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

• Published in: Development and psychopathology 2017-05, Vol.29 (2), p.535-553
• Main Authors: Swain, James E., Ho, S. Shaun, Rosenblum, Katherine L., Morelen, Diana, Dayton, Carolyn J., Muzik, Maria
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Babies; Brain; Cerebral Cortex - physiology; Child, Preschool; Connectome; Crying - psychology; Female; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Mother-Child Relations - psychology; Mothers - psychology; Outcome Assessment, Health Care; Parenting - psychology; Parents & parenting; Psychotherapy, Group - methods; Special Issue Articles; Stress; Stress, Psychological - therapy
• ISSN: 0954-5794; 1469-2198
• DOI: 10.1017/S0954579417000165

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.