Reactivity, regulation, and reward responses to infant cues among mothers with and without psychopathology: an fMRI review

Despite important progress in understanding the complex caregiving system, developmental research has only recently begun to focus on the mother’s internal affective state and its role in sensitive caregiving behavior. This review will summarize recent findings of functional neuroimaging research to elaborate on the neural components associated with maternal sensitive care or disrupted responsiveness to infant communications. First, maternal emotion reactivity and regulation, as well as maternal reward responsiveness to infant cues, will be reviewed among healthy mothers. Then, emotion and reward-related processes among mothers who display sensitive versus disrupted caregiving will be explored. Finally, these patterns of response will be compared to patterns of response among mothers with psychiatric disorders, including depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse. The aim of this review is to examine whether differences in emotion reactivity and regulation, as well as in the encoding of infant stimuli as rewarding, are related either to maternal psychopathology or to maternal difficulties in responding promptly and appropriately to their infants. A summary of the challenges facing developmental neuroscience research in furthering our understanding of maternal responses to infants will close this review.