Event-related potentials to cemetery images distinguish electroencephalogram recordings for women unresolved for loss on the Adult Attachment Interview

Unresolved/disorganized loss, as assessed by the Adult Attachment Interview, is characterized by brief slips during the discussion of loss which are termed "lapses in the monitoring of reasoning or discourse". Disruptions in working memory or altered states of consciousness, such as dissociation and absorption, have been proposed to be responsible for these lapses, which include indicating that a dead person is still believed to be alive, or highly detailed speech inappropriate to the interview context.;Children of Unresolved/disorganized parents are often classified "Disorganized" on reunion following brief laboratory separations from the Unresolved parent. Disorganized children tend to subsequently experience increased vulnerability to dissociation, internalizing/externalizing disorders, and psychopathology. Disorganized attachment may frequently be the product of anomalous frightening parental behaviors, hypothesized to emerge when Unresolved parents enter dissociative mental states resulting from associations with traumatic memories. These frightened, frightening or dissociative-like parental behaviors are inherently disorganizing, since the parent is simultaneously the infant's evolutionarily channeled haven of safety and the source of alarm.;Sixteen Unresolved/disorganized subjects and 15 subjects who were not Unresolved (hereafter, "Organized") viewed four categories of randomized centrally presented images: "social positive" (adults with children), "nature positive" (animals, flowers, landscapes), "blatant death" (dead or dying people) and "cemetery images" (cemeteries, tombstones). Unresolved participants' electroencephalogram event-related potentials (ERP) demonstrated increased physiological emotional responses. The anterior N2 ERP component indicated that they initially attended involuntarily to the cemetery images. A later posterior right-sided asymmetrical P3 ERP component towards all image types suggested continuing attention and emotional engagement. In contrast, Organized participants exhibited neither N2 heightened attention towards cemetery scenes nor asymmetrical P3 responses.;Unresolved participants' differential brain responses towards subtle death reminders may provide insight into the kinds of event which can involuntarily prompt entrances into mental states promoting the frightening behaviors observed in many Unresolved parents towards their children.;This study additionally replicated correlations between elevated Tellegen Absorption Scale scores and both reports of maternal loss experiences within two years of the subject's birth, and the subject's Unresolved classification. A previously unreported direct association between reports of maternal loss and Unresolved classification was also found.