134 Chapter 5 Neuroimaging findings: Whole-brain results To test whether task-related BOLD-activation in brain regions outside the ROIs was found in response to the unpleasant sentences, we performed a complementary whole-brain analysis. In line with the ROI analyses, we found a main effect of ‘perspective’ with similar directionalities in clusters including sub regions of vmPFC, bilateral dmPFC and right TPJ, with peak-coordinates in vmPFC, bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left precuneus, respectively. Outside these regions we found a main effect of ‘perspective’ in the right inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), left inferior occipital gyrus (IOG), right superior frontal gyrus (SFG), and right middle frontal gyrus (MFG) (see Figure 5.4 and Supplement S5.4). Post-hoc pairwise comparisons (using Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons) indicated that parents exhibited significantly decreased deactivation in BOLD-responses for own child versus unfamiliar child in vmPFC (p <.001) and increased BOLD-responses in right ITG (p <.001), and for unfamiliar child versus own child in right SFG (p <.001), right IFG (p <.001), and right MFG (p <.001). For own child versus self, parents exhibited significantly increased BOLD-responses towards their own child in left precuneus (p = .002) and a significantly decreased deactivation towards their own child in vmPFC (p <.001), and for self versus own child in left IOG (p <.001), left IFG (p <.001) and right SFG (p = .011). Furthermore, parents exhibited significantly increased BOLD-responses for an unfamiliar child versus the self in left precuneus (p = .003), right SFG (p = .014), right IFG (p <.001) and right MFG (p = .001), and for self versus unfamiliar child in left IOG (p <.001), left IFG (p <.001), and right ITG (p <.001), and a significantly decreased deactivation for self versus unfamiliar child in vmPFC (p = .010). Analyses revealed a main effect of ‘stimulus type’ in left MFG, bilateral IFG, left ITG, middle cingulate gyrus (MCG), right middle temporal gyrus, left inferior parietal gyrus, left precentral gyrus, right supramarginal gyrus, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and right superior temporal gyrus and an interaction between ‘perspective’ and ‘stimulus type’ in left insula, right dmPFC and right posterior orbitofrontal gyrus at whole-brain level (see Supplement S5.6 and S5.7 for more details). All outcomes at whole-brain level remained significant after controlling for handedness, gender of parents, current psychopathology, and psychotropic medication status in separate analyses, except for the interaction effect between ‘perspective’ and ‘stimulus type’ that was found in the right posterior orbitofrontal gyrus. Remarkably, we found no evidence for differences between mothers and fathers in terms of neural responses to imagined suffering on a whole-brain level,
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