Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The social cognitive ability to identify another’s internal state and social affective
ability to share another’s emotional experience, known as empathy, are integral to healthy
social functioning. During tasks, neural systems active when adolescents empathize
include cognitive (medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex with the
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and affective (anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex)
regions that are consistent with the adult task-based literature implicating the default mode,
salience, and frontoparietal networks. However, task-based studies are limited to
examining neural regions probed by the task; thus, do not capture broader patterns of
information processing associated with complex processes, such as empathy. Methods of
functional connectivity capture broader patterns of information processing at the level of
network connectivity. Although it has clear advantages in identifying neural vulnerabilities
to disorder, functional connectivity has yet to be used in adolescent investigations of
empathy. Via parent- and self-report, deficits in either cognitive or affective processes
central to empathy associate with the most widely agreed on classifications of behavioral
disorders in adolescents – transdiagnostic symptoms of internalizing and externalizing.
However, this evidence relies exclusively on self-report measures and research has yet to
examine the neural connectivity underlying transdiagnostic symptoms in relation to
cognitive and affective empathy. What has yet to be known is (1) how the social cognitive
and affective processes of empathy are functionally connected across a heterogeneous
sample of adolescents and (2) the association of cognitive, affective, and imbalanced empathy with transdiagnostic symptoms. Addressing these gaps in knowledge is an
important incremental step for specifying vulnerabilities not fully captured via subjective
report alone. This information can be used to improve prevention and intervention
strategies. The present study will examine the functional connectivity of neural networks
underlying empathy in early to mid-adolescents and their association with transdiagnostic
symptoms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:IUPUI/oai:scholarworks.iupui.edu:1805/22726 |
| Date | 04 1900 |
| Creators | Winters, Drew E. |
| Contributors | Lay, Kathy, Cyders, Melissa, Damoiseaux, Jessica, Fukui, Sadaaki, Pierce, Barbara |
| Source Sets | Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
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