Parent–child intervention decreases stress and increases maternal brain activity and connectivity during own baby-cry: An exploratory study

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Dev Psychopathol
• Personal Author:
  SWAIN, JAMES E. ; HO, S. SHAUN ; ROSENBLUM, KATHERINE L. ; MORELEN, DIANA ; DAYTON, CAROLYN J. ; MUZIK, MARIA
• Description:
  Parental responses to their children are crucially influenced by stress. However, brain-based mechanistic understanding of the adverse effects of parenting stress and benefits of therapeutic interventions is lacking. We studied maternal brain responses to salient child signals as a function of Mom Power (MP), an attachment-based parenting intervention established to decrease maternal distress. Twenty-nine mothers underwent two functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans during a baby-cry task designed to solicit maternal responses to child's or self's distress signals. Between scans, mothers were pseudorandomly assigned to either MP (n = 14) or control (n = 15) with groups balanced for depression. Compared to control, MP decreased parenting stress and increased child-focused responses in social brain areas highlighted by the precuneus and its functional connectivity with subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, which are key components of reflective self-awareness and decision-making neurocircuitry. Furthermore, over 13 weeks, reduction in parenting stress was related to increasing child- versus self-focused baby-cry responses in amygdala-temporal pole functional connectivity, which may mediate maternal ability to take her child's perspective. Although replication in larger samples is needed, the results of this first parental-brain intervention study demonstrate robust stress-related brain circuits for maternal care that can be modulated by psychotherapy.
• Subjects:
  Adult Article Cerebral Cortex Child, Preschool Connectome Crying Female Humans Magnetic Resonance Imaging Male Mother-Child Relations Mothers Outcome Assessment, Health Care Parenting Psychotherapy, Group Stress, Psychological

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• Source:
  Dev Psychopathol. 29(2):535-553
• Pubmed ID:
  28401845
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC7195811
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  R49 CE002099/CE/NCIPC CDC HHS/United States ; R49CE002099/ACL/ACL HHS/United States ; RC2 MD004767/MD/NIMHD NIH HHS/United States ; UL1 TR000433/TR/NCATS NIH HHS/United States
• Volume:
  29
• Issue:
  2
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:6e89f60ecac4b1f40a05e3d58ea27feb1929152b6317de7e5980cb2fc44f5021
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/87612/cdc_87612_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.92 MB ]