Publication Date
9-30-2019
Document Type
Article
Organizational Units
College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology
Keywords
Childhood maltreatment, Mother, Infant, Amygdala, Face
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.
Copyright Date
11-4-2019
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the authors. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:
Olsavsky, A. K., Stoddard, J., Erhart, A., Tribble, R., & Kim, P. (2019). Neural processing of infant and adult face emotion and maternal exposure to childhood maltreatment. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 14(9), 997-1008. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsz069
Rights Holder
Aviva K. Olsavsky, Joel Stoddard, Andrew Erhart, Rebekah Tribble, and Pilyoung Kim
Provenance
Received from CHORUS
File Format
application/pdf
Language
English (eng)
Extent
12 pgs
File Size
3.7 MB
Publication Title
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Volume
14
Issue
9
First Page
997
Last Page
1008
ISSN
1749-5024
Recommended Citation
Olsavsky, Aviva K.; Stoddard, Joel; Erhart, Andrew; Tribble, Rebekah C.; and Kim, Pilyoung, "Neural Processing of Infant and Adult Face Emotion and Maternal Exposure to Childhood Maltreatment" (2019). Psychology: Faculty Scholarship. 138.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/psychology_faculty/138
https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsz069