88 Chapter 4 This study therefore examined adolescents’ general neural responses to prolonged eye contact with their parent in healthy adolescents (aim 1). In addition, we examined whether these responses differ between depressed and non-depressed adolescents (aim 2). To examine whether adolescents’ responses are unique to the parent-child relationship, we compared these responses to adolescents’ responses to eye contact in other social contexts, i.e., with an unfamiliar peer and adult. We used a novel eye contact task (validated in adults (Wever et al., 2022)) in which adolescents are presented with personalized videos of prolonged direct and averted gaze. All study measures, hypotheses and analyses were preregistered prior to data analyses (https://osf.io/p6r28/). Non-depressed adolescents were hypothesized to have a better mood and feel more connected after making prolonged eye contact with others. Moreover, based on prior neuroimaging findings in parents of adolescents (Wever et al., 2022), we expect them to show differential neural responses when looking at their parent versus unfamiliar others in brain regions associated with mentalizing (i.e., dmPFC, TPJ) and familiarity (i.e., IFG, fusiform gyrus) (Laurita et al., 2019a). We expected that depressed adolescents report a lower mood and feel less connected in response to eye contact, independent of target identity. Lastly, we explored whether depressed and non-depressed adolescents differ in their neural and gaze responses to eye contact with their parents and unfamiliar others. METHOD Participants Adolescents and their parents participated in the context of the RE-PAIR study: “Relations and Emotions in Parent-Adolescent Interaction Research”. This study compared families with an adolescent with major depressive disorder (MDD) or dysthymia to families with an adolescent without psychopathology. Families included in the study were Dutch speaking, adolescents were aged between 11 and 17 years at study inclusion, and lived with at least one of their parents/caregivers. Families with an adolescent without psychopathology (healthy controls; HC) were included if the adolescent was not diagnosed with a (neuro)psychiatric disorder in the two years leading up to the study and had no lifetime diagnosis of MDD/dysthymia. Families with an adolescent with MDD/dysthymia (DEP) were included if the adolescent met criteria for one of these primary diagnoses, verified with the Kiddie-Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia Present and Lifetime version (K-SADS; Kaufman et al. (1996)). They could not participate if the adolescent met criteria for a primary diagnosis of a current (neuro)psychiatric disorder other than MDD or dysthymia, a comorbid psychosis, substance use disorder, or mental retardation. Exclusion criteria for the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) part of the study were incompatibilities with MRI scanning (e.g., metal implants, pregnancy).
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