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

It is currently unknown whether differences in neural responsiveness to infant cues observed in postpartum affective disturbance are specific to depression/anxiety or are better attributed to a common component of internalizing distress. It is also unknown whether differences in mothers’ brain respo...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Finnegan, Megan Kate, Kane, Stephanie, Heller, Wendy, Laurent, Heidemarie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8078806/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33905457
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250487
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author Finnegan, Megan Kate
Kane, Stephanie
Heller, Wendy
Laurent, Heidemarie
author_facet Finnegan, Megan Kate
Kane, Stephanie
Heller, Wendy
Laurent, Heidemarie
author_sort Finnegan, Megan Kate
collection PubMed
description It is currently unknown whether differences in neural responsiveness to infant cues observed in postpartum affective disturbance are specific to depression/anxiety or are better attributed to a common component of internalizing distress. It is also unknown whether differences in mothers’ brain response can be accounted for by effects of past episodes, or if current neural processing of her child may serve as a risk factor for development of future symptoms. Twenty-four mothers from a community-based sample participated in an fMRI session viewing their 3-month- old infant during tasks evoking positive or negative emotion. They were tracked across the ensuing 15 months to monitor changes in affective symptoms. Past and current episodes of depression and anxiety, as well as future symptoms, were used to predict differences in mothers’ hemodynamic response to their infant in positive compared to negative emotion contexts. Lower relative activation in largely overlapping brain regions involving frontal lobe structures to own infant positive vs. negative emotion was associated with concurrent (3-month) depression diagnosis and prospective (3–18 month) depression and anxiety symptoms. There was little evidence for impacts of past psychopathology (more limited effect of past anxiety and nonsignificant effect of past depression). Results suggest biased maternal processing of infant emotions during postpartum depression and anxiety is largely accounted for by a shared source of variance (internalizing distress). Furthermore, differential maternal responsiveness to her infant’s emotional cues is specifically associated with the perpetuation of postpartum symptoms, as opposed to more general phenotypic or scarring effects of past psychopathology.
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spelling pubmed-80788062021-05-06 Mothers’ neural response to valenced infant interactions predicts postpartum depression and anxiety Finnegan, Megan Kate Kane, Stephanie Heller, Wendy Laurent, Heidemarie PLoS One Research Article It is currently unknown whether differences in neural responsiveness to infant cues observed in postpartum affective disturbance are specific to depression/anxiety or are better attributed to a common component of internalizing distress. It is also unknown whether differences in mothers’ brain response can be accounted for by effects of past episodes, or if current neural processing of her child may serve as a risk factor for development of future symptoms. Twenty-four mothers from a community-based sample participated in an fMRI session viewing their 3-month- old infant during tasks evoking positive or negative emotion. They were tracked across the ensuing 15 months to monitor changes in affective symptoms. Past and current episodes of depression and anxiety, as well as future symptoms, were used to predict differences in mothers’ hemodynamic response to their infant in positive compared to negative emotion contexts. Lower relative activation in largely overlapping brain regions involving frontal lobe structures to own infant positive vs. negative emotion was associated with concurrent (3-month) depression diagnosis and prospective (3–18 month) depression and anxiety symptoms. There was little evidence for impacts of past psychopathology (more limited effect of past anxiety and nonsignificant effect of past depression). Results suggest biased maternal processing of infant emotions during postpartum depression and anxiety is largely accounted for by a shared source of variance (internalizing distress). Furthermore, differential maternal responsiveness to her infant’s emotional cues is specifically associated with the perpetuation of postpartum symptoms, as opposed to more general phenotypic or scarring effects of past psychopathology. Public Library of Science 2021-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8078806/ /pubmed/33905457 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250487 Text en © 2021 Finnegan et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Finnegan, Megan Kate
Kane, Stephanie
Heller, Wendy
Laurent, Heidemarie
Mothers’ neural response to valenced infant interactions predicts postpartum depression and anxiety
title Mothers’ neural response to valenced infant interactions predicts postpartum depression and anxiety
title_full Mothers’ neural response to valenced infant interactions predicts postpartum depression and anxiety
title_fullStr Mothers’ neural response to valenced infant interactions predicts postpartum depression and anxiety
title_full_unstemmed Mothers’ neural response to valenced infant interactions predicts postpartum depression and anxiety
title_short Mothers’ neural response to valenced infant interactions predicts postpartum depression and anxiety
title_sort mothers’ neural response to valenced infant interactions predicts postpartum depression and anxiety
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8078806/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33905457
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250487
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