Parental brain: cerebral areas activated by infant cries and faces. A comparison between different populations of parents and not.

Literature about parenting traditionally focused on caring behaviors and parental representations. Nowadays, an innovative line of research, interested in evaluating the neural areas and hormones implicated in the nurturing and caregiving responses, has developed. The only way to permit a newborn to survive and grow up is to respond to his needs and in order to succeed it is necessary, \ufb01rst of all, that the adults around him understand what his needs are. That is why adults\u2019 capacity of taking care of infants cannot disregard from some biological mechanisms, which allow them to be more responsive to the progeny and to infants in general. Many researches have proved that exist speci\ufb01c neural basis activating in response to infant evolutionary stimuli, such as infant cries and infant emotional facial expression. There is a sort of innate predisposition in human adults to respond to infants\u2019 signals, in order to satisfy their need and allow them to survive and become young adults capable of taking care of themselves. This article focuses on research that has investigated, in the last decade, the neural circuits underlying parental behavioral responses. Moreover, the paper compares the results of those studies that investigated the neural responses to infant stimuli under different conditions: familiar versus unknown children, parents versus non-parents and normative versus clinical samples (depression, addiction, adolescence, and PTSD)

Perceived maternal symptomatology and its influence on newborn’s motor development. Study on non-clinical mother-infant (1-11 months) dyads.

Introduction: Newborn’s first approach to the world takes place in the relationship with his/her mother. He/she builds his/her-own experiences from mother's repertoire of facial expressions, voices, gestures. Contemporarily, the process of becoming mother entails a wide range of changes, which may lead to psychopathology conditions, among which post-partum depression is the most common. This disease is known to negatively influence maternal abilities and produce feelings of greater struggle in caring the infant, sense of guilty and poor self-efficacy. Motor development represents the principal field of observation in helping to infer infant's needs, feelings and intentions. Its investigation may be a powerful means to understand the influence of maternal attitudes (e.g. depressive-symptoms) on infant motor-development. Aims of the study: The main aim of this research was to investigate the characteristics of motor- development in infants aged 1-11 months, and if/how maternal depressive-symptomatology may influence infant's motor-development during his/her first year of life. Material&Methods: Data were collected within the wider Italian-validation-project of the Peabody Developmental Motor Scale-II (PDMS-2). Participants included 123 infants (1-11 months old) with their mothers. Infants were tested with PDMS-2 and mothers’ symptomatology was screened with SCL-90-TR and CES-D. All dyads belong to non-clinical population. We calculated correlational- and regression-analysis between PDMS-2,SCL-90 and CES-D. Results: The best predictor of infants’ motor-performance is the age in months. Perceived maternal somatization negatively predicted infants’ Fine-Motor-scores. On the contrary, positive correlations were found between depressive perceived symptoms, InterpersonalSensitivity, Hostility and Paranoid Ideation and infants Gross- Motor abilities, especially Locomotion. Conclusions: Results suggest that mother's perceived symptoms influence the ability of the infant to move trough the space, while perceived levels of somatization negatively predict his/her fine- motor development. Age-in-months is the most accurate predictor of motor-performance. Further analyses are needed to better understand relationship between maternal-symptomatology and infant motor-skills

How Do Maternal Subclinical Symptoms Influence Infant Motor Development during the First Year of Life?

