Poster #204 - Infant’s Brain Response to Mother’s Voice – Relationship to Socioemotional Development

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Infants are born preferring voices over other auditory stimuli (Vouloumanos, Hauser, Werker, Martin, 2010), and able to distinguish their mother’s voice distinct from other voices (DeCasper, Fifer, 1980). Infants have demonstrated increased activation in areas analogous to those responsible for social and affective cognition in adults, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and medial and posterior temporal lobes in response to maternal voices (Dehane-Lambertz, 2010; Minagawa-Kawai, 2008; Imafuku, 2014) and emotional prosody (Graham et al, 2013). However, the influences of maternal voice and emotional prosody (e.g. happy vs angry mother’s voice) on neural activation have not been tested together, especially when examining the relationship to infant socioemotional outcomes. Thus, in the current study we set out to test whether infant’s socioemotional development assessed behaviorally can be related to infant’s brain activation to social stimuli, particularly maternal voices.
We investigated the relationship between infant’s behavioral socioemotional skills and the neural activation to social stimuli. Infants (N = 16, Male = 62.5%) aged 12-24 months were assessed on their socioemotional development using the BAYLEY-III scales of infant development (Bayley, 2006) and during natural sleep listened to their mother’s voice and a control woman’s voice reading nonsense sentences in 4 emotional tones, happy, angry, sad, and neutral while undergoing functional neuroimaging (fMRI). We hypothesized that those infants who showed increased socioemotional development behaviorally relative to age-normed peers would also show greater activation to mother’s positive voice in regions responsible for social communication and social perception, the PFC, OFC, temporal areas including the fusiform gyrus and temporal pole.
We found a significant three-way interaction between emotion, actor, and infant’s socioemotional development score in six clusters (see Table 1, Figure 1 for activation map); the superior occipital gyrus extending fronto-parietally including bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral DLPFC, bilateral cerebellum, bilateral OFC, and the right ITG including fusiform gyrus and temporal pole, p < 0.05, corrected (k ≥ 134 with a height threshold of p < 0.005 uncorrected). In the several clusters including OFC, higher socioemotional competence was associated with increased activation to happy mother’s voice (Beta = 0.05, p < .01). In the cerebellum, higher socioemotional competence was associated with increased activation to angry and neutral mother’s voice (Betas = 0.04, 0.02, both p’s < .01). In the right inferior temporal gyrus, higher socioemotional competence was associated with increased activation to angry and sad (Betas =0.06, 0.07, p’s < .01) as well as happy mother’s voice, (Beta = 0.09, p < .001).
This study demonstrates that for those infants who are more socioemotionally developed behaviorally, they show increased activation to maternal emotional voices in regions thought to be involved in the social brain in adults. This was found even when controlling for age in a sample ranging in age from 12-24 months. This is an important first step in understanding the link between infant’s brain functional in response to social stimuli and individual differences in social behavior development. This study also demonstrates the importance of caregiver vocalization in supporting infant’s socioemotional development.

Authors

• Andrew J Erhart, University of Denver
  Presenting Author

• Rebekah Tribble, University of Denver
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pamela M. Cole, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pilyoung Kim, University of Denver
  Non-Presenting Author