Socioeconomic Disadvantage, Neural Responses to Infant Emotions, and Emotional Availability Among First-Time New Mothers

Publication Date

5-15-2017

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Parenting, Amygdala, Infant faces, Emotional expressions, Maternal behaviors, Neuroimaging

Abstract

During the early postpartum period, mothers exhibit increased amygdala responses to positive infant expressions, which are important for positive mother-infant relationships. Socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with altered amygdala response to emotional stimuli as well as more negative mother-infant relationships. However, little is known about the role of socioeconomic disadvantage in neural responses specifically to infants. Thus, we examined whether socioeconomic disadvantage (indexed by lower income-to-needs ratio) is associated with neural responses to infant emotions and parenting behaviors among new mothers. Using fMRI, neural responses to infants’ emotional expressions (positive, negative, and neutral faces) were assessed among 39 low- and middle-income first-time mothers during 0–6 postpartum months. Lower income-to-needs ratio was associated with dampened amygdala responses to positive infant faces, but increased amygdala responses to negative infant faces. An indirect effect of socioeconomic disadvantage on emotional availability via amygdala activation suggests that socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with heightened neural sensitivity to infants’ negative emotions, which is further associated with mothers’ intrusiveness observed during interactions with their own infant. The findings suggest that low-income mothers may be more vulnerable to altered neural processing of infants’ emotional expressions which may further influence mothers’ emotional availability during interactions with their own infants.

Copyright Date

4-26-2017

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Rights Holder

Elsevier

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

Language

English (eng)

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by Elsevier. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Kim, P., Capistrano, C. G., Erhart, A., Gray-Schiff, R., & Xu, N. (2017). Socioeconomic disadvantage, neural responses to infant emotions, and emotional availability among first-time new mothers. Behavioural Brain Research, 325(Pt B), 188-196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2017.02.001

Accepted Manuscript is openly available through the "Link to Full Text" button.

The published Version of Record is available at libraries through Compass or Worldcat.

Publication Title

Behavioural Brain Research

Volume

325

Issue

Pt B

First Page

188

Last Page

196

ISSN

1872-7549

PubMed ID

28163097

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