An unavoidable reciprocal influence characterizes the mother-child dyad. Within this relationship, the presence of depression, somatization, hostility, paranoid ideation, and interpersonal sensitivity symptoms at a subclinical level and their possible input on infant motor competences has not been yet considered. Bearing in mind that motor abilities represent not only an indicator of the infant\u2019s health-status, but also the principal field to infer his/her needs, feelings and intentions, in this study the quality of infants\u2019 movements were assessed and analyzed in relationship with the maternal attitudes. The aim of this research was to investigate if/how maternal symptomatology may pilot infant\u2019s motor development during his/her first year of life by observing the characteristics of motor development in infants aged 0\u201311 months. Participants included 123 mothers and their infants (0\u201311 months-old). Mothers\u2019 symptomatology was screened with the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R), while infants were tested with the Peabody Developmental Motor Scale-Second Edition. All dyads belonged to a non-clinical population, however, on the basis of SCL-90-R scores, the mothers\u2019 sample was divided into two groups: normative and subclinical. Descriptive, t-test, correlational analysis between PDMS-2 scores and SCL-90-R results are reported, as well as regression models results. Both positive and negative correlations were found between maternal perceived symptomatology, Somatization (SOM), Interpersonal Sensitivity (IS), Depression (DEP), Hostility (HOS), and Paranoid Ideation (PAR) and infants\u2019 motor abilities. These results were further verified by applying regression models to predict the infant\u2019s motor outcomes on the basis of babies\u2019 age and maternal status. The presence of positive symptoms in the SCL-90-R questionnaire (subclinical group) predicted good visual-motor integration and stationary competences in the babies. In particular, depressive and hostility feelings in mothers seemed to induce an infant motor behavior characterized by a major control of the environmental space. When mothers perceived a higher level of hostility and somatization, their babies showed difficulties in sharing action space, such as required in the development of stationary positions and grasping abilities. In a completely different way, when infants can rely on a mother with low-perceived symptoms (normative group) his/her motor performances develop with a higher degree of freedom/independence. These findings suggest, for the first time, that even in a non- clinical sample, mother\u2019s perceived-symptoms can produce important consequences not in infant motor development as a whole, but in some specific areas, contributing to shape the infant\u2019s motor ability and his/her capability to act in the world

Drug addicted mothers and their empathic reactivity to painful cues.

Introduction: Mother-infant relationship is crucial for offspring\u2019s development. Substance-abuse has been shown to affect adults\u2019 ability to care for their children, in particular in the affective- relational aspects of parenting, such as the attachment bond and the ability to provide protection. Surprisingly, no previous study has explored neural responses associated with empathy towards children\u2019s pain in mothers with such history. Empathy is a more general construct than parenting and deficits in neural empathic responses may better explain failures in caring of addicted mothers. Aims of the study: This study was aimed at investigating the empathic response to pain inflicted by a dangerous tool to hands of kids when compared to neutral situations in a sample of mothers with history of drug-abuse. We used Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) technique to explore the time-course of neural empathic responses to pain by virtue of its excellent time resolution. In particular, we asked whether empathic responses to pain of children would differ in drug-addicted mothers compared to control group, during a relatively automatic early stage of processing or during a more controlled delayed one involving mentalizing. Material and methods: Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been recorded from drug-addicted mothers (i.e., clinical) and control groups to track neural activity in a pain decision task. Stimuli were pictures showing one infant hand in painful (harmful object applied to the hand) and neutral situations (harmful object located close to the hand). Results: Neural empathic responses towards children in pain differed between the two groups such that ERPs diverged between the painful and neutral stimulation at delayed stages of processing only for the clinical group. Conclusions: We interpreted these results as indicating that the control group implicitly judged also the neutral situations involving children as potentially painful supporting a lack of mentalizing abilities in the clinical group when compared with controls

Lo sviluppo motorio del bambino nel primo anno di vita in relazione ad una sintomatologia materna depressiva non clinica.

