Mother and Infant Brains Interact

• In Event: 1-055 - TAD Talks on International Research

Integrative Statement

Attachment between mother and infant is the earliest and most critical social relationship in mammalians. Specific automatic brain patterns regulate infants seeking proximity to mother and prompt protest on separation from mother. These mechanisms promote attachment through vocal communication and bodily movement. Reciprocally, enhanced brain activity in mothers is associated with mothers’ movement and speech to infants and, more generally, with their propensity to caregive. Infant and maternal brains “respond” to one another, and they follow a dynamic synchronous “dance”. During this TAD, I will illustrate these mother-infant dynamics with new findings from animal and human studies that employ a variety of techniques from genetic engineering to neuroimaging hyper-scanning.

Authors

• Andrew Ribner, New York University
  Introducer

• Gianluca Esposito, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; University of Trento, Italy
  Speaker