Investigating Links Between Dysfunctional Parenting and Infant Brain Connectivity on Development of Effortful Control

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Deficits in effortful control (EC; top-down control of self-regulation involving inhibitory control and executive attention) represent a major transdiagnostic risk factor for multiple psychiatric disorders in childhood. Dysfunctional parenting is a strong predictor of impaired EC, making it a potent target for intervention. Dysfunctional parenting includes behavioral deficits in parenting sensitivity [timely and appropriate responses to changes in infant physical and emotional needs], along with cognitive deficits in maternal mind-mindedness [MMM; attunement to infant mental states that govern goal-directed behavior]. MMM may underlie parenting sensitivity, but prospective links remain unclear. MMM facilitates the transition from external caregiver-based regulation to self-regulation in early childhood by providing the foundation for intentional mental-state talk to regulate behavior. While adverse caregiving exposures have profound effects on brain structure, the extent that MMM impacts infant brain structural and functional connectivity in key brain regions underlying EC during periods of brain plasticity is unknown. This innovative proposal offers an unprecedented opportunity to address this scientific question with training at an institution rich with expertise in child psychiatry and neuroscience research. This K01 will chart the development of EC and related brain networks by leveraging a valuable captured infant cohort undergoing repeated diffusion (dMRI) and resting state functional (rsfMRI) MRI scans and developmental evaluations from birth to age 3 years. The applicant will add to the existing study a prospective observational assessment of MMM, a standardized test of infant executive attention, and examine connectivity in a unique set of white matter tracts. As the cohort is enriched for poverty, this study will examine novel links between maternal perinatal psychosocial risk (poverty, depression, anxiety, stress) and later MMM and parenting sensitivity, and the extent that that psychosocial risk indirectly influences EC via causally linked multiple mediators of MMM and infant brain connectivity. Findings will elucidate MMM as a modifiable factor that may increase parent sensitivity to enhance infant brain connectivity and EC to reduce psychopathology. [If MMM alters infant brain connectivity, findings will underscore infancy as a critical time for targeted preventative intervention before EC deficits emerge and lead to psychopathology; identify vulnerable infants who may benefit the most from intervention; and inform the design of novel MMM interventions to enhance infant brain function in networks most sensitive to parenting inputs and most related to EC.] This award will build upon the applicant's foundation in child development, school- age executive attention, and structural MRI by providing [new and more advanced training in the assessment of mother-infant interactions, the development of EC in infancy, and dMRI and rsfMRI methods.] The applicant will gain the skills needed to conduct longitudinal research on the caregiving and neurobiological mechanisms of child psychopathology. This K01 will facilitate an R01 proposal that will modify MMM in a parent-child intervention to alter risk trajectories linking poverty with aberrant brain connectivity and psychopathology into school-age.