Neural Response to Infant Pictures; Comparing depressed and non-depressed mothers and non-mothers

• In Event: 3-077 - Multimodal Neuroimaging Approaches to Studies of Maternal Brain Adaptation: Parenting, Life Adversity and Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Background: In many mammalian species new mothers show heightened positive responsiveness to infants and their cues when they give birth (Lonstein, Levy, & Fleming, 2015). In fact, virgin female rats respond negatively to young pups, whereas new mothers display a repertoire of maternal behaviors. These parturitional changes in responsiveness are enhanced by maternal hormones and by changes in striatal dopamine and its reward properties (Lonstein et al, 2015). Recent work (Barrett et al., 2011; Wonch et al., 2016) shows that distress and anxiety are significantly related to reduced amygdala response to Own smiling infant faces compared to Unfamiliar smiling infant faces; additionally, in comparison to nondepressed mothers, depressed mothers show reduced activation in the amygdala. These results suggest that, in line with work from multiple laboratories (Cunningham & Brosch, 2012; Leibenluft et al., 2004; Seifritz et al., 2003; Ranote et al., 2004; Strathearn & Kim, 2013) examining human mothers, infant-related amygdala function may be an important factor in maternal anxiety/depression, quality of mothering, and individual differences in the motivation to provide care to offspring.
In the present study, we extend these findings comparing mothers and non-mothers (to assess parity effects) and Postpartum Depression (PPD) with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) (to assess depression effects) in neural and subjective responses to infant stimuli, as well as to positive but non-infant stimuli (to assess specificity and salience of stimuli) (Barrett & Fleming, 2012). The focus is on the maternal and reward neural networks including the amygdala and ventral striatum and their connections in the brain. All women also complete extensive questionnaires relating to their early experiences, mothering motivation, anxiety and depression, and demographic information.
Methods: Using fMRI, we investigated the neural response to ‘positive’ infant faces (IF) and positive non-infant pictures (NI), in PPD and non-PPD mothers and in MDD and non-MDD nonmothers. Separate whole-brain, within-groups fixed-effects analyses (Bonferroni p=0.05) were conducted for each group. We also undertook analyses of ROIs for certain a priori defined comparisons.
Results: In a direct comparison between PPD and non-PPD mothers, non-PPD mothers showed increased functional connectivity between the bilateral amygdala and the right insular cortex, whereas PPD mothers showed decreased functional connectivity between the two regions in response to own infant images. The results confirm the significance of increased neural sensitivity to own infant stimuli for parenting and the role of mothers’ negative mood in neural sensitivity. Moreover, patterns of amygdalar activity and connectivity in response to contrasts between ‘Own’ and control ‘Unfamiliar’ infant faces and between Unfamiliar infant faces and Noninfant stimuli within groups will be described; patterns will also be examined between groups of a) PPD new mothers and MDD non-mothers and b) new mothers and matched non-mothers without depression. Interactions between parity and depression status will be assessed. Finally, we will explore associations between amygdalar responses, women’s subjective evaluations of the stimuli, attitudes towards mothering, as well as the effects of early experiences in family of origin and brain responses to infant and noninfant stimuli.

Authors

• Aya Dudin, 1Department of Psychology, University of Toronto at Mississauga
  Presenting Author

• Kathleen Wonch, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto at Mississauga
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andrew Davis, McMaster University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Meier Steiner, McMaster University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alison Fleming, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto at Mississauga
  Non-Presenting Author

• Geoffrey Hall, McMaster University
  Non-Presenting Author