Soothing the Threatened Brain: Leveraging Contact Comfort with Emotionally Focused Therapy

Social relationships are tightly linked to health and well-being. Recent work suggests that social relationships can even serve vital emotion regulation functions by minimizing threat-related neural activity. But relationship distress remains a significant public health problem in North America and elsewhere. A promising approach to helping couples both resolve relationship distress and nurture effective interpersonal functioning is Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples (EFT), a manualized, empirically supported therapy that is strongly focused on repairing adult attachment bonds. We sought to examine a neural index of social emotion regulation as a potential mediator of the effects of EFT. Specifically, we examined the effectiveness of EFT for modifying the social regulation of neural threat responding using an fMRI-based handholding procedure. Results suggest that EFT altered the brain\u27s representation of threat cues in the presence of a romantic partner. EFT-related changes during stranger handholding were also observed, but stranger effects were dependent upon self-reported relationship quality. EFT also appeared to increase threat-related brain activity in regions associated with self-regulation during the no-handholding condition. These findings provide a critical window into the regulatory mechanisms of close relationships in general and EFT in particular

Valence and arousal graphed as a function of EFT (pre vs. post) by handholding (alone vs. stranger vs. partner).

<p>Panel A shows mean (± (anr Pleasantness ratings. Panel B shows mean (±SE) Arousal ratings.</p

Percent signal change (±SE) graphed as a function of EFT (pre vs. post) by handholding (alone vs. partner) interaction effects.

<p>Row A represents activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). Row B represents activity in the right inferior frontal Gyrus (IFG).</p

Point estimates of percent signal change graphed as a function of EFT (pre vs. post) by handholding (alone, stranger, partner) and DAS score.

<p>Point estimates were computed separately for individuals high (+1SD) and low (−1SD) in DAS. Point estimates reflect average percent signal change (threat – safe) from all voxels activated in the original Coan et al., handholding study.</p

Point estimates of percent signal change graphed as a function of EFT (pre vs. post) by handholding (alone vs. partner) and DAS score.

<p>Point estimates were computed separately for individuals high (+1SD) and low (−1SD) in DAS. Row A represents activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). Row B represents activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC).</p