Center for Developmental Social Neuroscience, Reichman University, Herzliya, 0460101, Israel.
Department of Criminology and Gonda Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
Sci Rep. 2024 Sep 30;14(1):22602. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-73630-2.
Caregiving plays a critical role in children's cognitive, emotional, and psychological well-being. In the current longitudinal study, we investigated the enduring effects of early maternal behavior on processes of interbrain synchrony in adolescence. Mother-infant naturalistic interactions were filmed when infants were 3-4 months old and interactions were coded for maternal sensitivity and intrusiveness with the Coding Interactive Behavior Manual. In early adolescence (Mean = 12.30, SD = 1.25), mother-adolescent interbrain synchrony was measured using hyperscanning EEG during a naturalistic interaction of positive valence. Guided by previous hyperscanning studies, we focused on interbrain connections within the right frontotemporal interbrain network. Results indicate that maternal sensitivity in early infancy was longitudinally associated with neural synchrony in the right interbrain frontotemporal network. Post-hoc comparisons highlighted enhancement of mother-adolescent frontal-frontal connectivity, a connection that has been implicated in parent-child social communication. In contrast, maternal intrusiveness in infancy was linked with attenuation of interbrain synchrony in the right interbrain frontotemporal network. Sensitivity and intrusiveness are key maternal social orientations that have shown to be individually stable in the mother-child relationship from infancy to adulthood and foreshadow children's positive and negative social-emotional outcomes, respectively. Our findings are the first to demonstrate that these two maternal orientations play a role in enhancing or attenuating the child's interbrain frontotemporal network, which sustains social communication and affiliation. Results suggest that the reported long-term impact of maternal sensitivity and intrusiveness may relate, in part, to its effects on tuning the child's brain to sociality.
育儿在儿童的认知、情感和心理健康方面起着至关重要的作用。在当前的纵向研究中，我们调查了早期母婴行为对青少年大脑间同步过程的持久影响。当婴儿 3-4 个月大时，拍摄了母婴自然互动的视频，并使用《编码互动行为手册》对母婴敏感性和侵入性进行了编码。在青少年早期（平均值=12.30，标准差=1.25），使用脑电图超扫描技术在积极情绪的自然互动过程中测量了母子大脑间同步。在之前的超扫描研究的指导下，我们专注于右侧额颞叶大脑间网络中的大脑间连接。结果表明，婴儿早期的母婴敏感性与右侧大脑间额颞网络中的神经同步具有纵向相关性。事后比较强调了母子额叶-额叶连接的增强，该连接与亲子社会交流有关。相比之下，婴儿期的母婴侵入性与右侧大脑间额颞网络中的大脑间同步减弱有关。敏感性和侵入性是母婴社会取向的关键指标，它们在母婴关系中从婴儿期到成年期都表现出个体稳定性，并预示着儿童的积极和消极社会情感结果。我们的研究结果首次表明，这两种母婴取向在增强或减弱儿童大脑间额颞网络方面发挥作用，该网络维持着社交沟通和情感联系。结果表明，报告的母婴敏感性和侵入性的长期影响可能部分与其对儿童大脑社会性的调节作用有关。
