Mindfulness-related differences in neural response to own infant negative versus positive emotion contexts

Abstract

Mindfulness is thought to promote well-being by shaping the way people respond to challenging social-emotional situations. Current understanding of how this occurs at the neural level is based on studies of response to decontextualized emotion stimuli that may not adequately represent lived experiences. In this study, we tested relations between mothers' dispositional mindfulness and neural responses to their own infant in different emotion-eliciting contexts. Mothers (n = 25) engaged with their 3-month-old infants in videorecorded tasks designed to elicit negative (arm restraint) or positive (peekaboo) emotion. During a functional MRI session, mothers were presented with 15-s clips from these recordings, and dispositional mindfulness scores were used to predict their neural responses to arm restraint > peekaboo videos. Mothers higher in nonreactivity showed relatively lower activation to their infants' arm restraint compared to peekaboo videos in hypothesized regions-insula and dorsal prefrontal cortex-as well as non-hypothesized regions. Other mindfulness dimensions were associated with more limited areas of lower (nonjudgment) and higher (describing) activation in this contrast. Mothers who were higher in mindfulness generally activated more to the positive emotion context and less to the negative emotion context in perceptual and emotion processing areas, a pattern that may help to explain mindfulness-related differences in well-being.

A mesocorticolimbic signature of pleasure in the human brain

“…Two studies of each reward type were selected for training (10 studies in total, n = 224). Activation maps included contrasts between images of appetizing food and baseline 137,138 , the average response to reward cues during a temporal discounting task and baseline 139 , linear variation in reward magnitude during a mixed gambles task 140 , contrasts between pleasant music and resting baseline 141,142 , activation as mothers viewed videos of their infants versus baseline 143 , images of social activities versus baseline following 24 hours of social deprivation 144 , and contrasts between erotic images and baseline 145,146 .…”

Mothers’ neural response to valenced infant interactions predicts postpartum depression and anxiety

“…Of the 25 original mothers, all returned for the 6-month assessment, 19 returned at 12-months and 16 returned at 18-months. This dataset is also described in [ 23 ] and [ 24 ]. None of the mothers reported using psychotropic medication either during pregnancy or at the time of the scan (T1 assessment).…”

“…As originally reported in Laurent, Wright, and Finnegan [ 23 ], immediately after scanning mothers re-watched videos and provided valence ratings from -100 (maximum negative) to +100 (maximum positive) with 0 as the neutral point, and intensity ratings from 0 to +100 (maximum intensity).…”

“…These questions were tested in a community sample of mothers assessed longitudinally. This dataset was originally described in [ 23 ] where it was used to explore the association of dispositional mindfulness with preferential neural activity to infant affect. Maternal brain response to videos of their infant during arm-restraint and peek-a-boo interactions was measured at the initial (3-month) assessment, as were past and current affective disorder diagnoses.…”

The effect of loving-kindness meditation on employees’ mindfulness, affect, altruism and knowledge hiding

“…Mindfulness training can reduce knowledge hiding by enhancing positive affect. Mothers with higher levels of mindfulness usually display stronger activation of a positive emotional environment [ 23 ]. Mindfulness improved the positive affect of middle-aged Americans [ 24 ], introduced flexibility by enhancing the production of cognitive assessments [ 25 ], enhanced the positive affect of patients with social anxiety [ 26 ] and improved the positive affect of Chinese college students [ 27 ].…”