TY - JOUR
T1 - A face a mother could love
T2 - Depression-related maternal neural responses to infant emotion faces
AU - Laurent, Heidemarie K.
AU - Ablow, Jennifer C.
N1 - Funding Information:
Correspondence should be addressed to: Heidemarie K. Laurent, Department of Psychology, University of Wyoming, 1000 E. University Avenue, Laramie, WY, USA. E-mail: [email protected] The authors thank the participants and research assistants who made this research possible. This study was supported by a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellowship (F32MH083462-02) to HL, a pilot grant from the University of Oregon Brain Biology Machine Initiative, and a grant from the National Science Foundation (0643393).
PY - 2013/5
Y1 - 2013/5
N2 - Depressed mothers show negatively biased responses to their infants' emotional bids, perhaps due to faulty processing of infant cues. This study is the first to examine depression-related differences in mothers' neural response to their own infant's emotion faces, considering both effects of perinatal depression history and current depressive symptoms. Primiparous mothers (n = 22), half of whom had a history of major depressive episodes (with one episode occurring during pregnancy and/or postpartum), were exposed to images of their own and unfamiliar infants' joy and distress faces during functional neuroimaging. Group differences (depression vs. no-depression) and continuous effects of current depressive symptoms were tested in relation to neural response to own infant emotion faces. Compared to mothers with no psychiatric diagnoses, those with depression showed blunted responses to their own infant's distress faces in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Mothers with higher levels of current symptomatology showed reduced responses to their own infant's joy faces in the orbitofrontal cortex and insula. Current symptomatology also predicted lower responses to own infant joy-distress in left-sided prefrontal and insula/striatal regions. These deficits in self-regulatory and motivational response circuits may help explain parenting difficulties in depressed mothers.
AB - Depressed mothers show negatively biased responses to their infants' emotional bids, perhaps due to faulty processing of infant cues. This study is the first to examine depression-related differences in mothers' neural response to their own infant's emotion faces, considering both effects of perinatal depression history and current depressive symptoms. Primiparous mothers (n = 22), half of whom had a history of major depressive episodes (with one episode occurring during pregnancy and/or postpartum), were exposed to images of their own and unfamiliar infants' joy and distress faces during functional neuroimaging. Group differences (depression vs. no-depression) and continuous effects of current depressive symptoms were tested in relation to neural response to own infant emotion faces. Compared to mothers with no psychiatric diagnoses, those with depression showed blunted responses to their own infant's distress faces in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Mothers with higher levels of current symptomatology showed reduced responses to their own infant's joy faces in the orbitofrontal cortex and insula. Current symptomatology also predicted lower responses to own infant joy-distress in left-sided prefrontal and insula/striatal regions. These deficits in self-regulatory and motivational response circuits may help explain parenting difficulties in depressed mothers.
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U2 - 10.1080/17470919.2012.762039
DO - 10.1080/17470919.2012.762039
M3 - Article
C2 - 23330663
AN - SCOPUS:84876116035
SN - 1747-0919
VL - 8
SP - 228
EP - 239
JO - Social neuroscience
JF - Social neuroscience
IS - 3
ER -