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Maternal antenatal depression strongly influences child mental health but with considerable inter-individual variation that is, in part, linked to genotype. The challenge is to effectively capture the genotypic influence. We outline a novel approach to describe genomic susceptibility to maternal antenatal depression focusing on child emotional/behavioral difficulties. Two cohorts provided measures of maternal depression, child genetic variation, and child mental health symptoms. We constructed a conventional polygenic risk score (PRS) for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (PRSADHD) that significantly moderated the association between maternal antenatal depression and internalizing problems at 60 months (p = 2.94 × 10−4, R2 =.18). We then constructed an interaction PRS (xPRS) based on a subset of those single nucleotide polymorphisms from the PRSADHD that most accounted for the moderation of the association between maternal antenatal depression and child outcome. The interaction between maternal antenatal depression and this xPRS accounted for a larger proportion of the variance in child emotional/behavioral problems than models based on any PRSADHD (p = 5.50 × 10−9, R2 =.27), with similar findings in the replication cohort. The xPRS was significantly enriched for genes involved in neuronal development and synaptic function. Our study illustrates a novel approach to the study of genotypic moderation on the impact of maternal antenatal depression on child mental health and highlights the utility of the xPRS approach. These findings advance our understanding of individual differences in the developmental origins of mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Altered neural reactivity to emotional faces is associated with experienced maltreatment. • Clear differential effects for experienced abuse and neglect are found. • Age-dependent neural sensitivity during face perception is found in maltreated individuals. • Altered neural reactivity to emotional faces is not associated with maltreating behaviour. Abstract Altered processing of emotional faces due to childhood maltreatment has repeatedly been reported, and may be a key process underlying the intergenerational transmission of maltreatment. The current study is the first to examine the role of neural reactivity to emotional and neutral faces in the transmission of maltreatment, using a multi-generational family design including 171 participants of 51 families of two generations with a large age range (8–69 years). The impact of experienced and perpetrated maltreatment (abuse and neglect) on face processing was examined in association with activation in the amygdala, hippocampus, inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and insula in response to angry, fearful, happy and neutral faces. Results showed enhanced bilateral amygdala activation in response to fearful faces in older neglected individuals, whereas reduced amygdala activation was found in response to these faces in younger neglected individuals. Furthermore, while experienced abuse was associated with lower IFG activation in younger individuals, experience of neglect was associated with higher IFG activation in this age group, pointing to potentially differential effects of abuse and neglect and significant age effects. Perpetrated abusive and neglectful behavior were not related to neural activation in any of these regions. Hence, no indications for a role of neural reactivity to emotional faces in the intergenerational transmission of maltreatment were found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The impact of two types of oncologists' emotion-oriented communication on participants' recall of medical information was investigated, and the potential mediation by a reduction in emotional stress. Additionally, moderation effects by personal characteristics were explored.Methods: An oncologist's communication in response to a patient's emotional expressions was manipulated during a videotaped, scripted bad-news consultation. Three conditions were created: 1) standard communication, 2) emotion-oriented silence, and 3) emotion-oriented speech. Participants (N = 217) were randomly allocated to one of the three conditions. Measurements included information recall (free recall and recognition), emotional stress (self-reported and physiological), and personal characteristics.Results: Emotion-oriented silence (p = .002) and speech (p = .019) enhanced information recognition compared to standard communication. No differences in free recall were found. Emotional stress did not mediate these relations. Poorer functional health literacy predicted poorer recognition, but this was counteracted by emotion-oriented communication.Conclusions: By means of acknowledging, exploring, empathic and supportive statements, and attentive silence, the oncologist's communication resulted in better information recognition. How oncologists' communication impacts patients' information recall warrants further investigation, as this could not be explained by reducing emotional stress.Practice Implications: These insights will help educators to validate the relevance of emotion-oriented strategies, and encourage oncologists to adopt them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated associations of the Incredible Years (IY) parenting program with children's DNA methylation. Participants were 289 Dutch children aged 3–9 years (75% European ancestry, 48% female) with above‐average conduct problems. Saliva was collected 2.5 years after families were randomized to IY or care as usual (CAU). Using an intention‐to‐treat approach, confirmatory multiple‐regression analyses revealed no significant differences between the IY and CAU groups in children's methylation levels at the NR3C1 and FKBP5 genes. However, exploratory epigenome‐wide analyses revealed nine differentially methylated regions between groups, coinciding with SLAMF1, MITF, FAM200B, PSD3, SNX31, and CELSR1. The study provides preliminary evidence for associations of IY with children's salivary methylation levels and highlights the need for further research into biological outcomes of parenting programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rejection by parents is an important aspect of child maltreatment. Altered neural responses to social rejection have been observed in maltreated individuals. The current study is the first to examine the impact of experienced and perpetrated abuse and neglect on neural responses to social exclusion by strangers versus family using a multigenerational family design, including 144 participants. The role of neural reactivity to social exclusion in the intergenerational transmission of maltreatment was also examined. Exclusion by strangers was especially associated with increased activation in the left insula, while exclusion by a family member was mainly associated with increased activation in the ACC. Neural reactivity to social exclusion by strangers in the insula, ACC and dmPFC, was associated with experienced maltreatment but not with perpetrated maltreatment. In abusive parents, altered neural reactivity during exclusion was found in other brain areas, indicating different neural correlates of experienced and perpetrated maltreatment. Hence, no mechanisms could be identified that are involved in the transmission of maltreatment. Hypersensitivity to social rejection by strangers in neglected individuals underscores the importance to distinguish between effects of abuse and neglect and suggests that the impact of experiencing rejection and maltreatment by your own parents extends beyond the family context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of this paper is to discuss experimental research investigating the effect of physicians' affect-oriented communication on patients' recall of information provided during medical consultations, with a special focus on the mediating role of emotional stress in that relation.Methods& Results: A search of experimental research literature was conducted, resulting in six research articles experimentally investigating