Page 261 - Like me, or else... - Michelle Achterberg

Summary and general discussion
259
can predict adolescent behavior and further explore childhood as a window of opportunity.
Social communication of digital natives
Today’s children are the first generation to grow up with unlimited internet access, enabling to be constantly connected to a complex and intense (digital) social network. Despite the fact that social media is everywhere around us and used by almost everyone on a daily basis, very little scientific research has been conducted on the effects of social media on the developing brain (Crone and Konijn, 2018). The studies in this thesis provide a starting point by unraveling the neural mechanisms of social evaluation in childhood. An important question for future research is whether individual differences in sensitivity to social evaluation are related to individual differences in real-life (digital) social interactions. Numerous studies have used real-life social media monitoring (for example see Montag et al. (2014)), mostly in combination with questionnaire data. Although this can provide insight on behavioral correlates, the covert neural mechanisms involved in social media remain unknown. The novel approach of bringing together both real-life social media monitoring, as well as innovative developmental neuroimaging will result in cutting edge research and can provide insights through a neuro-mechanistic approach.
Conclusion
This thesis provides a comprehensive overview of the underlying mechanisms of social emotion regulation in childhood. The studies show that our brain is prone to signal for socially relevant information, irrespective of its valence. This network of social saliency is already present in childhood, indicating this might be a core social mechanism. The thesis additionally shows that social rejection is often followed by behavioral aggression, and regulation of these retaliation emotions is related to control mechanisms of the DLPFC. The results are in line with previous neurodevelopmental models, which highlight the importance of top-down control of prefrontal regions over bottom-up processing subcortical- affective regions. As complement to these models, the results show that the vast architecture of functional subcortical-PFC brain connectivity is already in place in middle childhood and suggest fine tuning of (social evaluation) brain networks across childhood, highlighting the need to incorporate childhood into developmental models of social emotion regulation. Neuroimaging research, specifically neuroimaging in children is prone to challenges and several methodological considerations need to be taken into account when studying the childhood brain. In spite of these difficulties, studying childhood brain development has the potential to provide important insights into a unique developmental window of opportunity.
9