Neural signatures of bullying experience and social rejection in teenagers

Relational bullying in schools is one of the most frequent forms of violence and can have severe negative health impact, e.g. depression. Social exclusion is the most prominent form of relational bullying that can be operationalized experimentally. The present study used MR-based perfusion imaging (...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2021-08, Vol.16 (8), p.e0255681-e0255681
Main Authors: Kiefer, Markus, Sim, Eun-Jin, Heil, Sabrina, Brown, Rebecca, Herrnberger, Bärbel, Spitzer, Manfred, Grön, Georg
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adolescent Behavior
Adolescent psychology
Biology and Life Sciences
Bullying
Demographic aspects
Evaluation
Female
Frontal Lobe - diagnostic imaging
Frontal Lobe - physiology
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Medicine and Health Sciences
People and Places
Psychological aspects
Rejection (Psychology)
Research and Analysis Methods
Social Sciences
Social Status
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Summary:Relational bullying in schools is one of the most frequent forms of violence and can have severe negative health impact, e.g. depression. Social exclusion is the most prominent form of relational bullying that can be operationalized experimentally. The present study used MR-based perfusion imaging (pCASL) to investigate the neural signatures of social exclusion and its relationship with individually different extent of previous bullying experience. Twenty-four teenagers reporting bullying experience at different extent were scanned during a virtual ball-tossing (Cyberball game). Our findings showed that social exclusion (relative to social inclusion) activated frontal brain areas: sub- and perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (sg/pgACC), left inferior frontal cortex (IFG), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Positive relationship between exclusion-specific signal increase and individually different extents of prior bullying experience was for the first time observed in left IFG and sgACC. This suggests that more frequent prior experience has conditioned greater mentalizing and/or rumination, in order to cope with the situation. While this interpretation remains speculative, the present data show that the experience of being bullied partly sensitizes the neural substrate relevant for the processing of social exclusion.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0255681