the relations of interest, all using a video-vignettes design. A summary of results is provided and discussed.Conclusions: The research reviewed in this paper provides evidence for the causal and mostly positive influence of several forms of affect-oriented communication on patients' recall of medical information. Results indicate that reducing emotional stress may not be the underlying mechanism through which physicians' communication influences patients' recall.Practice Implications: The obtained insights will help educators to teach evidence-based medical communication skills and to scientifically validate the importance of these skills for patients' recall of information. Advancing physicians' communication skills with evidence-based training will contribute to the professionalism that is the hallmark of good quality of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patients forget 20–80% of information provided during medical consultations. The emotional stress often experienced by patients during consultations could be one of the mechanisms that lead to limited recall. The current experimental study therefore investigated the associations between (analog) patients’ psychophysiological arousal, self-reported emotional stress and their (long term) memory of information provided by the physician. One hundred and eighty one cancer-naïve individuals acted as so-called analog patients (APs), i.e. they were instructed to watch a scripted video-recoding of an oncological bad news consultation while imagining themselves being in the patient’s situation. Electrodermal and cardiovascular activity (e.g. skin conductance level and heart rate) were recorded during watching. Self-reported emotional stress was assessed before and after watching, using the STAI-State and seven Visual Analog Scales. Memory, both free recall and recognition, was assessed after 24–28 h. Watching the consultation evoked significant psychophysiological and self-reported stress responses. However, investigating the associations between 24 psychophysiological arousal measures, eight self-reported stress measures and free recall and recognition of information resulted in one significant, small (partial) correlation (r = 0.19). Considering multiple testing, this significant result was probably due to chance. Alternative analytical methods yielded identical results, strengthening our conclusion that no evidence was found for relationships between variables of interest. These null-findings are highly relevant, as they may be considered to refute the long-standing, but yet untested assumption that a relationship between stress and memory exists within this context. Moreover, these findings suggest that lowering patients’ stress levels during the consultation would probably not be sufficient to raise memory of information to an optimal level. Alternative explanations for these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives: The ecological validity of video-vignettes design investigating patient-provider communication hinges on the engagement of analogue patients (APs) with the vignette. The present study aimed to compare engagement in two commonly utilized groups of APs, patients and disease-naïve individuals. Engagement was assessed by self-report and in the form of physiological arousal.Methods: Cancer patients (N=22) and disease-naïve individuals (N=24) were recruited as APs. APs completed the Video Engagement Scale after watching a vignette of a oncologic bad news consultation. Electrodermal and cardiovascular activity were assessed continuously during watching the vignette, and cortisol levels were assessed in four saliva samples.Results: Patients reported higher engagement with the vignette than disease-naïve individuals (t=2.46, p<0.05) and showed a larger blood pressure response (systolic: F=5.87, p<0.01 and diastolic: F=4.00, p<0.05). However, these differences disappeared after adjusting for age. No group differences were found on other psychophysiological parameters.Conclusions: Our results suggest that patients and disease-naïve individuals are equally engaged when viewing video vignettes. When group differences were found, older age turned out to be a more prominent predictor of engagement.Practice Implications: Researchers may consider other arguments besides APs' disease history when selecting an AP group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Background: Oxytocin is known to enhance recognition of emotional expressions and may increase attention to the eye region. Therefore, we investigated whether oxytocin administration would lead to increased orienting of attention in response to gaze cues of emotional faces. Methods: In a randomized placebo-controlled double-blind crossover study 20 healthy males received 24 IU of oxytocin or placebo. Thirty-five minutes after administration they performed a gaze cueing task with happy, fearful and neutral faces. Stress levels were measured throughout the study. Results: Oxytocin did not affect stress levels during the study, but significantly increased gaze cueing scores for happy and fearful expressions compared to placebo. No effects were found for neutral expressions. Trait anxiety or depression did not moderate the effect. Conclusions: Oxytocin increases orienting of attention in response to emotional gaze cues, both for happy and fearful expressions. Replication is needed in female and clinical populations. Effects of oxytocin on early, automatic processing levels should be studied in relation to previously found pro-social and behavioral effects of oxytocin. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Noradrenalin modulates prefrontal function, such as working memory (WM), and is associated with enhanced distractibility, and enhanced memory for emotional events and stimuli. The beta-blocker propranolol has been shown to reduce memory for emotional stimuli. Herein we describe investigations aimed at assessing whether the administration of propranolol would reduce the interference by emotional distractions during WM performance. In a between-subjects design, 48 young, healthy men received 80mg propranolol (n =25) or placebo (n =23), before performing an “emotional Sternberg task” with neutral and negatively arousing distracters. Compared to placebo, propranolol impaired WM at low load, however, it also reduced the interference by emotional distracters at high load. Furthermore, an explorative moderated-mediation analysis indicated that the observed propranolol effects on emotional distraction were partially mediated by cortisol. In future non-clinical and clinical memory studies using propranolol administration, cortisol elevations should be monitored to further investigate the potential mediating role of cortisol. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Introduction: Many studies have incorporated cortisol measurements when studying infant development, but descriptions of normal development of basal cortisol levels in large study populations are scarce. The present study aimed to establish norm values for infant basal cortisol levels and to examine the development of intra-individual variability in the first year of life. Methods: More than 2500 cortisol samples were collected in 300 infants at three different ages. At each age four 1100h samples were collected to determine average cortisol levels and intra-individual variability. The development of basal cortisol levels and intra-individual variability was analyzed with multilevel growth curve modeling. Results: Norm tables with 90 and 95% intervals are presented. Basal cortisol levels decreased gradually over the year. Intra-individual variability was relatively large and stable in the first half year but decreased towards the end of the year. Conclusions: The results of this study will aid researchers in evaluating cortisol data collected in early infancy. It also underscores the importance of taking intra-individual cortisol variability into account in studies involving infants. