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Abstract
Adolescents spend a significant part of their leisure time watching TV programs and movies that portray violence. It is unknown, however, how the extent of violent media use and the severity of aggression displayed affect adolescents’ brain function. We investigated skin conductance responses, brain activation and functional brain connectivity to media violence in healthy adolescents. In an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, subjects repeatedly viewed normed videos that displayed different degrees of aggressive behavior. We found a downward linear adaptation in skin conductance responses with increasing aggression and desensitization towards more aggressive videos. Our results further revealed adaptation in a fronto-parietal network including the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC), right precuneus and bilateral inferior parietal lobules, again showing downward linear adaptations and desensitization towards more aggressive videos. Granger causality mapping analyses revealed attenuation in the left lOFC, indicating that activation during viewing aggressive media is driven by input from parietal regions that decreased over time, for more aggressive videos. We conclude that aggressive media activates an emotion–attention network that has the capability to blunt emotional responses through reduced attention with repeated viewing of aggressive media contents, which may restrict the linking of the consequences of aggression with an emotional response, and therefore potentially promotes aggressive attitudes and behavior.
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1 National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, 10 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA, 2 Department of Cognitive Psychology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Rudower Chaussee 18, 12489 Berlin, Germany, 3 Department of Molecular Neuroscience, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA, 4 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, 313 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA, and 5 National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, 10 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, 10 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA, 2 Department of Cognitive Psychology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Rudower Chaussee 18, 12489 Berlin, Germany, 3 Department of Molecular Neuroscience, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA, 4 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, 313 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA, and 5 National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, 10 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
2 National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, 10 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA, 2 Department of Cognitive Psychology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Rudower Chaussee 18, 12489 Berlin, Germany, 3 Department of Molecular Neuroscience, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA, 4 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, 313 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA, and 5 National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, 10 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA