Neural processing of infant and adult face emotion and maternal exposure to childhood maltreatment

Abstract

Face processing in mothers is linked to mother–infant social communication, which is critical for parenting and in turn for child development. Neuroimaging studies of child maltreatment-exposed (CME) mothers are sparse compared to studies of mothers with postpartum depression, which have suggested blunted amygdala reactivity to infant stimuli. We expected to see a similar pattern in CME mothers. Based on broader studies in trauma-exposed populations, we anticipated increased amygdala reactivity to negative adult face stimuli in a comparison task in CME mothers given heightened evaluation of potential threat. We examined Neuroimaging studies of mothers with childhood maltreatment exposure (CME) (18–37 years old), who performed infant (N = 45) and/or adult (N = 46) face processing tasks. CME mothers exhibited blunted bilateral amygdala reactivity to infant faces. There was no between-group difference in amygdala reactivity to adult faces. In infant and adult face processing tasks regardless of CME, superior temporal gyrus activation was increased for negative-valence stimuli. Our preliminary findings suggest that childhood maltreatment alters maternal processing of infant social cues, a critical skill impacting infant socioemotional development.

Reported maternal childhood maltreatment experiences, amygdala activation and functional connectivity to infant cry

“…Overall, our findings regarding the relationship between maternal CME and how infant stimuli are processed in maternal brain, in terms of both activation and connectivity, inform our understanding of infant cue processing, while generating additional questions to be targeted with different research approaches. First of all, this heightened amygdala activation to infant cries, interpreted in the context of prior work suggesting decreased amygdala reactivity across infant face emotions ( Olsavsky et al. , 2019 ), emphasizes the importance of studying stimuli with different characteristics and valence.…”

“…We recently reported that mothers with CME have lower amygdala activation to non-personalized infant face stimuli compared to mothers unexposed to CME in a partially overlapping sample to this cohort ( Olsavsky et al. , 2019 ).…”

How stress can influence brain adaptations to motherhood

“…Mothers who did not report trauma exhibited the reverse of this brain response pattern ( Kim et al, 2014 ). In a study of 45 first-time mothers at 4 months postpartum, those who reported experiencing childhood neglect and maltreatment exhibited blunted amygdala response to infant images across emotionality (sad, happy and neutral faces) ( Olsavsky et al, 2019 ). The discrepancies between these two studies may reflect that the latter study did not include images of the mother’s own baby, thus the finding may reflect blunted amygdala responses to infant cues more generally.…”

“…Mothers also may have been abused or neglected in their childhood, and this adverse early experience can compromise their ability to develop close emotional bonds with their children ( Conger et al, 2003 , Van Ijzendoorn, 1992 ). Recent studies suggest that these stressful experiences are associated with variations found in the maternal brain, which further influence parenting and the mother–child relationship ( Azhari et al, 2019 , Feldman et al, 2019 , Kim et al, 2014 , Levy et al, 2019b , Olsavsky et al, 2019 , Schechter et al, 2012 ).…”

Recognition of children’s emotional facial expressions among mothers reporting a history of childhood maltreatment

“…Olsavsky and colleagues [70] exposed mothers with and without a history of maltreatment to pictures of infants and adults depicting different emotions. They found a difference in brain activation between both groups, strictly in response to infant faces.…”