Neural mechanisms of psychological risk on mother and infant adjustment in African American and European American families

非洲裔和欧洲裔美国家庭母婴适应心理风险的神经机制

• 批准号: 10587669
• 负责人: Ashley Marie Groh
• 金额: $ 63.78万
• 依托单位: YALE UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-07-01 至 2028-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10587669
• 关键词: Adult; Affect; African; African American; American; Attention; Behavior; Belief; Birth; Brain; Characteristics; Child; Child Rearing; Child Welfare; Cognition; Color; Communities; Cues; Development; Discrimination; Distress; Electroencephalography; Emotional; Emotions; Enrollment; Ethnic Origin; European; European ancestry; Expectancy; Face; Family; Infant; Intervention; Knowledge; Life Cycle Stages; Link; Longitudinal Studies; Measurement; Mediating; Mental Depression; Mental Health; Modeling; Mothers; Nature; Neurocognitive; Neuronal Plasticity; Nulliparity; Outcome; Parents; Pathway interactions; Perception; Personal Satisfaction; Persons; Postpartum Period; Pregnancy; Pregnant Women; Problem behavior; Process; Psychological Impact; Research; Risk; Risk Factors; Role; Sampling; Security; Social support; Testing; Third Pregnancy Trimester; Time; Woman; Work; biomarker identification; brain research; caregiving; cohort; depressive symptoms; design; developmental psychology; ethnic difference; ethnic diversity; experience; health disparity; infancy; infant outcome; infant temperament; innovation; intergenerational; maternal caregiving; maternal depression; maternal risk; motherhood; neural; neuroadaptation; neuromechanism; offspring; physical conditioning; postnatal; prenatal; prospective; psychologic; psychosocial; social; stem; vigilance

Abstract One of the major contributions of developmental psychology is the demonstration that early caregiving experiences within the normative range (i.e., sensitive caregiving) not only contribute to offspring’s mental and physical health disparities, but also that such associations are enduring over the life course. Research by the PIs and others has identified brain mechanisms by which key maternal risk factors—depressive symptoms and attachment insecurity—undermine caregiving behavior. However, given evidence documenting significant change in the maternal brain over the transition to motherhood, there is a critical gap as to whether this transition serves as a sensitive period during which maternal neural responding to infants is particularly impacted by maternal depressive symptoms and insecurity that pose risk for caregiving behavior and infant adjustment. Moreover, the majority of research has focused exclusively on mother-driven effects, limiting understanding of the significance of infant characteristics for the maternal brain. Additionally, research on the maternal brain primarily comprises samples of European ancestry women, thus, little is known about whether such processes operate similarly in families of color. Therefore, this R01 application seeks to programmatically investigate whether maternal psychological risk undermines maternal sensitivity and, in turn, infant adjustment via negatively impacting change in maternal brain responding to infants over the transition to motherhood. Further, we will test the role of infant characteristics (i.e., negative emotionality) in moderating this pathway. Critically, we include expectant nulliparous European American (n=200) and African American (n=200) women to explore moderation of our findings by maternal ethnicity. We further propose to identify person (parenting/emotion beliefs), community (kinship/social support), and structural (discrimination) factors relevant to African American women that may impact their neural adaptation to motherhood – comparing these findings to European Ancestry women. We will examine maternal risk factors (depressive symptoms, attachment insecurity), multi-level factors relevant to African American women, and brain responding to infant cues prenatally (3rd trimester) and postnatally (4 and 8 months). Postnatal assessments will include caregiving behavior (4, 8, and 12 months), infant negative emotionality (4 and 8 months), and infant adjustment (12 months), including attachment security and behavior problems. Our approach is innovative given its intergenerational, prospective, multi-level, and multi-time point design and the ethnic diversity in the maternal sample enrolled. Our findings will inform models of the changing maternal brain from pregnancy to the postpartum period and how maternal depression and attachment insecurity may pose risk for maternal caregiving and infant adjustment as a function of infant negative emotionality and maternal ethnicity. Furthermore, our approach will allow for more targeted intervention strategies for women during their transition to motherhood to optimize mother and child well-being.

摘要