Page 87 - Like me, or else... - Michelle Achterberg

Heritability of aggression following social evaluation
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Introduction
Dealing with social evaluations and regulating emotions in the case of negative social feedback are important prerequisites for developing social relations. Several prior studies have shown that negative social feedback can lead to aggressive behavior (Chester et al., 2014; Achterberg et al., 2016b; Achterberg et al., 2017). This type of retaliation may be associated with emotional responses to negative feedback and a lack of impulse control. The capacity to regulate impulsive behavior increases from childhood to adulthood, which has been linked to the increased regulatory control of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) (Somerville et al., 2010; Casey, 2015). Indeed, prior studies in adults showed that stronger brain connectivity between nucleus accumbens and the lateral PFC was related to lower retaliatory aggression (Chester and DeWall, 2016). Moreover, increased dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) activity after negative social feedback has been associated to less subsequent aggression (Riva et al., 2015; Achterberg et al., 2016b). Therefore, the prefrontal cortex may be important for regulation of neural responses to social emotions and may signal which children are better able to regulate emotions than others. Middle childhood, ranging from approximately 7/8 years until the start of puberty, marks an important phase for regulating (social) emotions and developing social relations. Previous studies have mainly focused on the developmental trajectories of social rejection and acceptance (Guyer et al., 2008; Gunther Moor et al., 2010b; Silk et al., 2014; Guyer et al., 2016). At the same time there is a gap in our understanding of the genetic and environmental influences of brain responses to social feedback and regulatory responses. In this study, we therefore investigated the neural underpinnings and heritability of social feedback processing and subsequent aggression in middle childhood.
The way children respond to social feedback and show aggression in response to negative feedback has only recently been examined using experimental designs. Studies including children, adolescents and adults have used social feedback tasks in chat room settings to unravel neural responses to social feedback, namely social acceptance and rejection (Guyer et al., 2016). These studies point to the anterior cingulate cortex gyrus (ACCg), the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and the anterior insula as important brain regions related to social evaluation and social motivation (Cacioppo et al., 2013; Rotge et al., 2015; Apps et al., 2016). The dorsal ACC / ACCg was found to be activated in response to unexpected social feedback, irrespective of whether it was positive or negative (Somerville et al., 2006). Recently, we developed a social network aggression task (SNAT) to study neural responses to social feedback, both in adults and 7-10-year-old children (Achterberg et al., 2016b; Achterberg et al., 2017). Consistent with prior studies, the ACCg and the anterior insula were active during both positive and negative feedback in adults, indicating that these regions signal social salient cues (Achterberg et al., 2016b). These effects were
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