Summary: A new study shows that adolescent girls show different brain activity when faced with social exclusion. Using fMRI scans, the study shows increased activity in areas of the brain associated with self-concept and emotional states that are more likely to develop in women.
This research suggests that rumination feeds negative feedback into the self-concept. These findings may guide interventions aimed at helping girls improve their negative experiences and mitigate long-term mental health effects.
Key facts:
- Adolescent girls exhibit elevated brain activity during self-reflection during social deprivation as demonstrated by fMRI scans.
- The study involved 116 girls between the ages of 16 and 19, using a unique method to measure the brain’s response to rejection.
- This study highlights the importance of addressing adolescent addictions to prevent long-term mental health issues.
Source: UC Davis
Everyone talks about bad things that happen to them. When it comes to a bad breakup, embarrassing failure, or simply someone being mean, it can be hard to stop thinking about what happened and why. For people who talk too much, this negative thinking can cause lasting mental health problems.
A research team led by the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, found that adolescent girls show different patterns of brain activity when faced with social disruption.
The study was published in the journal in December Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.
“Everyone experiences rejection, but not everyone experiences it the same way,” said Amanda Guyer, associate director of the Mind and Brain Center and professor of human ecology at UC Davis. “By identifying the brain processes that differentiate bad behavior, we can provide people with better ways to avoid long-term damage.”
Rejection during brain scan
The immediate experience of social deprivation leaves unique fingerprints on the brain that can be measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. This type of scan shows minute changes in blood flow and electrical activity in different parts of the brain. The wide range of what a person feels and thinks can be visualized in real time with an fMRI scan.
In this study, 116 girls between the ages of 16 and 19 participated in two tasks to measure how their brains responded to social deprivation. In the first visit, participants were shown photographs of 60 teenagers and asked to choose 30 people they would like to chat with.
For the second visit, the participants were placed in an fMRI scanner and told which of the teenagers in the photos they wanted to chat with and which teenagers didn’t. While in the fMRI scanner, the girls were asked how these responses—and how they felt about being rejected by the person they chose during the first visit—made them feel. The data was collected from 2012 to 2014 and analyzed in 2023 when researchers applied new experimental methods.
How negative emotions can hide your self-image
An fMRI showed that rejection increases activity in areas of the brain known to play a role in how we define who we are.
These parts of the brain are all activated by increasing blood flow and electrical activity when we think about ourselves, or our emotional states, and recall memories.
Being told that a peer doesn’t want to talk to them is a form of social destruction, and this reluctance has been shown in brain scans to varying degrees in each of the girls. However, girls who self-reported negative attitudes had the highest activity in their brain scans.
“Our results show that girls with aversion tendencies are experiencing more than just a moment of sadness after rejection,” Guyer said. “They’re embedding this negative feedback deep into their own thinking.”
Changing the story to stop rumours
These findings suggest that specific processes in the brain are at play after rejection in girls with high delinquency tendencies. This knowledge can help target interventions that can treat remission so that it doesn’t cause major problems later, Guyer said.
“Our research suggests that reframing negative experiences in a way that makes them feel good after a bad situation can make a difference,” Guyer said.
In addition to Guyer, additional authors include Leehyun Yoon, also of UC Davis; Kate Keenan, University of Chicago, and Alison E. Hipwell and Erica E. Forbes, both University of Pittsburgh.
Financial support The study was conducted with funding from the National Institutes of Health.
So gossip and social behavior research news
Author: Karen Nikos
Source: UC Davis
Contact: Karen Nikos – UC Davis
Image: Image credited to Neuroscience News.
Preliminary study: Open Access.
“Preoccupied with thought: Associations between disruptive behavior and neural responses to social aggression in adolescent girls.” by Amanda Guyer et al Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
Draft
Preoccupied with thought: Associations between disruptive behavior and neural responses to social aggression in adolescent girls.
It is a significant risk factor for psychopathology in adolescent girls and is associated with prolonged physiological arousal following social deprivation.
However, no research has examined how social rejection is related to neurotic responses in adolescent girls; Thus, the present study aims to address this gap.
Adolescent girls (N = 116; age 16.95–19.09) self-reported promiscuous tendencies and completed a social evaluation fMRI task in which they received hypothetical feedback (acceptance, rejection) of their liked or disliked peers.
Rejection-related neural activity and connectivity of the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) are reversed in rumination, mediating feelings of rejection and depressive symptoms.
Increased neural activity in the prefrontal cortex, inferior parietal gyrus, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and supplementary motor area (SMA) and medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, and ventrolateral sgACC connectivity with multiple regions were associated with distinct neural responses following rejection from a favorite peer. . Pre-frontal cortex.
Grandiose conditioning and SMA activity mediate the effects of rumination on delayed response time to report emotional state following rejection from a loving peer. These findings suggest specific cognitive processes (eg, mentalizing, conflict processing, memory encoding) following rejection in girls with higher levels of promiscuity.