There is now ample evidence that the quality of early attachment experiences shapes expectations for supportive and responsive care and ultimately serves to scaffold adaptation to the salient tasks of development. Nonetheless, few studies have identified neural mechanisms that might give rise to these associations. Using a moderately large sample of low-income male participants recruited during infancy (N = 171), we studied the predictive significance of attachment insecurity and disorganization at age 18 months (as measured in the Strange Situation Procedure) for patterns of neural activation to reward and loss at age 20 years (assessed during a reward-based task as part of a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan). Results indicated that individuals with a history of insecure attachment showed hyperactivity in (a) reward- and emotion-related (e.g., basal ganglia and amygdala) structures and (b) emotion regulation and self-referential processing (cortical midline structures) in response to positive and negative outcomes (and anticipation of those outcomes). Further, the neural activation of individuals with a history of disorganized attachment suggested that they had greater emotional reactivity in anticipation of reward and employed greater cognitive control when negative outcomes were encountered. Overall, results suggest that the quality of early attachments has lasting impacts on brain function and reward processing.

Maltreatment is associated with chronic depression, high negativeself-attributions, and lifetime psychopathology. Adolescence is a sensitiveperiod for the formation of self-concept. Identifying neurobiomarkers ofself-processing in depressed adolescents with and without maltreatment may parsethe effects of trauma and depression on self-development and chronicpsychopathology. Depressed adolescents (n = 86)maltreated due to omission (DO, n = 13) orcommission (DCM, n = 28) or without maltreatment(DC, n = 45), and HCs (HC, n= 37) appraised positive and negative self-descriptors in thescanner. DCM and DO showed hypoactivity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex(dACC) while processing positive versus negative self-descriptors compared to DCyouth, who in turn showed reduced dACC recruitment versus HC. HC youth showedthe highest activation in the dACC and striatum during positiveself-descriptors; these regions showed a linear decline in activity across DC,DO, and DCM. Low dACC activity to positive versus negative self-descriptors waslinked to inadequate coregulation of children's emotions by parents.Negative self-cognitions prevalent in DCM and DO adolescents may be perpetuatedby activity in the dACC and striatum. Reduced activation of the dACC andstriatum for positive self-descriptors, coupled with enhanced activity fornegative self-descriptors, may heighten the risk for persistent depression.

We examined puberty-specific effects on affect-related behavior and on the psychophysiology of defensive and appetitive motivation while controlling for age. Adolescents (N = 94, ages = 12 and 13 years) viewed 75 pictures (International Affective Picture System: pleasant, neutral, and aversive) while listening to auditory probes. Startle response and postauricular (PA) reflex were collected as measures of defensive and appetitive motivation, respectively. Pubertal status and measures of anxiety/stress reaction and sensation/thrill seeking were obtained. Mid-/late pubertal adolescents showed enhanced startle amplitude across all picture valences. A Puberty × Valence interaction revealed that mid-/late pubertal adolescents showed appetitive potentiation of the PA, whereas pre-/early pubertal adolescents showed no modulation of the PA reflex. Mid-/late pubertal adolescents also scored significantly higher on measures of sensation/thrill seeking than did their pre-/early pubertal peers and puberty moderated the association between psychophysiology and behavioral measures, suggesting that it plays a role in reorganizing defensive and appetitive motivational systems.