Maternal reactions to infants become more comprehensible through the application of biosensors
Pregnancy and early motherhood are significant periods of change in how the brain processes infant signals of emotion. A study by the Neurocognition and Emotion in Affective Disorders (NEAD) Group, led by Professor Kamilla Miskowiak, has shed light on how maternal depression and bipolar disorder can affect this process, with far-reaching implications for the child's emotional development.
Mothers display greater brain activation in social, emotional, and empathizing networks when processing infant faces. However, depression and bipolar disorder can impair this ability, causing biases in interpreting infant cues. Maternal depression, for instance, is linked with a tendency to interpret neutral infant facial expressions as sad, indicating a negative cognitive bias in emotion perception.
This bias can influence the mother's emotional responsiveness and caregiving behavior. Pregnant women with depression recognize infant sadness better than happiness and interpret ambiguous infant stimuli negatively. These biases can have negative consequences for the child's development, as mothers' accurate understanding, attuned mirroring, and sensitive behavioral responses to infant emotional signals are crucial for psychological development.
Prenatal maternal depression and anxiety also impact infant brain development, particularly in the amyggdala—a brain region crucial for processing emotions. Infants exposed to maternal depression in utero show altered amygdala connectivity and volume, which correlates with increased negative affectivity and temperament differences.
Untreated maternal depression is associated with heightened amygdala connectivity to brain regions involved in emotional processing, such as the anterior cingulate gyrus and insula. This pattern may underlie a heightened infant response to negative emotional expressions, exacerbating challenges in mother-infant emotional interaction.
While less directly studied, bipolar disorder shares features of mood dysregulation that likely similarly impact maternal perception and responses to infant cues. Mothers with bipolar disorder show more incongruent positive facial expressions to infant distress vs laughter videos, suggesting potential difficulties in processing and responding to infant emotions.
However, there is hope. Biosensors can measure cognitive processing of emotional infant signals and provide real-time feedback to train the ability to voluntarily control a response. These biosensors can modify the task to the responses of the individual, providing personally sensitive emotional cognitive training. Early identification and intervention for maternal depression and bipolar disorder could help mitigate these negative effects on the child's emotional development.
In conclusion, maternal depression and bipolar disorder can alter both the mother’s cognitive-emotional processing and influence infant brain development related to emotion, collectively impairing effective maternal responsiveness to infants’ emotional needs. This has important implications for early attachment and infant socioemotional development.
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