Impact of couple conflict and mediation on how romantic partners are seen: An fMRI study
- PMID: 32702522
- DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.04.036
Impact of couple conflict and mediation on how romantic partners are seen: An fMRI study
Abstract
Previous studies on romantic love have reported increased neural activity in the brain's reward circuitry such as the striatum. To date, the extent to which this activity is modulated by couple conflict in general and mediated couple conflict in particular, is unknown. The present study seeks to fill this gap by randomly assigning 36 romantic heterosexual couples to a mediated or non-mediated conflict discussion. Before and after the conflict discussion, self-reports and functional neuroimaging data in response to a picture of the romantic partner versus an unknown person were acquired. Self-reports indicate that mediation increases conflict resolution, satisfaction about the contents and process of the discussion and decreases levels of remaining disagreement. Pre-conflict neuroimaging results replicate previous studies on romantic love, showing activations in the striatum, insula, anterior and posterior cingulate gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, hippocampus, temporal and occipital poles and amygdala when viewing the romantic partner versus an unknown person. The general effect of conflict on neural activations in response to the romantic partner across both conditions consisted of deactivations in the striatum, insula, thalamus, precuneus and ventral tegmental area. Small volume correction analyses revealed that participants in the mediated condition trended towards having greater activation in the nucleus accumbens than participants in the non-mediated condition when looking at the romantic partner versus the unknown after the conflict discussion. Parametric modulation analyses also revealed greater activity in the nucleus accumbens when viewing the romantic partner versus the unknown for participants who felt more satisfied after the conflict resolution. Our results illustrate that mediation improves conflict resolution and is associated with increased activity in the nucleus accumbens, a key region in the brain's reward circuitry.
Keywords: Conflict management; Couple satisfaction; Positive affect; Ventral striatum; fMRI.
Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Conflict of interest statement
Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Similar articles
-
Intense, Passionate, Romantic Love: A Natural Addiction? How the Fields That Investigate Romance and Substance Abuse Can Inform Each Other.Front Psychol. 2016 May 10;7:687. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00687. eCollection 2016. Front Psychol. 2016. PMID: 27242601 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Love-related changes in the brain: a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study.Front Hum Neurosci. 2015 Feb 13;9:71. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00071. eCollection 2015. Front Hum Neurosci. 2015. PMID: 25762915 Free PMC article.
-
Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love.Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2012 Feb;7(2):145-59. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsq092. Epub 2011 Jan 5. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2012. PMID: 21208991 Free PMC article.
-
Viewing pictures of a romantic partner reduces experimental pain: involvement of neural reward systems.PLoS One. 2010 Oct 13;5(10):e13309. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013309. PLoS One. 2010. PMID: 20967200 Free PMC article.
-
Romantic love: an fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice.J Comp Neurol. 2005 Dec 5;493(1):58-62. doi: 10.1002/cne.20772. J Comp Neurol. 2005. PMID: 16255001 Review.
Cited by
-
Getting closer: compassion training increases feelings of closeness toward a disliked person.Sci Rep. 2023 Oct 26;13(1):18339. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-45363-1. Sci Rep. 2023. PMID: 37884610 Free PMC article. Clinical Trial.
-
Quarreling After a Sleepless Night: Preliminary Evidence of the Impact of Sleep Deprivation on Interpersonal Conflict.Affect Sci. 2022;3(2):341-352. doi: 10.1007/s42761-021-00076-4. Epub 2021 Dec 7. Affect Sci. 2022. PMID: 35791417 Free PMC article.
Publication types
MeSH terms
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources
Medical
Miscellaneous