Cocaine: Translational Effects on Infant Vocalizations and Maternal Response

有婴幼儿的妇女使用可卡因与忽视儿童高度相关。母亲和婴儿分别在提供护理和诱导护理方面发挥重要作用，因此药物使用或婴儿产前暴露于药物可能在中断孕产妇护理方面发挥相互作用。尽管这一人群的忽视率很高，但人们对可卡因的使用如何特别干扰母婴互动知之甚少。可卡因诱导的母亲忽视的大鼠模型表明，药物治疗组和对照组的啮齿动物母亲在产后早期对可卡因暴露的婴儿表现出延迟或减少的母亲行为。延迟母性行为在可卡因治疗的母亲中更为明显。这些数据表明，在动物模型中，可卡因引起的变化，在母亲和婴儿的影响质量的孕产妇保健。由于在人类和非人类研究中都报告了类似的行为变化，因此旨在检查人类和动物模型的转化项目可以更直接地评估影响母婴相互作用的特定高度相关行为的变化。 人类和啮齿类动物的母亲会照顾婴儿的发声。可卡因暴露的婴儿的发声可能会改变，从而引起母亲的不同护理。该项目的具体目标是了解为什么在怀孕期间滥用药物，特别是可卡因的母亲对婴儿的忽视行为增加，以及这些婴儿产生的哭声是否有助于忽视护理。将确定a）人类和啮齿动物婴儿的产前可卡因暴露是否导致特定哭声特征的变化，以及B）这些差异是否改变人类和啮齿动物母体对哭声的反应，特别是在药物暴露的母体中。拟议的实验将是第一次系统地评估这些措施在人类和动物模型同时进行。长期目标是确定可卡因暴露如何影响早期养育行为和母婴互动，以及是否涉及人类和动物可卡因引起忽视的一个方面的共同机制。

Cocaine use by women with infants and young children is highly correlated with child neglect. Both mothers and infants play important roles in care-giving and elicitation of care respectively, so drug use or infant prenatal exposure to drugs likely play an interactive role in the disruption of maternal care. Despite the high rate of neglect in this population, little is understood about how cocaine use specifically interferes with maternal-infant interactions. A rat model of cocaine-induced maternal neglect indicated that rodent mothers from both drug- treated and control groups exhibited delayed or lessened maternal behavior towards cocaine-exposed infants during the early postpartum period. Delayed maternal behavior was even more pronounced in cocaine-treated mothers. These data imply that in animal models, cocaine-induced changes in both mother and infant influence quality of maternal care. Since similar behavioral changes are reported in both human and non- human studies, a translational project aimed at examining human and animal models can more directly assess changes in specific, highly relevant behaviors of mothers and infants that affect their interactions. Human and rodent mothers attend to infant vocalizations. Vocalizations of cocaine-exposed infants may be altered, and thus elicit differential care from mothers. The specific aims of this project focus on understanding why mothers who abuse drugs during pregnancy, specifically cocaine, show an increase in neglectful behavior towards their infant, and if cries produced from these infants contribute to neglectful care received. It will be determined if a) prenatal cocaine exposure in human and rodent infants results in changes in specific cry characteristics and b) if these differences alter human and rodent maternal response to the cries, particularly in drug-exposed mothers. The proposed experiments will be the first systematic evaluation of these measures in both human and animal models simultaneously. The long-term objectives serve to determine how cocaine exposure affects early nurturing behavior and maternal-infant interactions and whether a common mechanism underlying one aspect of human and animal cocaine-induced neglect is involved.