The Effect of Attachment-Related Stress on the Capacity to Mentalize: An Fmri Investigation of the Biobehavioral Switch Model

Fonagy and colleagues have conceptualized a decoupling effect of the activated attachment system on the capacity to mentalize (Fonagy and Target 2008). Neuroimaging studies provide evidence for this mechanism but drew on study designs that did not specifically operationalize the relationship between attachment activation and broader social cognition (Bartels and Zeki 2004). Bowlby's original notion of internal working models of attachment that come on line when a person is exposed to attachment-related stress (e.g., death, loss, other relational trauma) has as yet not been subjected to rigorous neuroscientific investigation. Behaviorally, however, it is known that secondary strategies come into play when direct security seeking, due to an inaccessibility of the attachment figure or its psychic representation, fails. The brain mechanisms of these processes of hyper-activation (perceptual vigilance) and deactivation (perceptual defense), as attempts to adapt to a suboptimal environment, have not yet been explored (Mikulincer and Shaver 2007).