protracted developmental period. Thus, although early caregiving adversities that alter amygdala development can result in enduring emotion regulation difficulties, these trajectories should respond to subsequent enriched caregiving. Exposure to high-quality parenting can regulate (i.e., decrease) children's amygdala reactivity, a process that, over the long term, is hypothesized to enhance emotion regulation. We tested the hypothesis that even following adversity, the parent-child relationship would be associated with decreases in amygdala reactivity to parent cues, which would in turn predict lower future anxiety
Article, 2019
Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging, 4, 201907, 664
2019