5 153 Neural signatures of parental empathic responses to imagined suffering of their adolescent child SUPPLEMENT S5.9 Confound analyses To exclude whether results may have been driven by differences in gender of parents (mother/ father), handedness (left-handed/right-handed), current psychopathology (yes/no), and psychotropic medication status (on/off), we performed additional analyses with these potential confounding variables as covariates. The present sample consisted of 35 mothers and 25 fathers of which 54 were right-handed and six were left-handed. Based on a structured interview to screen for current psychiatric disorders (MINI, Sheehan et al. (1998)) the majority of the parents had no current psychiatric disorders. Five parents fulfilled criteria for a current psychiatric disorder, i.e., obsessive-compulsive disorder (n = 1), dysthymia (n = 1), alcohol dependency (n = 1), panic disorder (n = 1), and agoraphobia (n = 1). One parent fulfilled criteria for multiple current mental disorders, including mania, generalized anxiety disorder, and alcohol- and drugs abuse. Five parents used psychotropic medication, i.e., Citalopram (SSRI, n = 3), Venlafaxine (SNRI, n = 1), Concerta (Methylphenidate, n = 1). No effects of covariates were found at ROI level on neural activation related to main effects of ‘perspective’ and ‘stimulus type’ or their interaction. At whole-brain level, however, adding handedness, gender of parents, current psychopathology, or psychotropic medication status led to a loss of significance of the interaction between ‘perspective’ and ‘stimulus type’ in the right posterior orbitofrontal gyrus. Regarding the correlation analyses between parental care and BOLD-activation at whole-brain level, adding gender of parents, current psychopathology, and psychotropic medication status led to a loss of significance in left anterior orbitofrontal gyrus. Handedness did not affect the correlational analyses at whole-brain level.
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