Publication Date

10-5-2024

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

HPA Axis, FMRI, Maternal, Cortisol, Infant

Abstract

Previous research indicates that maternal cortisol function and maternal brain response to infant are each in turn related to variations in parenting behavior. However, little is known about how maternal cortisol and maternal brain function are associated, thus studying these two mechanisms together may improve our understanding of how maternal cortisol assessed during interactions with own infant is associated with brain response to infant cry. First-time mothers (N = 59) of infants aged 3-4 months old were recruited to participate. Mothers' cortisol concentration was measured during a naturalistic interaction with their infant and their behavior was coded for two parenting behaviors-- maternal sensitivity and non-intrusiveness. In an fMRI session, mothers listened to their own infant and a control infant crying. Higher cortisol concentration was associated with more intrusive behavior. We found greater cortisol concentration was further associated with decreased activation in the brain to infant cry in the right precentral gyrus, the left culmen extending into the left inferior temporal gyrus and fusiform, two clusters in the superior temporal gyrus, and in the medial frontal gyrus. We also found that lower activation in these regions was associated with more intrusive maternal behavior. These data demonstrate the associations between maternal cortisol concentration and reduced brain activation to infant cry in both motor planning and auditory processing regions in predicting intrusive parenting behavior.

Copyright Date

10-24-2024

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Rights Holder

Andrew Erhart, Sarah Watamura, Aviva K. Olsavsky, Alexander Dufford, Rebekah Tribble, Tom Yeh, and Pilyoung Kim

Provenance

Received from Elsevier

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

12 pgs

File Size

1.61 MB

Publication Statement

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

Erhart, A., Watamura, S., Olsavsky, A. K., Dufford, A., Tribble, R., Yeh, T., & Kim, P. (2024). Maternal Cortisol Concentration is Associated with Reduced Brain Activation to Infant Cry and More Intrusive Parenting Behavior. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2024.107207

Publication Title

Psychoneuroendocrinology

Volume

171

First Page

107207

ISSN

0306-4530

PubMed ID

39413527

Download



Share

COinS