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Several studies have shown that stress and glucocorticoids can impair prefrontal-dependent working memory (WM) performance. WM is the ability to attend to the task at hand, and to maintain relevant information in mind during a delay while ignoring irrelevant stimuli. Here, it is investigated whether stress hormones impair WM by reducing the ability to suppress distracting, irrelevant neutral and emotional stimuli. Hydrocortisone (35mg) (n =23) or placebo (n =21) was administered to young, healthy men, who performed a Sternberg WM task with neutral and emotional irrelevant distracters shown in the delay-phase of the task, between encoding and recognition of the relevant stimuli for WM. Contrary to expectations, enhanced WM performance with higher processing speed and a reduction of errors was found in the hydrocortisone group compared to placebo. Moreover, hydrocortisone significantly reduced the distraction by emotional stimuli. These findings show that cortisol effects on WM are not unambiguous and contrast with previous findings on the impairing effects of cortisol on WM. Dose–response studies could give more insight into the specific modulating effects of glucocorticoids on suppression of irrelevant emotional distraction. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Background: While acute cortisol administration has been found to impair retrieval of emotional memories in healthy subjects, the duration of this memory impairment is still unknown. Propranolol, on the other hand, may impair the reconsolidation of emotional memories during reactivation, although human studies examining such effects are scarce. The present investigation was therefore undertaken to examine the immediate and prolonged effects of a single administered dose of cortisol or propranolol on memory retrieval in a double-blind placebo controlled design. Methods: Eighty-five healthy male participants were asked to retrieve previously learned emotional and neutral information after ingestion of 35mg cortisol, 80mg propranolol or placebo. After a washout period of 1 week, recall was again tested. Results: Memory retrieval of neutral and emotional information was impaired by a single dose of cortisol compared to placebo. The memory impairment due to cortisol remained, even after a washout period of 1 week. No immediate or prolonged effects of propranolol on memory retrieval were found, despite significant reductions in sympathetic arousal. Conclusions: These results lend support to the hypothesis that cortisol is able to attenuate (emotional) memory recall in men over longer time spans and may therefore augment the treatment of disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder and phobias, but do not clarify the mechanism(s) through which propranolol exerts its therapeutic effects. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Previous studies have found impairing effects of stress hormones on memory retrieval. So far, it is unknown whether these impairments are temporary, persistent throughout time, or whether the strength of the memory trace changes after retrieval because of the effects of stress hormones on memory processes during retrieval. In the present study, delayed cued recall (6 months after initial learning) was compared between male participants who had retrieved previously learned word pairs during stress or a control condition. Retrieval (with or without stress) had taken place either 1 day or 5 weeks after initial encoding. The group that had retrieved words under stress 5 weeks after encoding performed worse on long-term recall than the comparable control group. However, when words were retrieved under stress 1 day after encoding, no long-term effect was found, although performance at 6 months in relation to performance under stress was slightly increased compared to the control group. These results support previous findings in animals that stress may affect memory during reactivation. It further suggests that time intervals between encoding and reactivation may play an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this study the effects of stress-induced cortisol increases on long-term memory retrieval during and after acute psychosocial stress were examined. Seventy male students were exposed to either a psychosocial stress task or to a non-stressful control task. During and after this task, retrieval was tested for idiosyncratic emotionally negative and neutral word pair associations that were learned 1 day or 5 weeks earlier. Within the stress condition, retrieval of negative words, 5 weeks after learning, was impaired both during and after the stress task compared to the control group. Further, during the stress task, when sympathetic activity was enhanced, impaired retrieval of both neutral and emotional words was significantly related to enhanced cortisol response. In contrast, after the stress task, when cortisol levels were still increased but sympathetic activity was low again, no association was found between cortisol increase and retrieval of either neutral or emotional material. These results are in line with the previous animal research showing that when arousal is high, cortisol increase can impair memory retrieval. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objectives: The current study aimed to examine: (1.1) causal beliefs about adolescent depression in a sample of adolescents with a clinical depression and their mothers and fathers; (1.2) within‐family overlap of causal beliefs; (2.1) mothers' and fathers' reflected causal beliefs about their child's perspective; (2.2) the accuracy of mothers' and fathers' reflected causal beliefs as related to their child's causal beliefs. Design: Qualitative study using a within‐family approach. Methods: Adolescents with a current clinical depression (MDD/dysthymia; N = 34) and their parents (N = 34 mothers, N = 26 fathers) were independently interviewed about their causal beliefs about the adolescents' depression. Parents were additionally interviewed about their perception of their child's causal beliefs (i.e., reflected causal beliefs). Results: The causal beliefs most frequently mentioned by adolescents, mothers and fathers are: characteristics of the child, social factors, school and various stressful experiences. Parent–child overlap was relatively low, specifically for the themes of bewilderment, cumulative effect and stressful life events, whereas overlap was relatively high for themes of social factors, school and stressful experiences outside of the family. Parents were relatively accurate in their reflected causal beliefs, but tended to underestimate their child's insights into possible causes of their depression. Accuracy of parents' reflected causal beliefs was particularly low for the theme cumulative effect and high for social factors. Conclusions: The various causal beliefs of adolescents and their parents could be used in therapeutic setting. Future research could examine whether (guided) conversations may promote alignment within families and treatment efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Internalizing symptoms associate with epigenetic age acceleration in children. • Externalizing symptoms do not show this association. • Epigenetic age acceleration was based on the Horvath clock. • Childhood psychiatric symptoms were longitudinally assessed from age 2.5 to 10. Childhood psychiatric symptoms may be associated with advanced biological aging. This study examined whether epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) associates with internalizing and externalizing symptoms that were prospectively collected across childhood in a longitudinal cohort study. At age 6 buccal epithelial cells from 148 children (69 girls) were collected to survey genome-wide DNA methylation. EAA was estimated using the Horvath clock. Internalizing symptoms at ages 2.5 and 4 years significantly predicted higher EAA at age 6, which in turn was significantly associated with internalizing symptoms at ages 6–10 years. Similar trends for externalizing symptoms did not reach statistical significance. These findings indicate advanced biological aging in relation to child mental health and may help better identify those at risk for lasting impairments associated with internalizing disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eye contact improves mood, facilitates connectedness, and is assumed to strengthen the parent–child bond. Adolescent depression is linked to difficulties in social interactions, the parent–child bond included. Our goal was to elucidate adolescents' affective and neural responses to prolonged eye contact with one's parent in nondepressed adolescents (HC) and how these responses are affected in depressed adolescents. While in the scanner, 59 nondepressed and 19 depressed adolescents were asked to make eye contact with their parent, an unfamiliar peer, an unfamiliar adult, and themselves by using videos of prolonged direct and averted gaze, as an approximation of eye contact. After each trial, adolescents reported on their mood and feelings of connectedness, and eye movements and BOLD-responses were assessed. In HCs, eye contact boosted mood and feelings of connectedness and increased activity in inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), temporal pole, and superior frontal gyrus. Unlike HCs, eye contact did not boost the mood of depressed adolescents. While HCs reported increased mood and feelings of connectedness to the sight of their parent versus others, depressed adolescents did not. Depressed adolescents exhibited blunted overall IFG activity. These findings show that adolescents are particularly sensitive to eye contact and respond strongly to the sight of their parents. This sensitivity seems to be blunted in depressed adolescents. For clinical purposes, it is important to gain a better understanding of how the responsivity to eye contact in general and with their parents in particular, can be restored in adolescents with depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early caregiving environment can have lasting effects on child mental health. Animal models suggest that glucocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C1) DNA methylation plays a mediating role in linking more responsive caregiving to improved behavioral outcomes by its impact on the stress regulatory system. In this longitudinal study, we examined whether children's NR3C1 methylation levels mediate an effect of maternal sensitivity in infancy on levels of child internalizing and externalizing behavior in a community sample. Maternal sensitivity of 145 mothers was rated at infant age 5 weeks, 12 months, and 30 months by observing mother–infant interactions. Buccal DNA methylation was assessed in the same children at age 6 years and maternal-reported internalizing and externalizing behavior was assessed at age 6 and 10 years. Higher sensitivity at age 5 weeks significantly predicted lower DNA methylation levels at two NR3C1 CpG loci, although methylation levels at these loci did not mediate an effect of maternal sensitivity on levels of child internalizing and externalizing behavior. Overall, the study provides evidence that maternal sensitivity in early infancy is associated with DNA methylation levels at loci involved in stress regulation, but the significance of this finding for child mental health remains unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Parent-adolescent interactions, particularly parental criticism and praise, have previously been identified as factors relevant to self-concept development and, when negative, to adolescent depression. Yet, whether adolescents with depression show aberrant emotional and neural reactivity to parental criticism and praise is understudied. Methods: Adolescents with depression (n = 20) and healthy controls (n = 59) received feedback supposedly provided by their mother or father in the form of negative ('untrustworthy'), neutral ('chaotic'), and positive ('respectful') personality evaluations while in an MRI-scanner. After each feedback word, adolescents reported their mood. Beforehand, adolescents had rated whether these personality evaluations matched their self-views. Results: In both groups, mood decreased after criticism and increased after praise. Adolescents with depression reported blunted mood responses after praise, whereas there were no mood differences after criticism. Neuroimaging analyses revealed that adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls) exhibited increased activity in response to criticism in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, temporal pole, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus. Praise consistent with adolescents' self-views improved mood independent of depression status, while criticism matching self-views resulted in smaller mood increases in adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls). Exploratory analyses indicated that adolescents with depression recalled criticism (v. praise) more. Conclusions: Adolescents with depression might be especially attentive to parental criticism, as indexed by increased sgACC and hippocampus activity, and memorize this criticism more. Together with lower positive impact of praise, these findings suggest that cognitive biases in adolescent depression may affect how parental feedback is processed, and may be fed into their self-views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current study a three-generational design was used to investigate intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment (ITCM) using multiple sources of information on child maltreatment: mothers, fathers and children. A total of 395 individuals from 63 families reported on maltreatment. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to combine data from mother, father and child about maltreatment that the child had experienced. This established components reflecting the convergent as well as the unique reports of father, mother and child on the occurrence of maltreatment. Next, we tested ITCM using the multi-informant approach and compared the results to those of two more common approaches: ITCM based on one reporter and ITCM based on different reporters from each generation. Results of our multi-informant approach showed that a component reflecting convergence between mother, father, and child reports explained most of the variance in experienced maltreatment. For abuse, intergenerational transmission was consistently found across approaches. In contrast, intergenerational transmission of neglect was only found using the perspective of a single reporter, indicating that transmission of neglect might be driven by reporter effects. In conclusion, the present results suggest that including multiple informants may be necessary to obtain more valid estimates of ITCM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most prevalent nonverbal, social phenomena known to automatically elicit self- and other-referential processes is eye contact. By its negative effects on the perception of social safety and views about the self and others, childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM) may fundamentally affect these processes. To investigate whether the socioaffective consequences of CEM may become visible in response to (prolonged) eye gaze, 79 adult participants (mean [M]age = 49.87, standard deviation [SD]age = 4.62) viewed videos with direct and averted gaze of an unfamiliar other and themselves while we recorded self-reported mood, eye movements using eye-tracking, and markers of neural activity using fMRI. Participants who reported higher levels of CEM exhibited increased activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex to one's own, but not to others', direct gaze. Furthermore, in contrast to those who reported fewer of such experiences, they did not report a better mood in response to a direct gaze of self and others, despite equivalent amounts of time spent looking into their own and other peoples' eyes. The fact that CEM is associated with enhanced neural activation in a brain area that is crucially involved in self-referential processing (i.e., vmPFC) in response to one's own direct gaze is in line with the chronic negative impact of CEM on a person's self-views. Interventions that directly focus on targeting maladaptive self-views elicited during eye gaze to self may be clinically useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is an ongoing debate about the validity of the A1 criterion of PTSD. Whereas the DSM-5 has opted for a more stringent A1 criterion, the ICD-11 will leave it out as a key criterion. Objective: Here we investigated whether formal DSM-IV-TR traumatic (A1) and stressful (non-A1) events differ with regard to PTSD symptom profiles, and whether there is a gender difference in this respect. Method: This was examined in a large, mostly clinical sample from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (n = 1433). Participants described their most bothersome (index) event and were assigned to either an A1 or non-A1 event group according to this index event. Results: Remarkably, in men PTSD symptoms were even more severe after non-A1 than A1 events, whereas in women symptoms were equally severe after non-A1 and A1 events. Moreover, while women showed significantly higher PTSD symptoms after A1 events than men (29.9 versus 15.4% met PTSD criteria), there was no gender difference after non-A1 events (women: 28.2%; men: 31.3%). Furthermore, anxiety and perceived impact were higher in women than men, which was associated with PTSD symptom severity. Conclusion: In sum, while women showed similar levels of PTSD symptoms after both event types, men reported even higher levels of PTSD symptoms after non-A1 than A1 events. These findings shed a new light on the role of gender in PTSD symptomatology and the clinical usefulness of the A1 criterion. Planteamiento: Los recuerdos intrusivos de trauma son un síntoma clave del trastorno por estrés postraumático (TEPT), por lo que interrumpir su recurrencia es muy importante. El desarrollo de las intrusiones fue obstaculizado por intervenciones visuoespaciales administradas hasta 24 horas después del trauma analógico. Se desconoce si las intervenciones pueden ser aplicadas posteriormente, y si la modalidad o la carga de la memoria de trabajo son factores cruciales. Objetivos: Este estudio intenta probar: 1) si una tarea visuoespacial daría lugar a menos intrusiones en comparación con un grupo solamente de reactivación cuando se aplicara después de la reactivación del recuerdo 4 días después de la exposición al trauma analógico (replicación extendida); 2) si ambas tareas)es decir, una dirigida a ser visuoespacial, una más verbal) darían lugar a menos intrusiones que el grupo solamente de reactivación (efecto de la intervención), y 3) si la supuesta modalidad de la tarea (visuoespacial o verbal) es un componente crítico (efecto de la modalidad). Método: Cincuenta y cuatro participantes fueron asignados aleatoriamente a reactivación + Tetris (visuospatial), reactivación + juegos de palabras (verbales), o sólo reactivación (sin tarea). Vieron una película aversiva (día 0) y registraron recuerdos intrusivos de la película en el diario A. El día 4, se reactivó el recuerdo, después de lo cual los participantes jugaron al Tetris, a juegos de palabras, o no hicieron ninguna tarea durante 10 minutos. Luego escribieron en un segundo diario (B). Las hipótesis informativas fueron evaluadas utilizando los factores de Bayes. Resultados: Reactivación + Tetris y reactivación + juegos de palabras resultaron en relativamente menos intrusiones desde el último día del diario A hasta el primer día del diario B que solo reactivación (objetivo 1 y 2). Por tanto, ambas tareas fueron eficaces incluso cuando se aplicaron días después del trauma analógico. La reactivación solo no fue efectiva. Reactivación+juegos de palabras parecen resultar en menos intrusiones que Reactivación+Tetris (objetivo 3, efecto de la modalidad), pero esta evidencia fue débil. Los análisis exploratorios mostraron que los juegos de palabras eran más difíciles que el Tetris. Conclusiones: La aplicación de una tarea 4 días después de la película del trauma (durante la reconsolidación de la memoria) fue eficaz. La modalidad versus el problema de la carga de la memoria de trabajo no es concluyente. 背景：对PTSD诊断A1标准的讨论一直持续进行，DSM-5使用了更严格的A1标准，ICD-11则将其从关键诊断标准中删除。 目标：我们在此考察了过去的DSM-IV-TR创伤性（A1）和压力性（非A1）事件在PTSD症状剖面（symptom profiles）上的不同，以及是否存在性别差异。 方法：在一个大型的主要是临床样本的关于抑郁和焦虑的荷兰研究中（n=1433），被试描述了他们最受困扰的（指标）事件，并据此划分出A1或者非A1事件组。 结果：显著的差别是，男性在非A1事件后的PTSD症状比A1事件后更严重，而女性在非A1事件和A1事件后的症状程度相等。并且，在A1事件后女性的症状表现显著高于男性（29.9 vs 15.4% PTSD诊断率），非A1事件后没有性别差异（女性28.2%，男性31.3%）。进一步的，与PTSD症状严重程度相关的焦虑和知觉到的影响在女性中高于男性。 结论：总的来说，女性在两类事件后的PTSD症状水平相似，男性在非A1事件后比A1事件报告更高的PTSD症状水平。这些发现说明了PTSD症状学中的性别作用和A1标准的临床有用性。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This qualitative study examines patients' and oncologists' views on how to best address emotions during consultations, and explores oncologists' opinions on their own communication and on strategies to improve oncologists' response to patients' emotions.Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 cancer patients and 13 oncologists, after watching videotaped consultations illustrating three communication strategies for addressing emotions.Results: Many participants preferred emotion-oriented speech to address patients' emotions; this strategy was assumed to (positively) affect a broad range of outcomes. Nevertheless, some preferred attentive silence or no emotion-oriented talk at all. Oncologists and patients had similar views on factors that may hinder oncologists to address emotions. Generally, oncologists mentioned that their response to emotions could be improved; for this, various (educational) strategies were suggested.Conclusion: Patients and oncologists generally agree that patients' emotions can best be addressed by empathic, explorative, acknowledging, and supportive statements. Still, differences in preferences exist, thus oncologists need to attune their communication to the individual patient.Practice Implications: The findings can inform medical communication training and encourage oncologists to improve their communication. The regular videotaping of consultations might be a promising method to provide feedback and reflect, thereby improving oncologists' response to patients' emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the proposed mechanisms linking childhood stressor exposure to negative mental and physical health outcomes in later life is cellular aging. In this prospective, longitudinal, and pre‐registered study, we examined the association between a cumulative pattern of childhood risk exposure from age 6 to age 10 (i.e., poor maternal mental health, parental relationship problems, family/friend death, bullying victimization, poor quality friendships) and change in two biomarkers of cellular aging (i.e., telomere length, epigenetic age) from age 6 to age 10 in a Dutch low‐risk community sample (n = 193). We further examined the moderating effect of cortisol reactivity at age 6. Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses revealed no significant main effects of childhood risk exposure on change in cellular aging, nor a moderation effect of child cortisol reactivity. Secondary findings showed a positive correlation between telomere length and cortisol reactivity at age 6, warranting further investigation. More research in similar communities is needed before drawing strong conclusions based on the null results. Previous research in high‐adversity risk samples suggests an association between childhood stressor exposure and accelerated cellular aging. Our null‐findings from a longitudinal community sample indicate that such link between childhood stressor exposure and accelerated cellular aging might not be present in low‐adversity risk samples. Furthermore, our study uncovers an association between telomere length and cortisol reactivity and supports the notions of a lack of association between different biomarkers of cellular aging and a period of telomere length stability in childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eye region is thought to play an important role in the ability to accurately infer others' feelings, or empathic accuracy (EA), which is an important skill for social interaction. However, most past studies used static pictures, including only visual information, and knowledge about the contribution of the eye region to EA when visual information is