Poster No:
655
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Belinda Liddell1, Pritha Das2, Gin Malhi3, Mirjana Askovic4, Mariano Coello4, Jorge Aroche4, Kim Felmingham5, Richard Bryant6
Institutions:
1University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, 2UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 3Northern Sydney Local Health District, University of Sydney, St Leonards, NSW, 4NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors, Carramar, NSW, 5University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, 6University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Gin Malhi
Northern Sydney Local Health District, University of Sydney
St Leonards, NSW
Mirjana Askovic
NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors
Carramar, NSW
Mariano Coello
NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors
Carramar, NSW
Jorge Aroche
NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors
Carramar, NSW
Introduction:
Social difficulties such as isolation and loneliness are among the strongest predictors of poor mental health outcomes amongst refugees resettled in high income countries. Social integration stressors such as discrimination and exclusion have been found to exacerbate the mental health impact of past trauma by increasing risk for posttraumatic stress disorder amongst refugees (Chen et al., 2017). Building attachment systems may be an approach to mitigate these adverse effects. Previous studies have found that attachment priming facilitates emotion regulation brain mechanisms during threat of pain (Eisenberger et al., 2011), and buffer the impact of social exclusion on cardiovascular responses (Liddell & Courtney, 2018). Amongst refugees with PTSD, the positive effect of attachment priming on emotion regulation brain systems was attenuated depending of levels of grief related to separated loved ones (Liddell et al., 2022). To examine this further, this study investigated whether the priming of attachment figures modulated brain network connectivity patterns during experimentally induced social exclusion in a pilot sample of refugees resettled in Australia.
Methods:
During fMRI scanning, 44 refugees from diverse backgrounds played the "Cyberball" – a computerized ball tossing game where a period of inclusive play (3 blocks of 30 seconds duration) was followed by exclusion from play (5 blocks of 30 seconds duration). Participants believed they were playing with others connecting into the computer. Mental induction of a personal attachment figure preceded round 2 of the Cyberball by key questions and 2 minutes of mental imagery. MRI scanning was completed using a 3T Siemens Magnetom Trio Scanner based at the Advanced Research and Clinical High-field Imaging (ARCHI) facility in Sydney. A T2*-weighted gradient-echo echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequence (29 axial slices, slice thickness 4mm with 1mm gap, repeat time (TR) = 2000ms, echo time (TE) = 35ms, flip angle (FA) =70o, 64 × 64 matrix) was used to acquire 189 whole-brain volumes of functional data (including 5 dummy scans) for each Cyberball phase. Independent components analysis using GIFT (https://trendscenter.org/software/gift/) identified 53 active networks within the NeuroMark pipeline (Du et al., 2020). Subtraction analysis compared exclusion to inclusion blocks in the post-attachment round compared to the pre-attachment round to consider the impact of attachment on network connectivity during exclusion in a within-subjects analysis (p < .05 Bonferroni corrected). Secondary analyses examined the role of trauma exposure, PTSD symptoms, separation grief and attachment style on networks where there was an effect of attachment priming on exclusion.
Results:
The second round of the Cyberball saw distress levels marginally decrease (p = .069), perceptions of belonging marginally increase (p = .087) and significant increases in feeling liked by others (p = .046). Attachment priming increased connectivity in two networks during exclusion - a subcortical network including the bilateral thalamus and caudate (p = .002), and in the default mode network – principally the dorsomedial prefrontal network centring on the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (p = .003), but decreased connectivity in a bilateral occipitotemporal network (p < .001 Bonferroni-corrected) and right cognitive control network in the right lateral prefrontal cortex (p <.001 Bonferroni-corrected). Separation grief diluted the impact of attachment prime on connectivity in the cognitive control network, even after controlling for PTSD and other demographic factors.
Conclusions:
Findings suggest that attachment priming buffers social exclusion by boosting connectivity in self-referential and emotion regulation networks, and by reducing cognitive burden. Limitations include possible practice effects. This study supports the idea of a role for attachment figures in enhancing social stress coping amongst resettled refugees.
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Social Interaction 1
Higher Cognitive Functions:
Executive Function, Cognitive Control and Decision Making
Imagery
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
fMRI Connectivity and Network Modeling 2
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
BOLD fMRI
Keywords:
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Psychiatric Disorders
Social Interactions
Trauma
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Please indicate below if your study was a "resting state" or "task-activation” study.
Task-activation
Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):
Patients
Was this research conducted in the United States?
No
Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel?
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Were any animal research approved by the relevant IACUC or other animal research panel?
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Please indicate which methods were used in your research:
Functional MRI
For human MRI, what field strength scanner do you use?
3.0T
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SPM
Provide references using APA citation style.
Chen, W., Hall, B. J., Ling, L., & Renzaho, A. M. (2017). Pre-migration and post-migration factors associated with mental health in humanitarian migrants in Australia and the moderation effect of post-migration stressors: findings from the first wave data of the BNLA cohort study. Lancet Psychiatry, 4(3), 218-229. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(17)30032-9
Du, Y., Fu, Z., Sui, J., Gao, S., Xing, Y., Lin, D., Salman, M., Abrol, A., Rahaman, M. A., Chen, J., Hong, L. E., Kochunov, P., Osuch, E. A., Calhoun, V. D., & Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging, I. (2020). NeuroMark: An automated and adaptive ICA based pipeline to identify reproducible fMRI markers of brain disorders. Neuroimage Clin, 28, 102375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2020.102375
Eisenberger, N. I., Master, S. L., Inagaki, T. K., Taylor, S. E., Shirinyan, D., Lieberman, M. D., & Naliboff, B. D. (2011). Attachment figures activate a safety signal-related neural region and reduce pain experience. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 108(28), 11721-11726.
Liddell, B. J., & Courtney, B. S. (2018). Attachment Buffers the Physiological Impact of Social Exclusion PLoS One, 13(9), e0203287.
Liddell, B. J., Malhi, G. S., Felmingham, K. L., Den, M. L., Das, P., Outhred, T., Nickerson, A., Askovic, M., Coello, M., Aroche, J., & Bryant, R. A. (2022). Activating the attachment system modulates neural responses to threat in refugees with PTSD. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 16(2), 1244-1255. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsab077
No