Introduction
Part 3 looks at right-brain-led development in early childhood, the formation of attachment, and how far co-regulation between infant and caregiver lays the ground for later capacity to regulate feeling and for relationship itself. What is described here has a good deal to say to anyone working with people — in Rolfing, in coaching.
What Is Attachment Theory? — A Blueprint for Relationship
Attachment Theory brings together psychoanalysis and developmental psychology to explain how a child’s relationship with a caregiver — most often the mother — shapes their later relationships and their capacity to regulate emotion.
The theory was proposed by the British psychiatrist John Bowlby, and developed into empirical research and a system of classification by Mary Ainsworth and Mary Main.
Attachment is not merely an emotional tie. Whether or not there is someone who functions as a secure base when crisis or anxiety arrives makes a fundamental difference to how a child’s nervous system develops and how it responds to stress.
Attachment, in other words, is a blueprint for the regulation of affect. The quality of its formation reaches later capacity for relationship, self-regard, emotional control — and even the structural development of the brain.
The Attachment Styles
For reference, the styles as classified by Bowlby and by those who followed him, Mary Ainsworth and Mary Main.
| Style | Characteristics | Background | Relation to neural development |
|---|---|---|---|
| Secure | Trusts others; able to regulate own feeling | A caregiver who responds consistently and with understanding | Empathy and bodily sensation integrate readily in the right hemisphere; the regulating function of the mPFC (middle prefrontal cortex) develops well. |
| Avoidant | Expects little of others; cuts off from feeling | An indifferent or rejecting caregiver | Access to affect is restricted and right-hemisphere processing of emotion is suppressed. A tilt toward left-hemisphere logic and control of behaviour. |
| Ambivalent | Dependent on others; unstable regulation of feeling | Inconsistent response, or over-protection | Right-hemisphere processing of affect is active but unsteady, and the regulating function of the mPFC is unstable. Empathy and self-regulation fall out of balance. |
| Disorganized | Safety and fear mixed together; confused response | Trauma, or an abusive environment | The amygdala, which governs fear response, becomes over-active. Right-hemisphere processing of affect is disordered and the integrative function of the mPFC is impaired. |
These bear not only on behaviour — how one relates to people — but directly on how feeling is felt and how it is regulated, and so reach deep into later relationships and into the picture one forms of oneself.
The Ground of Attachment Is Laid in the Right Hemisphere
The researcher who took attachment theory further from the side of neural development is Allan Schore.
Schore holds that the non-verbal exchange in the infant-caregiver relationship — gaze, tone of voice, the sensation of skin, facial expression — reaches deep into the development of the child’s right hemisphere.
For the first one to three years of life, the human brain develops with the right hemisphere in the lead. The right hemisphere at this stage handles non-verbal, emotional and social cues, and is regulated only through empathic relationship. Through these, the infant learns bodily what is safe, what is dangerous, what is all right.
Schore calls this the period of attachment’s neural development, and holds that the non-verbal resonance — attunement — between infant and caregiver is what builds the circuitry for self-regulation and co-regulation in the nervous system. An infant at this stage cannot regulate affect alone; the nervous system is steadied through the attunement of a parent’s gaze, voice, breath and touch.
For reference, the regions involved in forming the networks that attunement encourages:
— Amygdala (fear, affect)
— Prefrontal cortex (empathy, decision, inhibition)
— Hypothalamus (hormonal regulation)
— Vagus nerve (parasympathetic function and social connection)
From around age three, the left hemisphere begins to develop. Logic, language, planning, the sense of time — the left hemisphere can only develop functionally once the ground of safety has been set by the right.