presented together with verbal content is lacking. We therefore examined whether eye gazing contributes to EA during videos of emotional autobiographical stories including both visual and verbal content. One hundred seven perceivers watched videos of targets talking about positive and negative life events and continuously rated the targets' feelings during the videos. Simultaneously, perceivers' eyes were tracked. After each video, perceivers reported on their feelings and the extent to which they empathized with and took the perspective of the targets. In contrast to studies using static pictures, we found that gazing to the eyes of targets during the videos did not significantly contribute to EA. At the same time, results on the association between the amount of gaze towards the eye region of targets and perceivers' state and trait empathy ratings suggest that eye gazing might signal empathy and social engagement to others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harsh parenting has been shown to increase the risk of physical and mental health problems in later life. To improve our understanding of these risks and how they can be mitigated, we investigated associations of harsh parenting with a clinically relevant biomarker, epigenetic age deviation (EAD), using data from a randomized-control trial of the Incredible Years (IY) parenting program. This study included 281 children aged 4–8 years who were screened for heightened externalizing behavior and whose parents were randomly allocated to either IY or care-as-usual (CAU). Parents reported on their own parenting practices and their child's externalizing behavior at baseline and at a follow-up assessment approximately three years later. Epigenetic age, based on the Pediatric Buccal Epigenetic (PedBE) clock, was estimated from child DNA methylation derived from saliva collected at the follow-up assessment. PedBE clock estimates were regressed on chronological age as a measure of EAD. Moderation analyses using multiple regression revealed that harsher parenting at baseline predicted epigenetic age deceleration in children that received CAU (b = −.21, 95% CI[-0.37, −0.05]), but no association was found in children whose parents were allocated to IY (b = −.02, 95% CI [-0.13, 0.19]). These results highlight a prospective association between harsh parenting and children's EAD and indicate a potential ameliorating effect of preventive intervention. Future work is needed to replicate these findings and understand individual differences in children's responses to harsh parenting in relation to epigenetic aging. • Parent-reported harsh parenting predicted epigenetic age deceleration in children with high externalizing behavior. • The Incredible Years parenting intervention reduced parent-reported harsh parenting and child externalizing behavior. • Incredible Years mitigated the prospective association of parent-reported harsh parenting with epigenetic age deceleration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fetal origins of mental health is a well-established framework that currently lacks a robust index of the biological embedding of prenatal adversity. The Pediatric-Buccal-Epigenetic (PedBE) clock is a novel epigenetic tool that associates with aspects of the prenatal environment, but additional validation in longitudinal datasets is required. Likewise, the relationship between prenatal maternal mental health and the PedBE clock has not been described. Longitudinal cohorts from the Netherlands (Basal Influences on Baby Development [BIBO] n = 165) and Singapore (Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes [GUSTO] n = 340) provided data on prenatal maternal anxiety and longitudinal assessments of buccal cell–derived genome-wide DNA methylation assessed at 6 and 10 years of age in BIBO, and at 3, 9, and 48 months of age in GUSTO. Measures of epigenetic age acceleration were calculated using the PedBE clock and benchmarked against an established multi-tissue epigenetic predictor. Prenatal maternal anxiety predicted child PedBE epigenetic age acceleration in both cohorts, with effects largely restricted to males and not females. These results were independent of obstetric, socioeconomic, and genetic risk factors, with a larger effect size for prenatal anxiety than depression. PedBE age acceleration predicted increased externalizing symptoms in males from mid- to late childhood in the BIBO cohort only. These findings point to the fetal origins of epigenetic age acceleration and reveal an increased sensitivity in males. Convergent evidence underscores the societal importance of providing timely and effective mental health support to pregnant individuals, which may have lasting consequences for both mother and child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Background: Animal and human studies have found that prior stressful events can result in an altered reactivity in the HPA axis. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of adverse events in childhood on cortisol reactivity to psychosocial stress in young healthy subjects (n=80). Methods: Salivary cortisol levels were measured before, during and after exposure to a psychosocial stress task in healthy men and women with high (n=33) and low (n=47) exposure to adverse childhood events. Results: A significant blunted cortisol response was found in individuals with a history of adverse events compared to individuals with no adverse life events, with no differences in baseline cortisol levels. This finding appeared to be primarily driven by men. The groups did not differ on any other physiological or subjective stress measure, including heart rate, blood pressure, and subjective tension. Conclusions: These findings suggest that, at least in healthy young males, adverse childhood events are associated with changes in HPA-axis functioning. Longitudinal studies are needed to investigate whether the blunted cortisol response is a risk factor in the etiology of psychiatric disorders or rather reflects resiliency with regard to the development of psychopathology. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Over the past three decades, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become crucial to study how cognitive processes are implemented in the human brain. However, the question of whether participants recruited into fMRI studies differ from participants recruited into other study contexts has received little to no attention. This is particularly pertinent when effects fail to generalize across study contexts: for example, a behavioural effect discovered in a non-imaging context not replicating in a neuroimaging environment. Here, we tested the hypothesis, motivated by preliminary findings (N  = 272), that fMRI participants differ from behaviour-only participants on one fundamental individual difference variable: trait anxiety. Analysing trait anxiety scores and possible confounding variables from healthy volunteers across multiple institutions (N  = 3317), we found robust support for lower trait anxiety in fMRI study participants, consistent with a sampling or self-selection bias. The bias was larger in studies that relied on phone screening (compared with full in-person psychiatric screening), recruited at least partly from convenience samples (compared with community samples), and in pharmacology studies. Our findings highlight the need for surveying trait anxiety at recruitment and for appropriate screening procedures or sampling strategies to mitigate this bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current study, the associations between multiple types of child maltreatment (CM), parent–offspring interactions, and family cohesion were examined in an extended family study. A total of 366 parent–offspring pairs from 137 nuclear families participated. Parents (Mage = 52.8 years, age range: 26.6–88.4 years, 57% female) reported about perpetrated CM and offspring (Mage = 25.7 years, range: 7.5–65.5 years, 58% female) about experienced CM during their childhood. Parent–offspring interactions were observed during a conflict interaction task. Cohesion within the nuclear family was observed during a playful tower building task. Results showed that parents and offspring displayed more aversive behavior in parent–offspring dyads characterized by higher levels of child abuse, but not in dyads characterized by higher levels of child neglect. In addition, less dyadic affective similarity was observed in parent–offspring dyads characterized by higher levels of child neglect, whereas dyadic affective similarity was higher in dyads characterized by higher levels of child abuse. Findings imply that interventions focused on parent–offspring interactions with a somewhat different content for neglectful and abusive families may be efficacious for families in the child welfare system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how child maltreatment is passed down from one generation to the next is crucial for the development of intervention and prevention strategies that may break the cycle of child maltreatment. Changes in emotion recognition due to childhood maltreatment have repeatedly been found, and may underly the intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment. In this study we, therefore, examined whether the ability to recognize emotions plays a role in the intergenerational transmission of child abuse and neglect. A total of 250 parents (104 males, 146 females) were included that participated in a three-generation family study. Participants completed an emotion recognition task in which they were presented with series of photographs that depicted the unfolding of facial expressions from neutrality to the peak emotions anger, fear, happiness, and sadness. Multi-informant measures were used to examine experienced and perpetrated child maltreatment. A history of abuse, but not neglect, predicted a shorter reaction time to identify fear and anger. In addition, parents who showed higher levels of neglectful behavior made more errors in identifying fear, whereas parents who showed higher levels of abusive behavior made more errors in identifying anger. Emotion recognition did not mediate the association between experienced and perpetrated child maltreatment. Findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between abuse and neglect when investigating the precursors and sequalae of child maltreatment. In addition, the effectiveness of interventions that aim to break the cycle of abuse and neglect could be improved by better addressing the specific problems with emotion processing of abusive and neglectful parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social feedback, such as praise or critique, profoundly impacts our mood and social interactions. It is unknown, however, how parents experience praise and critique about their child and whether their mood and neural responses to such 'vicarious' social feedback are modulated by parents' perceptions of their child. Parents (n  = 60) received positive, intermediate and negative feedback words (i.e. personality characteristics) about their adolescent child during a magnetic resonance imaging scan. After each word, parents indicated their mood. After positive feedback their mood improved and activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus increased. Negative feedback worsened parents' mood, especially when perceived as inapplicable to their child, and increased activity in anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus. Parents who generally viewed their child more positively showed amplified mood responses to both positive and negative feedback and increased activity in dorsal striatum, inferior frontal gyrus and insula in response to negative feedback. These findings suggest that vicarious feedback has similar effects and engages similar brain regions as observed during feedback about the self and illustrates this is dependent on parents' beliefs of their child's qualities and flaws. Potential implications for parent–child dynamics and children's own self-views are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child-driven genetic factors can contribute to negative parenting and may increase the risk of being maltreated. Experiencing childhood maltreatment may be partly heritable, but results of twin studies are mixed. In the current study, we used a cross-sectional extended family design to estimate genetic and environmental effects on experiencing child maltreatment. The sample consisted of 395 individuals (225 women; M age = 38.85 years, rangeage = 7–88 years) from 63 families with two or three participating generations. Participants were oversampled for experienced maltreatment. Self-reported experienced child maltreatment was measured using a questionnaire assessing physical and emotional abuse, and physical and emotional neglect. All maltreatment phenotypes were partly heritable with percentages for h 2 ranging from 30% (SE = 13%) for neglect to 62% (SE = 19%) for severe physical abuse. Common environmental effects (c 2) explained a statistically significant proportion of variance for all phenotypes except for the experience of severe physical abuse (c 2 = 9%, SE = 13%, p =.26). The genetic correlation between abuse and neglect was ρg =.73 (p =.02). Common environmental variance increased as socioeconomic status (SES) decreased (p =.05), but additive genetic and unique environmental variances were constant across different levels of SES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child maltreatment has been associated with various cumulative risk factors. However, little is known about the extent to which genetic and environmental factors contribute to individual differences between parents in perpetrating child maltreatment. To estimate the relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to perpetrating maltreatment we used a parent-based extended family design. Child-reported perpetrated maltreatment was available for 556 parents (283 women) from 63 families. To explore reporter effects (i.e., child perspective on maltreatment), child reports were compared to multi-informant reports. Based on polygenic model analyses, most of the variance related to the perpetration of physical abuse and emotional neglect was explained by common environmental factors (physical abuse: c 2 = 59%, SE = 12%, p =.006; emotional neglect: c 2 = 47%, SE = 8%, p <.001) whereas genetic factors did not significantly contribute to the model. For perpetrated emotional abuse, in contrast, genetic factors did significantly contribute to perpetrated emotional abuse (h 2 = 33%, SE = 8%, p <.001), whereas common environment factors did not. Multi-informant reports led to similar estimates of genetic and common environmental effects on all measures except for emotional abuse, where a multi-informant approach yielded higher estimates of the common environmental effects. Overall, estimates of unique environment, including measurement error, were lower using multi-informant reports. In conclusion, our findings suggest that genetic pathways play a significant role in perpetrating emotional abuse, while physical abuse and emotional neglect are transmitted primarily through common environmental factors. These findings imply that interventions may need to target different mechanisms dependings on maltreatment type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary-developmental psychologists have posited that individuals who grow up in stressful rearing circumstances follow faster life history strategies, thereby increasing their chances of reproduction. This preregistered study tested this stress-acceleration hypothesis in a low-risk longitudinal sample of 193 Dutch mother-child dyads, by investigating whether infant-mother attachment insecurity at 12 months of age predicted earlier pubertal onset and more callous-unemotional traits, aggression and risk-taking about a decade later. Also evaluated were the possible mediating roles of two biomarkers of accelerated aging (i.e., telomere length, epigenetic aging) at age 6. Structural equation modelling revealed no effects of attachment insecurity on biomarkers, pubertal timing or behavior. These null findings suggest that the explanatory value of evolutionary-developmental thinking might be restricted to high-risk