Adult attachment and the brain
Abstract
Individuals in adult attachment relationships regulate one another via overt emotional and social behavior. Attachment-related styles of utilizing social support moderate these regulatory effects. In recent years, the social and affective neurosciences have begun to clarify how these processes are instantiated in the brain, including the likely neural mechanisms of long-term felt security following past attachment experiences and the neural circuitry supporting the regulation of emotion by relational partners. In this brief review, I describe the neural systems involved in the formation and maintenance of adult attachment relationships and review the small amount of work to date on the neuroscience of adult attachment style. I then offer my own speculations about how adult attachment relationships conserve the brain’s metabolic resources, especially those of the prefrontal cortex.
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For social animals such as humans, social safety signals are the most important.
“For social animals such as humans, the social safety signals are the most important (cf.Coan's Social Baseline Theory;Coan, 2010).”
From Exposed to events that never happen: generalized unsafety, the default stress response, and prolonged autonomic activity (2017) · cites this paper as Coan, 2010
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“The neuroscience of attachment has also been progressively developed (Insel and Young, 2001; Insel and Fernald, 2004; Montague and Lohrenz, 2007; Coan, 2008; Neumann, 2008; Coan, 2010; Panksepp, 2011; Gillath, 2015; Feldman, 2017).”
Background
- Authors
- Coan, J. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Virginia (US)
- Corresponding author
- Coan, James A.
- ORCID
- Coan, James A.
- Venue
- Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2010-03
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 210-217
- ISSN
- 0265-4075 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-3608
- OpenAlex
- W1974789877
- Semantic Scholar
- e1603981b3e202b55177d3fb4d1cdc41c63e3ae8
- Cited by
- 134
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 14 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 10.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- adult attachment, attachment styles, emotion regulation, social support, sense of security, prefrontal cortex, brain energy metabolism, attachment relationships, affective neuroscience
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