Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Mechanisms Linking Unpredictable Maternal Care to Risk for Socioemotional Problems

项目摘要/摘要 照料环境是儿童早期生活经验的最重要来源之一。 早期与照顾者的互动提供了必要的输入，塑造了发育中的大脑，为 为儿童未来的社交、情感和智力功能奠定基础。虽然大量的工作 强调早期照顾者-儿童互动的质量(包括照顾者的敏感度和响应性) 作为儿童健康和发展的关键贡献者，新出现的证据表明， 这些互动也可能在塑造儿童发展方面发挥强大的作用，特别是在社会情感方面 域名。这一说法的最有力证据来自啮齿动物模型，它们越来越多地与 在啮齿动物幼崽中，具有普遍的社会情感障碍的不可预测的母性行为，以及这些 损伤似乎依赖于控制认知和情绪功能的神经回路的变化 (即前额-海马-杏仁核环路)。最近来自人类研究的行为证据也 支持不可预测的母亲行为与社会情绪功能受损之间的联系 儿童，包括外部化问题的风险增加和亲社会性减少。然而， 这些联系背后的机制在儿童中并没有得到很好的理解。拟议的研究将 整合动物和人类模型的洞察力，直接解决文献中的这一差距并测试潜力 神经发育和认知机制将不可预测的产妇护理与 幼儿的社会情绪问题。目标1将使用现有的纵向数据，从一项调查 儿童从出生跟踪到3岁，测试静息脑功能，即脑电波频段的变化 支持行政职能和社会行为的地区的权力和一致性是这些关联的基础 不可预测的母亲行为和孩子随后出现外部性问题的风险之间的关系。目标2将 包括一项实验测试，以确定执行功能的神经和行为标记物是否也存在缺陷 有助于在不可预测的母性行为和外部性问题和 4至5岁儿童的亲社会性降低。总而言之，这些发现将为机制提供新的见解 将不可预测的早期照顾者投入与社会情感问题联系起来，并可能提供关键的新 旨在促进健康社会情绪发展的预防和干预工作的方向 孩子们。这个奖项将为在发展心理学方面有很强背景的候选人提供机会， 接受神经生物学方面的培训，并使用脑电和事件相关电位方法，这将有助于她过渡到 独立研究生涯。

Project Summary/Abstract The caregiving environment constitutes one of the most significant sources of early life experience for children. Early interactions with caregivers provide essential inputs that shape the developing brain and lay the foundation for children’s future social, emotional, and intellectual functioning. While an extensive body of work highlights the quality of early caregiver-child interactions (including caregiver sensitivity and responsiveness) as a key contributor to child health and development, emerging evidence suggests that the predictability of these interactions may also play a powerful role in shaping child development, especially within socioemotional domains. The strongest evidence for this claim comes from rodent models, which increasingly associate unpredictable maternal behavior with pervasive socioemotional impairments in rodent pups, and these impairments appear dependent on alterations in neural circuitry governing cognitive and emotional function (i.e., prefrontal-hippocampal-amygdala circuits). Recent behavioral evidence from human research also supports associations between unpredictable maternal behavior and impaired socioemotional functioning in children, including elevated risk for externalizing problems and reduced prosociality. However, the mechanisms underlying these associations are not well-understood in children. The proposed studies will integrate insights from animal and human models to directly address this gap in the literature and test potential neurodevelopmental and cognitive mechanisms linking unpredictable maternal care and the emergence of socioemotional problems in young children. Aim 1 will use existing longitudinal data from an investigation of children followed from birth to age 3 to test whether alterations in resting brain function, namely EEG band power and coherence in regions supporting executive function and social behavior, underlie the associations between unpredictable maternal behavior and children’s risk for subsequent externalizing problems. Aim 2 will involve an experimental test of whether deficits in neural and behavioral markers of executive function also contribute to associations between unpredictable maternal behavior and both externalizing problems and reduced prosociality in 4- to 5-year-old children. Together, findings will provide new insight into mechanisms linking unpredictable early caregiver inputs and socioemotional problems and may provide critical new direction to prevention and intervention efforts aimed at promoting healthy socioemotional development in children. This award will provide the candidate, who has a strong background in developmental psychology, with training in neurobiology and the use of EEG and ERP methods that will facilitate her transition into an independent research career.