Yale Child Study Center, New Haven, CT, USA.
Soc Neurosci. 2012;7(5):525-36. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2012.672457. Epub 2012 Mar 21.
Infant faces are highly salient social stimuli that appear to elicit intuitive parenting behaviors in healthy adult women. Behavioral and observational studies indicate that this effect may be modulated by experiences of reproduction, caregiving, and psychiatric symptomatology that affect normative attention and reward processing of infant cues. However, relatively little is known about the neural correlates of these effects. Using the event-related potential (ERP) technique, this study investigated the impact of parental status (mother, non-mother) and depression symptoms on early visual processing of infant faces in a community sample of adult women. Specifically, the P1 and N170 ERP components elicited in response to infant face stimuli were examined. While characteristics of the N170 were not modulated by parental status, a statistically significant positive correlation was observed between depression symptom severity and N170 amplitude. This relationship was not observed for the P1. These results suggest that depression symptoms may modulate early neurophysiological responsiveness to infant cues, even at sub-clinical levels.
婴儿面孔是高度显著的社会刺激，似乎能在健康成年女性中引发直觉的养育行为。行为和观察研究表明，这种效应可能受到生殖、照顾和精神症状的影响，这些因素会影响对婴儿线索的正常注意力和奖励处理。然而，关于这些效应的神经相关性，我们知之甚少。本研究使用事件相关电位（ERP）技术，在成年女性的社区样本中，调查了父母身份（母亲、非母亲）和抑郁症状对婴儿面孔早期视觉处理的影响。具体来说，研究了婴儿面孔刺激引发的 P1 和 N170 ERP 成分。虽然 N170 的特征不受父母身份的调节，但在抑郁症状严重程度和 N170 振幅之间观察到了统计学上显著的正相关。P1 则没有观察到这种关系。这些结果表明，即使在亚临床水平，抑郁症状也可能调节对婴儿线索的早期神经生理反应。
