ArticlePloS one2013
Soothing the threatened brain: leveraging contact comfort with emotionally focused therapy.
Article in PloS one, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 24 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- The comfort in touch: Immediate and lasting effects of handholding on emotional pain.PloS one · 2021Trial
- Relational Memory Reconsolidation: A New Lens on Change Mechanisms in EFT for Couples.Family process · 2026Review
- Expressive Writing and Self-Care in Palliative Care Professionals: A Qualitative Longitudinal Study.Journal of clinical psychology in medical settings · 2026Article
- Emotion-focused therapy and forgiveness in the older population: Protocol for a feasibility randomized controlled trial.PloS one · 2026Article
- Feeling socially connected to others is linked to better emotion regulation in adolescent girls' daily lives: An ecological momentary assessment study.Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence · 2025Article
- Spouse support and stress: gender differences in neural measures of performance monitoring under observation of a spouse.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- The effects of parental presence on amygdala and mPFC activation during fear conditioning: An exploratory study.Developmental science · 2024Article
- Article
- Vicarious ratings of social touch the effect of age and autistic traits.Scientific reports · 2021Observational
- Social dialogue triggers biobehavioral synchrony of partners' endocrine response via sex-specific, hormone-specific, attachment-specific mechanisms.Scientific reports · 2021Observational
- The social regulation of emotion: Inconsistencies suggest no mediation through ventromedial prefrontal cortex.Social neuroscience · 2021Article
- Cognitive Processes Unfold in a Social Context: A Review and Extension of Social Baseline Theory.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
- Soothing the emotional brain: modulation of neural activity to personal emotional stimulation by social touch.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2019Article
- Relationship status and perceived support in the social regulation of neural responses to threat.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2017Article
- A Social Psychological Perspective on the Links between Close Relationships and Health.Current directions in psychological science · 2017Article
- Modernizing Relationship Therapy through Social Thermoregulation Theory: Evidence, Hypotheses, and Explorations.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- Contextual Positive Psychology: Policy Recommendations for Implementing Positive Psychology into Schools.Frontiers in psychology · 2016Review
- System Level spatial-frequency EEG changes coincident with a 90-day cognitive-behavioral therapy program for couples in relationship distress.Brain imaging and behavior · 2015Article
- Social Baseline Theory: The Social Regulation of Risk and Effort.Current opinion in psychology · 2015Article
- Thriving through relationships.Current opinion in psychology · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Social relationships are tightly linked to health and well-being. Recent work suggests that social relationships can even serve vital emotion regulation functions by minimizing threat-related neural activity. But relationship distress remains a significant public health problem in North America and elsewhere. A promising approach to helping couples both resolve relationship distress and nurture effective interpersonal functioning is Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples (EFT), a manualized, empirically supported therapy that is strongly focused on repairing adult attachment bonds. We sought to examine a neural index of social emotion regulation as a potential mediator of the effects of EFT. Specifically, we examined the effectiveness of EFT for modifying the social regulation of neural threat responding using an fMRI-based handholding procedure. Results suggest that EFT altered the brain's representation of threat cues in the presence of a romantic partner. EFT-related changes during stranger handholding were also observed, but stranger effects were dependent upon self-reported relationship quality. EFT also appeared to increase threat-related brain activity in regions associated with self-regulation during the no-handholding condition. These findings provide a critical window into the regulatory mechanisms of close relationships in general and EFT in particular.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.