Poster #15 - Early mother-child attachment as a predictor of child white matter microstructure: A 9-year longitudinal study

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Integrative Statement

Early childhood experiences are considered to determine to a large degree the strength and effectiveness of neural connections and fine tune the development of brain connectivity. As one of the most pervasive and potent relational experiences of early childhood, parent-child relationships are prime candidates to account for experience-driven differences in children’s brain development. Yet, current knowledge on the effects of the quality of parent-child relationships on brain connectivity in typically developing children is limited to functional connectivity (Dégeilh et al., 2018; Rifkin-Graboi et al., 2015; Thijssen et al., 2017), and caregiving influences on structural connectivity (i.e., white matter organization) have not been explored.
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a valuable in vivo imaging technique for assessing white matter microstructure and thus for studying the development of structural brain connectivity. DTI provides several metrics, such as fractional anisotropy (FA), axial diffusivity (AD), radial diffusivity (RD), and mean diffusivity (MD), which reflect the organization and architecture of white matter fibers. During healthy brain development, changes in diffusion parameters are proposed to reflect maturation processes such as myelination and axonal growth (Tamnes et al., 2017).
The present study examined whether normative variation in mother-child attachment security, a widely documented and well recognized indicator of the quality of early mother-child relationships, predicts structural connectivity in late childhood. We hypothesized that greater attachment security would be associated with higher white matter organization.
Mother-child attachment security was assessed when children (n=32) were 2 years old using the Attachment Q-Sort (Waters & Deane, 1985) completed by trained coders who observed mother and child behavior throughout a home visit that lasted approximately 80 minutes. When children were 10 years old, they underwent a magnetic resonance imaging exam including a DTI sequence. Voxelwise statistical analyses of the DTI metrics (FA, AD, RD and MD) were carried out using Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS; Smith 2006). General linear model analyses were run with child age and sex, as well as, maternal education as covariates to investigate changes in each DTI metric predicted from mother-child attachment security. Threshold-free cluster enhancement (TFCE) method was used to identify statistically significant clusters with a threshold level at p < .05 corrected for family-wise error and a minimum size of 50 voxels.
Results revealed that higher security of attachment at 2 years predicted lower FA and higher MD and RD in several white matter tracts including the corpus callosum, cingulum, superior longitudinal fasciculus, anterior thalamic radiation, and inferior frontal occipital fasciculus. This negative association between mother-child attachment security and child white matter organization was not expected and needs to be replicated. It may, however, be consistent with previous observations that children exposed to caregiving adversity show accelerated brain development (Callaghan & Tottenham, 2016 – although such effects have seldom been observed for white matter microstructure; but see Hanson et al. 2013). The current results raise the possibility that early attachment security may protect children against such premature development of white matter. Further analyses will be conducted to identify factors that may explain these counterintuitive, yet intriguing findings.

Authors

• Fanny Degeilh, Sainte-Justine Research Center, Univertisy of Montreal
  Presenting Author

• Annie Bernier, University of Montreal
  Non-Presenting Author

• Élizabel Leblanc, University of Montreal
  Non-Presenting Author

• Veronique Daneault, Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine, Montreal Sacré-Cœur Hospital, Quebec, Canada
  Non-Presenting Author

• Miriam H. Beauchamp, University of Montreal
  Non-Presenting Author