Introducing the concept of neurobiological foundation of Rorschach responses using the example of Oral Dependent Language

Abstract

We introduce the concept of “neurobiological foundation” of Rorschach interpretations as an extension of the concept of behavioral representation as a foundation for interpretation of R‐PAS variables. Here, we propose that if there is a parallelism between the mental, verbal and perceptual behaviors occurring within the microcosm of the Rorschach task and those occurring in the external environment [behavioral foundation], then the same brain regions engaged by the test‐taker when producing of a given code, should be engaged also when reproducing, in the external environment, the same psychological processes underlying that specific Rorschach code [neurobiological foundation]. To investigate this concept, we used archival, fMRI data and tested whether producing Oral Dependency Language (ODL) responses would associate with increased activation in brain regions associated with dependency‐related, psychological processes. Results from a sample of 21 non‐clinical volunteers partially confirmed our hypothesis, providing some support to the neurobiological foundation of the ODL code.

Complexity and Cognitive Engagement in the Rorschach Task: An fMRI Study

“…A second study tested whether delivering a Human Movement (M) response would be associated with increased activity in mirror neuron-related areas in the brain (Giromini, Viglione, Pineda, et al, 2019). A third study examined whether delivering an Oral Dependency Language (ODL) response would be associated with increased activity in dependency-related areas in the brain (Giromini, Viglione, Vitolo, et al, 2019). These fMRI data, however, have never been analyzed to test the possible association of DAN activity to R-PAS scores reflecting cognitive engagement and processing.…”

“…In this study, we used a similar analytic approach to that used before by Giromini, Viglione, Pineda, et al (2019) and by Giromini, Viglione, Vitolo, et al (2019) to investigate M-related and ODL-related neural activations, respectively. First, we identified a region of interest (ROI) indicative of DAN involvement, by relying on Neurosynth (see www.neurosynth.org), an online platform for large scale, automated, meta-analytic synthesis of fMRI data (see Yarkoni et al, 2011a).…”

“…Next, we split our participants' Rorschach responses into 'complex' responses versus 'non-complex' responses. This was done to maximize power and use the same analytic procedures utilized in previously published studies reporting on this same data set (Giromini, Viglione, Pineda, et al, 2019;Giromini, Viglione, Vitolo, et al, 2019). Indeed, as discussed in Giromini, Viglione, Pineda, et al (2019), our study has fewer data points and thereby less power than the typical fMRI study, in that to preserve ecological validity we used 10 different visual stimuli only (i.e., the 10 Rorschach cards), we did not show the same stimuli more than twice.…”

“…This finding, together with the fact that in Ales et al's (2019) study Complexity strongly correlated with the number of fixations recorded during the visual examination of the Rorschach inkblot stimuli, suggests that Rorschach responses characterized by greater complexity should associate with increased activity in the DAN of the test-taker's brain. The current study used the same database previously analyzed for three different published studies (Giromini et al, 2017;Giromini, Viglione, Pineda et al, 2019;Giromini, Viglione, Vitolo et al, 2019), encompassing fMRI data from 26 healthy participants exposed to the Rorschach inkblots with the instruction to think of what they might be. A first study investigated what brain areas are engaged, in general, when the Rorschach is administered to a person, regardless of what the test-taker sees in the inkblot designs (Giromini et al, 2017).…”

A performance‐based measure of emotion response control: A preliminary MRI study

“…The reviewed literature has provided compelling evidence of FC: CF + C as a correlate of other observational and experimental measures of emotionality and response regulation. Neural correlates of RIM responses are rarely studied, which limits developments of future research applications (Arble, Steinert & Daugherty, 2020); however, the few available reports indicate that modern neuroimaging methods provide sensitive correlates of RIM indices of cognitive and interpersonal processes (Giromini, Viglione, Pineda, et al ., 2017; Giromini, Viglione, Vitolo, Cauda & Zennaro, 2019; Giromini, Viglione, Zennaro, Viglione, Zennaro & Cauda, 2017). We aim to address this in a preliminary study of associations between RIM responses and cortical thickness in regions that are commonly reported in MRI studies of emotion regulation.…”