Knowledge Clips: Relationships and Infant Attachment

Attachment Across Species:
Attachment is a long-lasting social bond found across animal species, especially in humans, involving romantic partners and infant-parent relationships. The goal of attachment is to maintain close proximity to the partner, both physically and psychologically/emotionally, with the aim of providing comfort and security.

Infant Attachment Styles:
The strange situation test assesses how children respond to strangers in the presence of their mothers, revealing different attachment styles:
1. **Securely attached:** Proximity seeking and moderate distress after separation, with the mother appropriately responding to the infant's signals.
2. **Insecure/avoidant:** Ambivalent behavior toward the mother, unclear and inconsistent in seeking proximity, often associated with neglectful maternal behavior.
3. **Insecure/anxious:** Proximity seeking and high distress after separation, associated with inconsistent maternal behavior.

(Infant) Attachment Styles in the Brain:
A study of 50 young adults determined attachment styles during infancy, childhood, and young adulthood. The study found two key findings:
- **Self > Other:** More activation in ACC, thalamus, midbrain, subcortex, cerebellum, brain regions active in romantic partner interactions and human affect/reward.
- **Infancy > Childhood > Early Adulthood (Time Factor):** More activation in occipital regions, temporal lobe, parietal cortex, and limbic regions during infancy, decreasing with age.

Additionally, higher ACC activity during interactions with the mother correlated with more child initiation of social communication, positive affect, warmth, motivation, and involvement, emphasizing ACC's role in representations of attachment, emotional processing, and social functions.

Consequences of Deprivation:
Using Romanian orphanages as an example, children faced malnourishment, limited social contact, and caregiving, leading to persistent neurodevelopmental disorders. A study compared Romanian and British individuals adopted in their first weeks of life, showing significantly lower brain volume and volume reductions in emotional processing regions among deprived individuals.

Take-Home Messages:
- Long-lasting social bonds involve different attachment styles.
- Attachment styles correlate with functional brain responses in adulthood.
- Childhood deprivation can have lasting behavioral and structural effects.

Adult Attachment:
Similar to infant attachment styles, adult attachment is often self-reported. Studies, such as Vrticka et al. (2008) and DeWall et al. (2012), explore neural responses based on attachment styles.

In the social support condition, higher self-reported avoidance attachment correlated with decreased activation in the ventral striatum and ventral tegmental area, suggesting that avoidant individuals show reduced activation of affective processes.

In the social punishment condition, higher anxious attachment correlated with increased activity in the left amygdala, indicating enhanced processing of situations associated with emotional arousal and fear for those with higher anxious attachment.

A study by DeWall et al. (2012) revealed positive correlations between anxious attachment and activity in the dorsal ACC and anterior insula, indicating greater negative responses to imagined social rejection and interpersonal conflict. On the other hand, avoidant attachment showed negative correlations with the activity in dACC and anterior insula, suggesting lower activity in attachment-relevant experiences.

Take-Home Messages:
- Adult attachment mirrors infant attachment.
- Attachment styles link to variations in neural responses.
  - Avoidant: Lower response to social rewards and exclusion.
  - Anxious: Higher response to aversive situations and exclusion.