Where attunement chronically fails — mis-attunement — the following follow:
— Excess release of the stress hormone cortisol
— Neural over-sensitivity, instability of affect
— An over-active amygdala, a suppressed prefrontal cortex
— Formation of a traumatic attachment style
What the Regions Do — The Structure of the Social Brain
| Region | Side | Main role |
|---|---|---|
| Right prefrontal cortex | Right | Empathy with feeling, integration of bodily sensation, face recognition |
| Insula | Both (right in particular) | Interoception, empathy, recognition of affect |
| Amygdala | Both (right dominant) | Processing of fear, anger and the like; detection of threat |
| Left temporal lobe, Broca’s area | Left | Comprehension and production of language; meaning-making |
| Left prefrontal cortex | Left | Logical judgement, analysis, inhibition of behaviour |
The right hemisphere, then, is given over to bodily sensation and affect in the present moment, and to non-verbal connection with others; the left handles language, meaning and logic. In developmental order, the right lays the ground and the left builds its structure on top.
What Is the Middle Prefrontal Cortex?
Part 2 described the difference between the immediate response of the amygdala and the slower response of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. What matters here is the middle prefrontal cortex (mPFC).
The mPFC joins brainstem, limbic system and cortex, and works as a centre of integration, bridging affect and cognition, body and awareness, self and other.
The experience of safety and ease that grows within an attachment relationship in particular supports the development of the mPFC, and raises both the capacity to regulate the autonomic nervous system and the flexibility of feeling and behaviour.
The mPFC also carries out the following:
- Inhibition and regulation of feeling (emotional regulation)
- Taking the position of oneself and another (empathy, perspective taking)
- Integration of interoception
- Formation of conscience and moral awareness
Where this region develops soundly, what grows with it is the capacity not to be swallowed by feeling, to imagine another’s position, and to come back to the present moment using bodily sensation as the way in.
The Nine Functions and the mPFC — Where Mindfulness Meets This
Dan Siegel holds that the middle prefrontal cortex carries nine integrative functions.
- Body Regulation
- Emotional Balance
- Response Flexibility
- Fear Modulation
- Empathy
- Insight
- Moral Awareness
- Intuition
- Attuned Communication
Every one of these is central to relationship, to self-care, and to how decisions are made — and an approach that works through the body, as Rolfing does, can raise this integrative capacity too.
What is worth noticing is that the practice of mindfulness is held to activate all nine. Staying in the present moment while attending carefully to breath, sensation, feeling and thought strengthens the work of the mPFC and encourages the plasticity of the brain.
Work that turns attention toward bodily sensation, for instance, activates the insula and the mPFC together, and helps grow the capacity to regulate feeling and to feel with others.
How the Different Approaches Work
NLP encourages change at the unconscious level through building rapport, shifting perspective, and reconstructing feeling. This makes possible the reintegration of feeling and memory, and change in patterns of behaviour.
Coaching, through dialogue and questioning, grows a client’s capacity to notice what is going on inside them, widen their options, and choose how to act. Putting feeling into words and noticing bodily sensation contribute in particular to the integration of the right hemisphere and the mPFC.
Active Inference is a model in which the brain is always predicting the world and working to minimise error; it is a way of bringing the unconscious hypotheses behind our behaviour and feeling into view, and updating them.
Bodywork rewrites the body’s sensory map through non-verbal contact with skin and fascia, and rebuilds the sense of safety and connection from the body.
By Approach: Engaging the Right Hemisphere and the mPFC
| Approach | Engaging the right hemisphere | Engaging the mPFC |
| NLP | Non-verbal rapport, reframing of feeling, submodality technique | Reinterpretation, shift of perspective, self-regulation through reflective questioning |
| Coaching | Putting feeling into words, noticing bodily sensation, empathic dialogue through questions | Building a setting of safety, mindful time for reflection |
| Active Inference | Predicting and updating feedback from the world, minimising error | Readjusting subjective reality, rebuilding the predictive model |
| Bodywork | Non-verbal resonance through contact, integration of skin and fascial sensation | Regulating affect and attention through breath and bodily sensation |
From the Rolfing Side
Rolfing is not simply a matter of working with fascia. It accompanies a process in which a client notices the sensations of their own body, and through that noticing arrives at new meaning for what they are and for their relationship with others.
Which is exactly the work of reintegrating the networks of the social brain — right hemisphere, amygdala, insula, mPFC.
Next time I want to look at how the amygdala works as a smoke detector for affect, and at how memories of threat response come to stay in the body.