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

Direct link:

Maternal Mind-Mindedness and Sensitivity as Moderators of Neonatal Brain Connectivity and Executive Function Outcomes.

Fri, March 24, 8:30 to 9:15am, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 2, Meeting Room 258

Abstract

Introduction: Aberrant brain development in frontal, parietal, and temporal regions has been implicated in disrupted executive function (EF) development. The extent that early aspects of the caregiving environment, including maternal attunement to infant mental states (maternal mind-mindedness [MM]) and sensitive parenting behavior, shapes the neural underpinnings of emerging EF in early childhood is unclear.
Methods: This longitudinal study focuses on 398 infant-mother dyads oversampled for exposure to poverty. Mothers were recruited during pregnancy and completed social and life experience background measures. Maternal income-to-needs ratio (INR) provided a measure of family socio-economic status. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and Perceived Stress Scale assessed maternal depression symptoms and perceived stress, respectively. At birth, neonates underwent resting state functional (n=319) and diffusion (n=303) MRI scans on a Prisma 3T scanner. Key resting state networks included cingulo-opercular (CO), frontoparietal (FPN), ventral (VAN) and dorsal attention (DAN), and default mode (DMN) networks. Key white matter tracts included the cingulum, uncinate, and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF). At the 1-year follow-up, maternal MM and sensitivity was observed during a 15-minute parent-child interaction and coded using validated coding schemes (n=224 coded). At age 2 years, child EF was assessed with the Minnesota Executive Function Scale task (n=131). Measures of neonatal brain connectivity were fitted to EF outcomes using multiple regression adjusted for covariates (maternal background factors and infant factors including age at MRI scan, preterm birth [term=0, preterm=1], sex [male=1, female=2]). Moderation analysis was used to test interactions between parenting behavior and neonatal brain connectivity on EF outcomes, to examine whether the strength of associations between neonatal brain connectivity and EF outcomes varied depending on the quality of the early caregiving environment.
Results: Maternal INR (r=.18, p=.04), but not perceived stress (r=-.11, p=.23) or depression symptoms (r=-.17, p=.06), was correlated with poorer child EF outcomes at age 2 years. After covariate adjustment for maternal INR and infant factors, aberrant neonatal FPN-CO functional connectivity (β=-.19, p=.05) and bilateral IFOF (β=-.28, p=.04) and left cingulum (β=-.31, p=.01) structural connectivity predicted poorer child EF outcomes. At the year 1 follow-up, maternal MM and sensitivity were positively correlated (r=.47, p<.001). Increased maternal MM (p=.02) and sensitivity (p=.009) were associated with better child EF outcomes (Table 1). Moderation analysis showed a significant interaction between year 1 maternal MM and neonatal left cingulum mean diffusivity on child EF outcomes (p=.01, Table 2), such that infants exposed to higher maternal MM had stronger neonatal cingulum connectivity-EF outcome relationships than infants exposed to lower maternal MM. In contrast, exposure to more sensitive parenting behavior did not moderate cingulum-EF relationships (p=.16). Additionally, there were no interactions between either maternal MM or sensitivity and neonatal FPN-CO or IFOF connectivity on child EF outcomes (all p>.05).
Conclusions: Integrating multi-modal neuroimaging, observational, and behavioral data elucidates the pathways by which EF delays emerge in early childhood. Early exposure to poverty and altered neonatal brain connectivity increase risks of poorer EF. Maternal MM, but not sensitivity, may enhance brain-EF relationships, making maternal MM an important intervention target to support brain-EF development.

Authors