7 187 Summary and general discussion Chapter 5 examined parents’ empathic responses to the imagined suffering of their adolescent child. Parents’ self-reported empathic distress and neural responses were examined to a variety of unpleasant situations that included either their own or an unknown child. TheyParents reported more empathic distress and exhibited enhanced BOLD-responses within the cognitive empathy network (i.e., temporoparietal junction (TPJ), dmPFC, vmPFC) when imagining their own versus an unknown child suffering. The task also engaged the affective empathy network (i.e., anterior insula, anterior mid-cingulate cortex), but activity in these regions was not modulated by the person parents empathized with (i.e., whether parents imagined the suffering of one’s own or an unknown child). Together, this suggests that parents more strongly engage the cognitive empathy network (i.e., perspective taking) rather than the affective empathy network (i.e., vicarious experience of emotions) when imagining their own child suffering. Furthermore, adolescent-reported parental care was not associated with parents’ self-reported distress or with neural empathic responses to imagining their own child’s suffering. The results provide new insights into neural processes supporting parental empathy, highlighting the importance of regions in the cognitive empathy network when imagining the suffering of their own adolescent child. In addition to focusing on parents’ empathic reactions to their child, the final aim was to examine whether parents were also able to accurately infer the feelings of (unknown) others and whether making eye contact contributes to this process. Chapter 6 examined the association between this so-called empathic accuracy and the extent to which parents were making eye contact with (unknown) targets during videos of positive and negative emotional target stories, assessed with eye tracking. The results demonstrate that gazing into the eyes of others did not contribute to one’s level of empathic accuracy. However, parents who made more eye contact during the emotional target stories reported higher levels of state and trait empathy. Together this suggests that, rather than (only) collecting information about the other’s internal state, eye gazing might play a role in affiliative bonding by signaling empathy and social engagement to others. PARENTS’ AND ADOLESCENTS’ RESPONSES TO EYE CONTACT Chapters 2-4 examined parents’ and adolescents’ neural and affective responses to prolonged eye contact with each other versus with unknown others as an approximation of socio-emotional connectedness. First, parents’ and adolescents’ general responses to eye contact (direct versus averted gaze) are discussed (i.e., gaze direction), independent of the identity of the person with whom they make eye contact. Thereafter, parents’ and adolescents’ responses when making eye contact with each other versus unknown others (i.e., target identity) are addressed. In
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