Vanderbilt University, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203, USA.
Vanderbilt University, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203, USA.
Biol Psychol. 2023 Oct;183:108673. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108673. Epub 2023 Sep 9.
Pregnancy is marked by physiological and psychosocial changes for women, and event-related potentials (ERP) are comfortable and safe for examining brain function across pregnancy. The late positive potential (LPP) ERP, a measure of allocated attention to emotional stimuli, may provide insight into associations between internalizing symptoms and neural processing of infant emotion cues, which may be particularly salient in this life stage.
We developed a task to examine neural and behavioral responses to infant faces in pregnant women (N = 120, Mage=31.09, SD=4.81), the impact of auditory infant cries on the LPP to faces, and associations between the LPP and anxiety and depressive symptoms. Participants matched distressed, happy, and neutral infant faces and shapes as a comparison condition with interspersed auditory conditions (infant cry sounds vs. white noise) while electroencephalogram data were collected. Participants also completed self-report measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms.
Reaction time (RT) was faster for the infant cry vs. white noise condition and when matching shapes vs. infant faces. Depressive symptoms were associated with slower RTs to neutral infant faces. The LPP was enhanced overall to faces vs. shapes, but there was no main effect of auditory condition. Anxiety symptoms were associated with an enhanced LPP to infant distressed faces in the infant cry condition.
Results support these methods for measuring neural and behavioral responses to infant emotional cues in pregnancy and provide evidence that combinations of auditory and visual stimuli may be particularly useful for capturing emotional processes relevant to anxiety.
妊娠期间女性会经历生理和心理社会变化，事件相关电位（ERP）是一种舒适且安全的方法，可用于检测整个妊娠期间的大脑功能。晚期正电位（LPP）ERP 是衡量对情绪刺激的分配注意力的一种指标，它可以深入了解内化症状与婴儿情绪线索的神经加工之间的关联，而这在这个生命阶段可能尤为重要。
我们开发了一项任务，以检查孕妇（N=120，Mage=31.09，SD=4.81）对婴儿面孔的神经和行为反应、听觉婴儿哭声对面孔 LPP 的影响，以及 LPP 与焦虑和抑郁症状之间的关联。参与者在脑电图数据采集的同时，将婴儿的痛苦、快乐和中性面孔与形状进行匹配，并穿插听觉条件（婴儿哭声与白噪声）。参与者还完成了焦虑和抑郁症状的自我报告测量。
与白噪声条件相比，婴儿哭声条件下的反应时间（RT）更快，且匹配形状比匹配婴儿面孔时的 RT 更快。抑郁症状与中性婴儿面孔的 RT 变慢有关。与形状相比，面孔的 LPP 总体上增强，但听觉条件没有主效应。在婴儿哭声条件下，焦虑症状与对婴儿痛苦面孔的 LPP 增强有关。
这些方法支持用于测量妊娠期间对婴儿情绪线索的神经和行为反应，并且提供了证据表明听觉和视觉刺激的组合可能特别有助于捕捉与焦虑相关的情绪过程。
