Page 16 - Like me, or else... - Michelle Achterberg

Chapter 1
as the Social Information Processing Network (Nelson et al., 2005; Nelson et al., 2016) and the Imbalance Model (Casey et al., 2008; Somerville et al., 2010). The Social Information Processing Network (SIPN, Nelson et al. (2005); Nelson et al. (2016)) states that social information is processed through bi-directional communication between three nodes: the detection node, the affective node, and the cognitive-regulation node (Figure 2). The detection node includes regions that have been found to be important to categorize stimuli as being socially relevant, such as the fusiform face area. Once a stimulus has been recognized as a social stimulus, it is further processed by the affective node, which includes - amongst others - the amygdala and the VS (nucleus accumbens). Finally, social stimuli are processed in a network dedicated to complex cognitive operations that is referred to as the cognitive-regulatory node, which includes prefrontal cortical regions. The SIPN model states that goal directed behavior relies on interactions between different (dorsal and ventral) regions within the prefrontal cortex, that process social-emotional information from the affective node (Nelson et al., 2005). Complementary, the Imbalance Model (Casey et al., 2008; Somerville et al., 2010) describes the mismatch in developmental trajectories of subcortical brain regions and the prefrontal cortex. Specifically, the gradual linear increase of prefrontal cortex maturation is slower than the non-linear increase of affective- limbic regions such as the VS. This induces an imbalance between bottom-up limbic regions and top-down control regions, which is most pronounced during adolescence (Figure 2). The imbalance model suggests that this imbalance between subcortical and cortical maturation hinders social emotion regulation and can results in risky, reward driven behavior.
Previous studies and theoretical models have shown that social emotion regulation is not solely dependent on isolated brain regions, but relies on a network of integrated connections between subcortical and cortical brain regions (Olson et al., 2009; Chester et al., 2014; de Water et al., 2014; Peper et al., 2015; Silvers et al., 2016b; van Duijvenvoorde et al., 2016a). Most of these studies have focused on adolescence or only included small samples of children. It therefore remains a question whether these integrated subcortical-cortical brain networks are already in place during childhood. The developmental phase towards the teenage years, in which the first friendships are formed, is an underexposed phase in experimental research. Theoretical perspectives have suggested that the increase of executive functions and maturation of DLPFC during childhood are important underlying mechanisms for developing a variety of self-regulation functions in childhood (Bunge and Zelazo, 2006; Diamond, 2013). Few studies have investigated the development of social emotion regulation during childhood, despite empirical findings showing that middle-to-late childhood marks the most rapid changes in executive functions (Luna et al., 2004; Zelazo and Carlson, 2012; Peters et al., 2016). This is a gap in the literature that needs to be investigated. This dissertation takes an important step by focusing precisely on the age of seven to eleven, the pre- to early pubertal years.
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