Child Maltreatment and Neurobiological Underpinnings of Social Cognition

儿童虐待和社会认知的神经生物学基础

• 批准号: 9145091
• 负责人: Charlotte Heleniak
• 金额: $ 3.87万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-16 至 2017-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9145091
• 关键词: 17 year old; Accidental Injury; Address; Adolescence; Adolescent; Adult; Affective; Aggressive behavior; American; Amygdaloid structure; Anger; Anterior; Behavioral; Biological; Biological Markers; Biological Neural Networks; Brain; Brain region; Child Abuse and Neglect; Childhood; Chronic; Clinical Psychology; Cognitive; Conduct Disorder; Data; Depressed mood; Development; Distress; Emotions; Empathy; Ensure; Environment; Etiology; Evaluation; Exposure to; Fellowship; Fright; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Goals; Impairment; Individual; Insula of Reil; Intentional injury; Interpersonal Violence; Intervention; Knowledge; Label; Link; Mental disorders; Methods; Mind; Modeling; Morals; National Institute of Mental Health; National Research Service Awards; Neurobiology; Neurophysiology - biologic function; Pathway interactions; Patient Self-Report; Pattern; Performance; Prefrontal Cortex; Prevention; Preventive Intervention; Process; Psychopathology; Recruitment Activity; Research; Research Domain Criteria; Risk; Sampling; Severities; Shapes; Social Development; Social Processes; Strategic Planning; Testing; Time; Training; Variant; Violence; Youth; aged; base; cingulate cortex; cognitive neuroscience; cognitive process; cognitive task; experience; infancy; information processing; neurodevelopment; novel; physical abuse; public health relevance; relating to nervous system; response; social; social cognition; support network; theories

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Adolescents who are victims of interpersonal violence are at markedly elevated risk of perpetrating violence not only in childhood and adolescence, but also in adulthood. This is concerning, given that the majority of American youth have been exposed to at least one form of violence by the time they reach adolescence. Research examining how interpersonal violence exposure disrupts social cognitive processes beyond those involved in social information processing models remains in its infancy. Although deficits in empathic ability have long been proposed as a determinant of aggressive behavior, scant research has examined the social cognitive processes underlying empathy (e.g. moral reasoning) as potential mechanisms in the cycle of violence. To that end the proposed project aims to examine the impact of physical abuse, a severe form of interpersonal violence exposure, on the development of social cognitive processes involved in empathy, and their neural bases. We predict that exposure to physical abuse disrupts the development of specific processes that underlie empathy including emotion recognition, cognitive and affective theory of mind, and moral reasoning. We propose, a) that physical abuse disrupts behavioral performance on social cognition tasks as well as neural functions supporting these processes, and b) these deficits in social cognition are correlated with aggressive behavior. The proposed research addresses Objective 1 of the NIMH Strategic Plan by examining how altered neural function in regions supporting social cognition and the Social Processes Domain of the RDoC, may be a biological marker for aggressive behavior. The conceptual model will be tested by acquiring self-report, behavioral, structural and functional MRI data in a sample of 13-17 year olds, half with exposure to physical abuse and half without violence exposure. The sample will be recruited to ensure variation in physical abuse severity, chronicity and developmental timing as well as variation in the presence of psychopathology, allowing me to examine associations of physical abuse exposure with social cognition and neural function in adolescents with and without aggressive behavior problems. The proposed study builds on existing research on the cycle of violence by examining how childhood experiences of physical abuse influence multiple social cognitive processes and neural function in the networks that support these processes in adolescents. Identifying these mechanisms will not only enhance knowledge of how adverse environments alter neural function in ways that might increase risk for aggression, but will also indicate possible targets for preventive interventions aimed at reducing aggressive behavior in adolescents who are victims of violence. This fellowship will provide the opportunity to obtain intensive training in cognitive neuroscience methods-not a standard part of training in clinical psychology. Training in these methods will be critical to the evaluation of this conceptual model and proposed hypotheses.

 说明(由申请人提供)：成为人际暴力受害者的青少年不仅在童年和青春期，而且在成年后实施暴力的风险都明显增加。这是令人担忧的，因为大多数美国年轻人在进入青春期时已经接触到至少一种形式的暴力。除了社会信息处理模型之外，研究人际暴力暴露如何扰乱社会认知过程的研究仍处于初级阶段。虽然移情能力的缺陷一直被认为是攻击行为的决定因素，但很少有研究将移情背后的社会认知过程(如道德推理)作为暴力循环中的潜在机制。为此，拟议的项目旨在审查身体虐待--一种严重的人际暴力暴露形式--对涉及同理心的社会认知过程及其神经基础的发展的影响。我们预测，暴露在身体虐待中会扰乱共情的特定过程的发展，这些过程包括情感识别、认知和情感心理理论以及道德推理。我们提出，a)身体虐待扰乱了社会认知任务的行为表现以及支持这些过程的神经功能；b)这些社会认知缺陷与攻击行为有关。这项拟议的研究着眼于NIMH战略计划的目标1，通过检查支持社会认知的区域和RDoC的社会过程域中神经功能的变化如何可能成为攻击行为的生物标志。这一概念模型将通过获取13-17岁的样本中的自我报告、行为、结构和功能磁共振数据进行测试，其中一半接受过身体虐待，另一半没有遭受暴力。该样本将被招募，以确保身体虐待的严重性、慢性化和发展时机的差异，以及在精神病理学存在的情况下的差异，使我能够在有和没有攻击行为问题的青少年中检查身体虐待暴露与社会认知和神经功能的关系。这项拟议的研究建立在现有的暴力循环研究的基础上，通过考察童年遭受身体虐待的经历如何影响青少年的多种社会认知过程和支持这些过程的网络中的神经功能。确定这些机制不仅将加强对不利环境如何以可能增加攻击风险的方式改变神经功能的了解，还将指明旨在减少暴力受害者青少年攻击行为的预防性干预的可能目标。这一奖学金将提供获得认知神经科学方法的强化培训的机会--这不是临床心理学培训的标准部分。对这些方法的培训将是评估这一概念模型和提出的假设的关键。