samples, though unexplored variation in susceptibility to environmental influences might also explain the null findings. • In a low-risk sample, attachment insecurity did not predict reproductive strategies. • Attachment insecurity did not predict telomere length or epigenetic aging. • The biomarkers of aging did not predict pubertal onset or behavior. • No evidence for role of cellular aging in reproductive strategies was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Prolonged cardiac activity that exceeds metabolic needs can be detrimental for somatic health. Psychological stress could result in such "additional cardiac activity."Purpose: In this study, we examined whether prolonged additional reductions in heart rate variability (AddHRVr) can be measured in daily life with an algorithm that filters out changes in HRV that are purely due to metabolic demand, as indexed by movement, using a brief calibration procedure. We tested whether these AddHRVr periods were related to worry, stress, and negative emotions.Methods: Movement and the root of the mean square of successive differences (RMSSD) in heart rate were measured during a calibration phase and the subsequent 24 h in 32 participants. Worry, stress, explicit and implicit emotions were assessed hourly using smartphones. The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale and resting HRV were used to account for individual differences. During calibration, person-specific relations between movement and RMSSD were determined. The 24-h data were used to detect prolonged periods (i.e., 7.5 min) of AddHRVr.Results: AddHRVr periods were associated with worrying, with decreased explicit positive affect, and with increased tension, but not with the frequency of stressful events or implicit emotions. Only in people high in emotional awareness and high in resting HRV did changes in AddHRVr covary with changes in explicit emotions.Conclusions: The algorithm can be used to capture prolonged reductions in HRV that are not due to metabolic needs. This enables the real-time assessment of episodes of potentially detrimental cardiac activity and its psychological determinants in daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Dissociation proneness is a trait-like individual difference and a cardinal feature of trauma-related disorders. Dissociative symptoms have been associated with repeated exposure to aversive interpersonal contexts. While research has shown that dissociation proneness involves alterations in basic information processing, less attention has been brought to socio-cognitive processing. Here, a deficit in empathic abilities is hypothesized. Method: Ninety Dutch university students were selected with high, medium, or low dissociation proneness. A dissociation questionnaire and a behavioral task measuring both emotional and cognitive empathy were administered, as well as questionnaires on negative affect, emotional awareness, and parenting styles. Results: High dissociation proneness was significantly associated with lower accuracy rates on cognitive empathy, and this association could partly be explained by difficulties in emotional awareness and perceived parenting styles, but not by negative affect. No association was found between dissociation and emotional empathy. Conclusions: Weakened cognitive empathy appears to be a socio-cognitive attribute of dissociation proneness. Future research should study the impact of reduced empathy in dissociation on interpersonal interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eye contact is crucial for the formation and maintenance of social relationships, and plays a key role in facilitating a strong parent-child bond. However, the precise neural and affective mechanisms through which eye contact impacts on parent-child relationships remain elusive. We introduce a task to assess parents' neural and affective responses to prolonged direct and averted gaze coming from their own child, and an unfamiliar child and adult. While in the scanner, 79 parents (n = 44 mothers and n = 35 fathers) were presented with prolonged (16-38 s) videos of their own child, an unfamiliar child, an unfamiliar adult, and themselves (i.e., targets), facing the camera with a direct or an averted gaze. We measured BOLD-responses, tracked parents' eye movements during the videos, and asked them to report on their mood and feelings of connectedness with the targets after each video. Parents reported improved mood and increased feelings of connectedness after prolonged exposure to direct versus averted gaze and these effects were amplified for unfamiliar targets compared to their own child, due to high affect and connectedness ratings after videos of their own child. Neuroimaging results showed that the sight of one's own child was associated with increased activity in middle occipital gyrus, fusiform gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus relative to seeing an unfamiliar child or adult. While we found no robust evidence of specific neural correlates of eye contact (i.e., contrast direct > averted gaze), an exploratory parametric analysis showed that dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) activity increased linearly with duration of eye contact (collapsed across all "other" targets). Eye contact-related dmPFC activity correlated positively with increases in feelings of connectedness, suggesting that this region may drive feelings of connectedness during prolonged eye contact with others. These results underline the importance of prolonged eye contact for affiliative processes and provide first insights into its neural correlates. This may pave the way for new research in individuals or pairs in whom affiliative processes are disrupted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We introduce a task to assess neural processes supporting empathy for imagined pain. • Parents report more distress when imagining their own child (vs. other) in pain. • Empathizing with own child (vs. other): enhanced activity in TPJ, vmPFC and dmPFC. • AI and aMCC similarly activated for imagined pain for self, own and other child. • Parental care co-varies with prefrontal activity while imagining own child in pain. Empathy is deemed indispensable for sensitive caregiving. Neuroimaging studies have identified canonical empathy networks consisting of regions supporting cognitive and affective aspects of empathy. However, not much is known about how these regions support empathy towards one's own offspring and how this neural activity relates to parental caregiving. We introduce a novel task to assess affective and neural responses to the suffering of one's own adolescent child. While in the scanner, 60 parents (n = 35 mothers, n = 25 fathers) were confronted with unpleasant situations involving their own child, an unfamiliar child, and themselves. Parents were asked to vividly imagine these situations and indicate their levels of distress. Parents reported higher levels of distress when imagining suffering for their own child relative to an unfamiliar child or themselves. Neuroimaging results showed increased activation within the cognitive empathy network (i.e., temporoparietal junction, dorsomedial- and ventromedial prefrontal cortex) when contrasting suffering of one's own child versus an unfamiliar child or the self. The task also engaged regions of the affective empathy network (i.e., anterior insula and anterior mid-cingulate cortex), which was however not modulated by whether suffering was for the self, one's own child, or an unfamiliar child. Parental care did not co-vary with activity in the empathy networks, but parents who were perceived as less caring exhibited increased activity in anterior prefrontal regions when imagining their own child suffering. These results provide new insights into neural processes supporting parental empathy, highlighting the importance of regions in the cognitive empathy network when confronted with the suffering of their own adolescent child, and suggest that additional (i.e., emotion regulation) networks may be relevant for parental caring behavior in daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]