Shaping internal working models : parental love withdrawal, oxytocin, and asymmetric frontal brain activity affect socio-emotional information processing

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to gain insight into the associations between experiences of parental love withdrawal, oxytocin, and asymmetric frontal brain activity (reflecting basic motivational tendencies) on the one hand, and (neural) processing of and responses to socio-emotional stimuli on the other. The first chapters focus on the neural processing of emotional stimuli, investigating whether experiences of love withdrawal (Chapters 2 and 3) and oxytocin administration (Chapter 3) are related to event-related potential (ERP) responses to emotional facial expressions accompanying feedback, within a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects design. Chapter 4 focuses on behavioral responses to emotionally relevant information: donating money to charity after viewing a video of a child in need. The central question in this chapter is whether asymmetric frontal brain activity, as a measure of approach-withdrawal motivation, predicts charitable donations, and, in addition, the possibility that asymmetric frontal brain activity mediates or moderates effects of oxytocin and parental love withdrawal on donating behavior is explored.