Introduzione I neonati sperimentano il primo approccio con il mondo attraverso la relazione con i propri caregiver: il piccolo costruisce le proprie esperienze sulla base del repertorio di espressioni facciali, vocali e di gesti della madre. Al contempo, il processo di divenire genitore porta con se\u301 una serie di cambiamenti che possono alle volte essere accompagnati da sintomi psicopatologici, come per esempio la depressione post-partum. Tale disturbo e\u300 noto influenzare negativamente le abilita\u300 materne e produrre sentimenti di grande difficolta\u300 nel prendersi cura del proprio bambino, accompagnati da senso di colpa e inefficacia. Nel valutare le conseguenze di tale disturbo, e\u300 importante tener conto che la diade madre-bambino e\u300 caratterizzata da influenze reciproche, tanto che il piccolo e\u300 in grado di rispondere alla madre a seconda del livello di maturazione raggiunto dai sistemi corporei e sensoriali e del proprio livello di sviluppo. Sono, infatti, gia\u300 state dimostrate le conseguenze che puo\u300 avere una sintomatologia depressiva materna a livelli clinici sullo sviluppo cognitivo e motorio dei piccoli nel primo anno di vita (Galler, et al., 2000; Sohr-Preston, et al., 2006; Nasreen, et al., 2013). L\u2019indagine della qualita\u300 e quantita\u300 dei movimenti del piccolo potrebbe, quindi, rappresentare un potente mezzo per comprendere il ruolo che rivestono le attitudini materne (ad es. la presenza di sintomi depressivi) nel determinare il suo sviluppo motorio. Obiettivi Scopo del presente lavoro e\u300 illustrare i risultati di un progetto di ricerca volto a indagare le competenze di movimento in bambini tra 0-11 mesi di vita e se/in che misura la presenza di sintomatologia materna possa influenzare lo sviluppo motorio nel corso del primo anno di vita. Metodo La raccolta dati, svolta nel contesto del progetto di validazione italiana delle scale PDMS-2 (per la valutazione delle abilita\u300 motorie in bambini da 0 a 5 anni e 11 mesi), ha coinvolto 123 diadi madre- bambino di eta\u300 compresa tra 0-11 mesi. I bambini sono stati testati attraverso le scale PDMS-2 e la sintomatologia materna e\u300 stata misurata tramite l\u2019utilizzo di due test sintomatologici, SCL-90 e CES-D. Tutte le diadi coinvolte appartengono a una popolazione non clinica. Attraverso analisi correlazionali tra PDMS-2, SCL-90 e CES-D sono state rilevate correlazioni sia positive che negative tra alcuni sintomi percepiti dalla madre (Sensibilita\u300 Interpersonale, Ostilita\u300 e Ideazione Paranoide) e le abilita\u300 motorie dei bambini, in particolare capacita\u300 di afferramento, integrazione visuo-motoria e posizione stazionaria. Risultati I risultati suggeriscono che anche in una popolazione non clinica la sintomatologia percepita dalla madre puo\u300 influenzare l\u2019abilita\u300 del bambino di percepirsi come agente attivo rispetto all\u2019ambiente circostante. In particolare, la presenza di sintomi, riferita dalla madre attraverso questionari self- report, sembra contribuire a spingere il bambino a muoversi maggiormente nell\u2019ambiente circostante, allontanandosi dalla madre, o sollecitandola a stabilire uno spazio d\u2019azione condiviso. Quando invece la madre non riporta la percezione di alcun sintomo, il bambino sembra potersi dotare liberamente di azioni di raggiungimento e afferramento di oggetti, in cui al valore dell\u2019esperienza motoria in se\u301 si aggiunge la possibilita\u300 di scambio intersoggettivo col caregiver

Does infant negative emotionality moderate the effect of maternal depression on motor development?

Maternal depression represents an important social/environmental factor in early childhood; however, its effect on children's motor development may vary depending on the role of infants' dispositional variables. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the interaction between maternal depressive symptoms in the first two years of a child's life and the child's temperamental negative emotionality on motor development during this time. Using a cross-sectional study, we assessed 272 infants aged 0 to 24 months old and their mothers. We measured the following variables: maternal depression, infant's negative emotionality, and motor development. A three-way interaction effect highlights that negative emotionality in infants and maternal depression together affect children's overall motor growth trajectory. Infants with low negative emotionality display no effect of maternal depression on motor development. Conversely, infants with high negative emotionality seem to be more susceptible to the effect of maternal depression. Specifically, high maternal depression tends to foster the negative effect of infant's negativity on motor development across time, albeit not significantly. Finally, the absence of maternal depression significantly buffers negative temperament in infants. Findings highlighted the importance of integrating different perspectives when describing early motor growth. In fact, only when considering the interdependence of potential predictors their effect on the motor growth significantly emerges. Screening for early temperamental vulnerability might help in tailoring interventions to prevent maternal depression from affecting infants' motor development