skip to main content

Explore Research Products in the NSF-PAR

Title: Mothers’ Attachment Representations and Children’s Brain Structure
Ample research demonstrates that parents’ experience-based mental representations of attachment—cognitive models of close relationships—relate to their children’s social-emotional development. However, no research to date has examined how parents’ attachment representations relate to another crucial domain of children’s development: brain development. The present study is the first to integrate the separate literatures on attachment and developmental social cognitive neuroscience to examine the link between mothers’ attachment representations and 3- to 8-year-old children’s brain structure. We hypothesized that mothers’ attachment representations would relate to individual differences in children’s brain structures involved in stress regulation—specifically, amygdala and hippocampal volumes—in part via mothers’ responses to children’s distress. We assessed 52 mothers’ attachment representations (secure base script knowledge on the Attachment Script Assessment and self-reported attachment avoidance and anxiety on the Experiences in Close Relationships scale) and children’s brain structure. Mothers’ secure base script knowledge was significantly related to children’s smaller left amygdala volume but was unrelated to hippocampal volume; we found no indirect links via maternal responses to children’s distress. Exploratory analyses showed associations between mothers’ attachment representations and white matter and thalamus volumes. Together, these preliminary results suggest that mothers’ attachment representations may be linked to the development of children’s neural circuitry related to stress regulation.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1749280
NSF-PAR ID:
10366253
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Volume:
16
ISSN:
1662-5161
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ( , Scientific Reports)
    Abstract

    Previous research has established important developmental changes in sleep and memory during early childhood. These changes have been linked separately to brain development, yet few studies have explored their interrelations during this developmental period. The goal of this report was to explore these associations in 200 (100 female) typically developing 4- to 8-year-old children. We examined whether habitual sleep patterns (24-h sleep duration, nap status) were related to children’s performance on a source memory task and hippocampal subfield volumes. Results revealed that, across all participants, after controlling for age, habitual sleep duration was positively related to source memory performance. In addition, in younger (4–6 years, n = 67), but not older (6–8 years, n = 70) children, habitual sleep duration was related to hippocampal head subfield volume (CA2-4/DG). Moreover, within younger children, volume of hippocampal subfields varied as a function of nap status; children who were still napping (n = 28) had larger CA1 volumes in the body compared to children who had transitioned out of napping (n = 39). Together, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that habitually napping children may have more immature cognitive networks, as indexed by hippocampal integrity. Furthermore, these results shed additional light on why sleep is important during early childhood, a period of substantial brain development.

     
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ( , Journal of Neuroendocrinology)
    Abstract

    The parenting brain may undergo remodeling that supports the adjustment to new parenthood. Prior work on human mothers has found gray matter volume decreases from preconception to early postpartum in multiple structures, including the left hippocampus, which was the only structure to show gray matter volume recovery at 2 years postpartum. This is consistent with evidence from animal models that the hippocampus is unusually plastic across reproductive transitions. However, no studies have focused specifically on hippocampal volume changes in human fathers. Among 38 men who were scanned by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) before and after having their first child, individual differences in left hippocampal volume changes were associated with men's prenatal oxytocin, postpartum testosterone, and postpartum adaptation to parenthood. Across the whole sample, hippocampal volumes did not change significantly from prenatal to postpartum. However, men who showed larger increases in left hippocampal volume from prenatal to postpartum reported stronger parent–child bonding and affectionate attachment and lower parenting stress. Fathers with higher levels of prenatal oxytocin showed larger left hippocampal volume increases across the transition to parenthood. In turn, greater increases in left hippocampal volume predicted lower postpartum testosterone after adjusting for prenatal testosterone. These findings did not extend to the right hippocampus. In conclusion, remodeling of the left hippocampus across the transition to new fatherhood may reflect adaptation to parenthood in human males.

     
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ( , Nature Communications)
    Abstract

    Macrostructural characteristics, such as cost of living and state-level anti-poverty programs relate to the magnitude of socioeconomic disparities in brain development and mental health. In this study we leveraged data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study from 10,633 9-11 year old youth (5115 female) across 17 states. Lower income was associated with smaller hippocampal volume and higher internalizing psychopathology. These associations were stronger in states with higher cost of living. However, in high cost of living states that provide more generous cash benefits for low-income families, socioeconomic disparities in hippocampal volume were reduced by 34%, such that the association of family income with hippocampal volume resembled that in the lowest cost of living states. We observed similar patterns for internalizing psychopathology. State-level anti-poverty programs and cost of living may be confounded with other factors related to neurodevelopment and mental health. However, the patterns were robust to controls for numerous state-level social, economic, and political characteristics. These findings suggest that state-level macrostructural characteristics, including the generosity of anti-poverty policies, are potentially relevant for addressing the relationship of low income with brain development and mental health.

     
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ; ; ( , PNAS Nexus)
    Abstract

    Gun violence is a major public health problem and costs the United States $280 billion annually (1). Although adolescents are disproportionately impacted (e.g. premature death), we know little about how close adolescents live to deadly gun violence incidents and whether such proximity impacts their socioemotional development (2, 3). Moreover, gun violence is likely to shape youth developmental outcomes through biological processes—including functional connectivity within regions of the brain that support emotion processing, salience detection, and physiological stress responses—though little work has examined this hypothesis. Lastly, it is unclear if strong neighborhood social ties can buffer youth from the neurobehavioral effects of gun violence. Within a nationwide birth cohort of 3,444 youth (56% Black, 24% Hispanic) born in large US cities, every additional deadly gun violence incident that occurred within 500 meters of home in the prior year was associated with an increase in behavioral problems by 9.6%, even after accounting for area-level crime and socioeconomic resources. Incidents that occurred closer to a child's home exerted larger effects, and stronger neighborhood social ties offset these associations. In a neuroimaging subsample (N = 164) of the larger cohort, living near more incidents of gun violence and reporting weaker neighborhood social ties were associated with weaker amygdala–prefrontal functional connectivity during socioemotional processing, a pattern previously linked to less effective emotion regulation. Results provide spatially sensitive evidence for gun violence effects on adolescent behavior, a potential mechanism through which risk is biologically embedded, and ways in which positive community factors offset ecological risk.

     
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ( , Developmental Science)
    Abstract

    Infancy is a sensitive period of development, during which experiences of parental care are particularly important for shaping the developing brain. In a longitudinal study ofN = 95 mothers and infants, we examined links between caregiving behavior (maternal sensitivity observed during a mother–infant free‐play) and infants’ neural response to emotion (happy, angry, and fearful faces) at 5 and 7 months of age. Neural activity was assessed using functional Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), a region involved in cognitive control and emotion regulation. Maternal sensitivity was positively correlated with infants’ neural responses tohappyfaces in the bilateral dlPFC and was associated with relative increases in such responses from 5 to 7 months. Multilevel analyses revealed caregiving‐related individual differences in infants’ neural responses to happy compared to fearful faces in the bilateral dlPFC, as well as other brain regions. We suggest that variability in dlPFC responses to emotion in the developing brain may be one correlate of early experiences of caregiving, with implications for social‐emotional functioning and self‐regulation.

     
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email