In a recent study, functional magnetic resonance imaging was utilized to track 51 male-female romantic pantners’ brain activity as they encountered real-time intimate partner hostility.
They found that aggression toward intimate partners was associated with
aberrant activity in the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex, or MPFC, which has
many functions, but among them is the ability to foster perceptions of
closeness with and value of other people.
The study led by Virginia Commonwealth University researchers used
functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the brain activity of 51
male-female romantic couples as they experienced intimate partner aggression
in real-time.
They found that aggression toward intimate partners was associated with
aberrant activity in the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex, or MPFC, which has
many functions, but among them is the ability to foster perceptions of
closeness with and value of other people.
“We found that aggression towards intimate partners has a unique signature in
the brain,” said lead author David Chester, Ph.D., an associate professor in the
Department of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Sciences. “There is
something distinct happening at the neural level when people decide whether to harm their romantic partners, a process that differs in a meaningful way
from decisions about whether to harm friends or strangers.”
The research was led by Chester’s Social Psychology and Neuroscience Lab,
which seeks to understand the psychological and biological processes that
motivate and constrain aggressive behavior.
The study, “Neural Mechanisms of Intimate Partner Aggression,” will be published in the journal Biological Psychology. The researchers were able to observe couples’ brain activity during intimate partner aggression by asking participants to play a computer game against three people, one at a time: their romantic partner, a close friend, and a stranger.
In reality, they were playing against a computer.
The participants were tasked with pressing a button faster than their
opponents. The loser, they were told, would be punished with a nasty blast of
sound in their headphones.
The researchers measured aggression by giving participants, and their fictitious opponents, the opportunity to select the volume of that sound blast, with higher volume representing more aggression, and lower volume representing less aggression.
“Basically, we gave participants repeated opportunities to hurt or not hurt each
of these three people, and we examined how brain activity changed based on
who they thought they were hurting,” Chester said.
“But ….. no one was actually hurt by this computer game, participants unknowingly played against the computer.”
The researchers’ findings also extended beyond the lab into the real world. They
had participants fill out a validated questionnaire that asked whether they had
perpetrated acts of intimate partner violence prior to the study.
They found that blunted medial prefrontal cortex activity predicted some of the
participants’ real-world acts of intimate partner violence.
“We expected to see that intimate partner aggression was linked to a unique
signature of brain activity,” Chester said. “What we were surprised about was
the ability of this brain signature to predict real-world intimate partner
violence.”
They also investigated how men’s and women’s neural activity affected each
other’s aggression. They found that women’s intimate partner aggression was
predicted by their male partner’s brain response to a perceived provocation.
“This result fits with the well-established finding that women’s intimate partner
aggression may very often be in self-defence,” Chester said.
Taken together, he said, the study’s results provide new insights into brain
regions that are likely to be fruitful targets for interventions that aim to reduce
intimate partner aggression and help science build an accurate brain model of
such harmful acts.
Chester added that the researchers approached this study with utmost care.
Couples were pre-screened to ensure they were not at elevated risk for intimate
partner violence.
The researchers carefully debriefed each participant individually. to make sure thev felt comfortable being reunited with their partner. And they carefully debriefed both partners again as a couple to make sure there were no lingering, negative effects of the study.
“We had robust protocols in place in case anything went wrong, to safeguard
the well-being of our participants,’ Chester said.
“It is of paramount importance that studies into intimate partner aggression prioritize the safety and well-being of their participants, and we believe we achieved this goal.”
While this study focused on male-female intimate partner aggression, Chester
said future work is needed to examine these dynamics across a greater
diversity of gender identities and sexual orientations.
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