Trajectories of Infant EEG Delta-Beta Coupling in the Context of Mother-Infant Dyadic Interactions: The Role of Infant Temperament in Coloring These Relations

• In Event: Temperament and Social Relationships: Multiple Methods for Understanding the Whole Child Across Development

Abstract

Delta-beta coupling measures the correlation between simultaneous delta and beta EEG power activity and may reflect the dynamic crosstalk between limbic and cortical regions underlying regulation. Stronger, positive delta-beta coupling is associated with infant temperamental negative affect and fearful phenotypes (Brooker et al., 2016; Poole & Schmidt, 2019), as well as anxiety symptoms in children (Poole & Schmidt, 2019). However, the role of early social relationships in shaping the development of delta-beta coupling remains understudied. Mother-infant interactions are the fabric of the early environment and are foundational to brain development (Luby et al., 2020). One study reported that fathers’ harsh parenting was associated with stronger, positive delta-beta coupling in preschoolers (Najjar & Brooker, 2017). However, additional studies are needed to model how mother-infant dyadic interactions may influence the development of delta-beta coupling, and how infant temperament may condition these longitudinal relations. Here, we use State Space Grids (SSGs) to model dyadic patterns of mother-infant affect and behavior (Figure 1-1), characterizing dynamic states that may better capture active developmental mechanisms. Our goal was to examine how mother-infant dyadic attractor strength at 8 months interacted with infant negative affect to predict infant delta-beta coupling trajectories.
Mothers reported on their infants’ negative affect at 4, 8, 12, 18, and 24 months using the Infant Behavioral Questionnaire (Putnam et al., 2014) and the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire (Goldsmith, 1996). Repeated measures of infant EEG were collected starting at 8 months. Mother-infant affect and behaviors were observed and coded during a 5-minute play at 8 months. 100 families provided data across all these measures. We used conditional multilevel models to examine trajectories of intraindividual delta-beta coupling as a function of dyadic attractor strength and infant negative affect. We modeled trait (average negative affect over time) and fluctuating (visit-to-visit fluctuations) components of infant negative affect, capturing time-varying effects. Dyadic attractor strength was operationalized as return time to adaptive regions (neutral and positive SSG cells), which reflects the latency to return to the selected region (higher durations indicate weaker attractor strength).
Fluctuations in infant negative affect interacted with dyadic affective attractor strength to predict delta-beta coupling trajectories at Central regions (β = .002, SE = .001, p < .015). Regions of significance analyses (Figure 1-2) indicated that for dyads with strong affective attractor strength (remained in the adaptive affective region during the entire play), delta-beta coupling gradually decreased over time regardless of fluctuations in negative affect. This was the prototypical pattern of the sample. In contrast, for dyads with weak affective attractor strength (spent more time outside the adaptive affective region), different patterns emerged. Specifically, infants who fluctuated below their usual negative affect exhibited stable and decoupled delta-beta activity over time. However, infants with no fluctuations and those who fluctuated above their usual negative affect, exhibited delta-beta coupling that sharply decreased and became uncoupled after 10 and 14 months, respectively. Our results suggest that early mother-infant dyadic interactions shape the development of delta-beta coupling, and that the role of the early environment must be contextualized by evocative effects of infant temperament.

Authors

• Berenice Anaya, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Presenting Author

• Vanessa LoBue, Rutgers University

• Kristin A. Buss, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

• Koraly Elisa Perez-Edgar, Pennsylvania State University, University Park