Editorial: Neuroscience of human attachment volume II

• Published in: Frontiers in human neuroscience Vol. 16; p. 1018528
• Main Authors: Buchheim, Anna, George, Carol, Gündel, Harald
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lausanne Frontiers Research Foundation 31-08-2022; Frontiers Media S.A
• Subjects: Adolescents; Age groups; Attachment; attachment measures; Brain research; Child development; Children; Children & youth; Editorials; endocrine markers; fMRI; Genetic markers; Heart rate; Human Neuroscience; Hypotheses; Mothers; Nervous system; Neurobiology; Neurosciences; Parents & parenting; Personality disorders; Physiology; Psychiatry; psychophysiology; Psychotherapy; Teenagers
• ISSN: 1662-5161; 1662-5161
• DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.1018528

The second part of the volume includes focuses on physiological and genetic markers of attachment in middle childhood and adolescence. Since most previous studies examining gene-environment effects on self-regulation focused only on outcomes of early childhood or adulthood the paper by Zimmermann and Spangler aimed to investigate longitudinal effects during middle childhood and adolescence. Secure adolescents showed a higher HRV from baseline to the attachment interview compared to insecure ones, indicating that secure adolescents were more capable of dealing with attachment-related distress which is represented in higher HRV. [...]HRV is increasingly recognized as a marker of feeling safe and connected in social environments (Bryant and Hutanamon, 2018) and thus these results might have important implications for psychotherapy research. [...]we again achieved an exciting interdisciplinary synthesis of existing knowledge and new perspectives on the human neuroscience of attachment that demonstrates the tremendous development in this field.