BackHome
Refresh: OffView Personal Schedule
Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Poster #145 - Observed Infant Attachment and Brain Morphology in Pre-Adolescence: A Population-Based Study in 551 Parent-Child Dyads

Sat, March 23, 9:45 to 11:00am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Objective: The quality of the infant-parent attachment has long-term consequences for child development; in particular infants with disorganized attachment are at higher risk for poor outcomes. An increased risk of childhood and adult psychopathology and lower basal cortisol levels have been described in infants with disorganized attachment (Bernard & Dozier, 2010; Groh, Fearon, van IJzendoorn, Bakermans‐Kranenburg, & Roisman, 2017). However, little is known about the relation of infant attachment with brain development. Larger amygdala volumes were reported in two samples of adults with insecure or disorganized attachment patterns during infancy (Lyons-Ruth, Pechtel, Yoon, Anderson, & Teicher, 2016; Moutsiana et al., 2015). In contrast, this association was not observed in a small study of children (Leblanc, Dégeilh, Daneault, Beauchamp, & Bernier, 2017). The present study examined the prospective relation between the quality of infant-parent attachment and brain morphology in a large sample of pre-adolescent children.
Methods: This study included 551 children from a prospective population-based cohort in the Netherlands. Infant-parent attachment was observed with the Strange Situation procedure at 14 months of age and brain morphology measures were subsequently obtained with magnetic resonance imaging at age 10 years. Infant-parent attachment, classified as secure (n = 281), avoidant (n = 69), resistant (n= 81) or disorganized (n = 120), was examined in relation to the amygdala and hippocampal volumes. In exploratory analyses other brain measures, including global structural and white matter connectivity metrics, were also assessed. The association of disorganized and insecure (resistant or avoidant) attachment with brain outcomes was tested with linear regression models adjusted for multiple child and maternal characteristics, including child sex and age at the MRI scan, total intracranial volume, maternal psychiatric symptoms and socioeconomic status.
Results: Children with a disorganized infant attachment had larger hippocampal volumes than those who had an organized attachment pattern (b=72.1, SE=29.9, p=0.02). This finding was robust to the adjustment for confounders and was consistent across brain hemispheres. The association was not explained by child IQ or by child emotional and behavioral problems. Disorganized attachment did not predict any other difference in brain outcomes. Moreover, infants with an insecure organized (avoidant or resistant) attachment pattern did not differ from those who were securely attached in any brain measure at age 10 years.
Conclusions: Disorganized infant-parent attachment was related to larger hippocampal volumes in preadolescent children. This association was not explained by child IQ or emotional and behavioral problems. Our results extend the knowledge on the relation of infant attachment and brain development with evidence for an association between disorganized attachment and a subcortical structure key in emotional and cognitive processing. Further studies with large samples and repeated measurements of brain morphology are needed to confirm this association and to explore the relation with concurrent socio-emotional development. Although causality cannot be inferred, our results in a large prospective population-based sample suggest that a poor quality of infant attachment has a long-term impact on child neurological development.

Authors