Citation

Martinelli A, Kreifelts B, Wildgruber D, Ackermann K, Bernhard A, Freitag CM, Schwenck C. Neuroimage 2019; 184: 621-631.

Affiliation

Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Frankfurt, Goethe University, Deutschordenstrasse 50, 60327, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Department of Special Needs Educational and Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, University of Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Straße 10C, 35394, Giessen, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.09.066

PMID

30266262

Abstract

The tendency to interpret nonverbal social signals as hostile in intention is associated with aggressive responding, poor social functioning and mental illness, and can already be observed in childhood. To investigate the neural correlates of such hostile attributions of social intention, we performed a functional magnetic imaging study in 10-18 year old children and adolescents. Fifty healthy participants rated videos of laughter, which they were told to imagine as being directed towards them, as friendly versus hostile in social intention. Hostile intention ratings were associated with neural response in the right temporal voice area (TVA). Moreover, self-reported trait physical aggression modulated this relationship in both the right TVA and bilateral lingual gyrus, with stronger associations between hostile intention ratings and neural activation in children with higher trait physical aggression scores. Functional connectivity results showed decreased connectivity between the right TVA and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with increasing trait physical aggression for making hostile social intention attributions. We conclude that children's social intention attributions are more strongly related to activation of early face and voice-processing regions with increasing trait physical aggression.

Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Language: en

Keywords

Aggression; Hostile attribution; Laughter perception; Lingual gyrus; Social intention; Temporal voice area