Adolescents' depressive symptoms moderate neural responses to their mothers' positive behavior

S Whittle; M Yücel; EE Forbes; CG Davey; IH Harding; L Sheeber; MBH Yap; NB Allen

Journal article

Adolescents' depressive symptoms moderate neural responses to their mothers' positive behavior

S Whittle, M Yücel, EE Forbes, CG Davey, IH Harding, L Sheeber, MBH Yap, NB Allen

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience | OXFORD UNIV PRESS | Published : 2012

DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsr049

Abstract

The way that parents express their emotions during interactions with their adolescent children is important for adolescent adjustment, and predicts adolescent emotional problems such as depression. In the current study, we assessed whether adolescent depressive symptoms were associated with neural activity during exposure to their mother's affective behavior. Thirty adolescents (18 females, mean age 17.35, s.d. 0.43) participated in an fMRI task that used digitized video segments of their own mother's, as well as an unfamiliar mother's affective behavior as stimuli. Exposure to one's own (compared to an unfamiliar) mother's positive (compared to neutral) behavior was associated with activati..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Sarah Whittle Author

Chris Davey Author

Nick Allen Author

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Grants

Awarded by National Institute of Mental Health

Funding Acknowledgements

Neuroimaging analysis was facilitated by the Neuropsychiatry Imaging Laboratory managed by Ms Bridget Soulsby at the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre and supported by Neurosciences Victoria. The authors would like to thank the Brain Research Institute for support in acquiring the neuroimaging data, Oregon Research Institute for its role in the coding of family interaction data and the families who participated in the study.