2 39 Neural and affective responses to prolonged eye contact with one’s own adolescent child and unfamiliar others Figure 2.3 Average levels of gaze of parents toward the eye region and the overall face area of targets (i.e., own child, unfamiliar child, unfamiliar adult, self) during video stimuli with direct and averted gaze. Gaze was operationalized as the percentage of dwell time within the eye region as part of the total video duration per video. The right and left eye AOIs were combined into a single AOI of the eye region (A). Overall, parents gazed significantly more towards the eye region of others during prolonged direct gaze versus averted gaze, and parents gazed significantly more towards the eye region of an unfamiliar adult compared to the other targets. There was no significant interaction between gaze direction and target on the amount of gaze towards the eye region of targets (p = .346) (B). Parents’ percentage of dwell time with respect to the overall face area did not differ between the different targets (C). Error bars represent standard error of the mean. Significant p-values <.05 were indicated by *, p <.01 by **, and p <.001 by ***. Neural responses To examine neural responses to direct versus averted gaze and whether these responses are modulated by the identity of the target in the video, we performed a whole-brain 2 (gaze direction) × 4 (targets) full factorial ANOVA on parents’ BOLD-responses. This analysis yielded no significant main effect of gaze direction or a significant interaction effect between target and gaze direction. Together, these results did not reveal evidence for neural correlates of prolonged eye contact or for a hypothesis that different brain regions may be differentially sensitive to making prolonged eye contact with a specific target person. However, the analysis revealed a main effect of target in several brain regions, including right fusiform gyrus, left middle/inferior occipital gyrus, the triangular- and opercular part of right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), left TPJ, left IFG, left precentral gyrus, and the medial part of the right superior frontal gyrus (SFG)/ dmPFC (Figure 2.4-A, Supplement S2.6). Post-hoc (Bonferroni corrected) pairwise comparisons indicated that parents exhibited significantly decreased deactivation in BOLD-response in left middle/inferior occipital gyrus (p <.001), triangular- and opercular part of right IFG (two clusters, both p <.001), and right fusiform gyrus (p = .013) towards their own child versus an unfamiliar child. For their own child versus an unfamiliar adult, parents exhibited significantly decreased deactivation in BOLD-response in left middle/inferior occipital gyrus (p = .003) and right IFG (p = .010). Results indicated no significant differences in BOLD-responses to an unfamiliar child versus an unfamiliar adult. In addition, we found several brain regions that were significantly less activated when parents look at the videos of themselves versus others (i.e., own child,
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