42 Chapter 2 2.5-A). An analysis testing for linear decreases in BOLD-response with increased eye contact did not yield significant neural responses at our chosen threshold. To explore whether this potential neural correlate of prolonged eye contact may drive increases in feelings of connectedness, we correlated eye contact related dmPFC activity with self-reported increases in parents’ feelings of connectedness with the targets between direct and averted gaze videos (Δdirect – averted gaze; see Figure 2.5-B). This analysis yielded a significant positive association between right dmPFC activity increases and feelings of connectedness with others (r = 0.29, p = .010). Together, these results suggest that parents who show enhanced neural activation in dmPFC in response to direct versus averted gaze videos as presentation duration of eye contact increases also showed a greater increase in feelings of connectedness with others after direct versus averted gaze videos. Figure 2.5 Prolonged eye contact was associated with parametric increases in right dmPFC, which correlated with increased feelings of connectedness with others (Δ direct – averted gaze videos). We performed a parametric analysis testing for linear increases in neural responses associated with presentation duration of eye contact (Δ direct minus averted gaze). To visualize the parametric effect, we subdivided each video in 3 epochs of equal length and plotted average BOLD-responses in dmPFC for each epoch (A). Correlation analysis testing for the association between individual levels of dmPFC activity and feelings of connectedness in response to eye contact between direct versus averted gaze videos (Δ direct – averted gaze) (B). Confound analyses To control for the fact that in two cases two parents of the same adolescent performed the task, we added a covariate to our analyses regarding the self-reported affect ratings and gaze responses of parents, indicating which parents were part of the same family. As this revealed that the data was not nested at the family level, we did not remove these parents from the functional MRI analyses. All outcomes remained significant after controlling for gender of parents and whether parents participated in the study with a child with or without MDD/dysthymia. In addition, all outcomes at the neural level remained significant after controlling for handedness (left/right), current psychopathology (yes/no), and psychotropic medication status (yes/no).
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