Neural correlates of empathy for babies in postpartum women: A longitudinal study

Gender differences in brain response to infant emotional faces

Infant emotional stimuli can preferentially engage adults' attention and provide valuable information essential for successful interaction between adults and infants. Exploring the neural processes of recognizing infant stimuli promotes better understandings of the mother-infant attachment mechanisms. Here, combining task-functional magnetic resonance imaging (Task-fMRI) and resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI), we investigated the effects of infants' faces on the brain activity of adults. Two groups including 26 women and 25 men were recruited to participate in the current study. During the task-fMRI, subjects were exposed to images of infant emotional faces (including happy, neutral, and sad) randomly. We found that the brains of women and men reacted differently to infants' faces, and these differential areas are in facial processing, attention, and empathetic networks. The rs-fMRI further showed that the connectivity of the default-mode network-related regions increased in women than in men. Additionally, brain activations in regions related to emotional networks were associated with the empathetic abilities of women. These differences in women might facilitate them to more effective and quick adjustments in behaviors and emotions during the nurturing infant period. The findings provide special implications and insights for understanding the neural processing of reacting to infant cues in adults.

Decreased brain functional connectivity associated with cognitive dysfunction in women with second pregnancy

Purpose

Previous research has found that women with second pregnancy may have an increased risk of cognitive dysfunction. This study aims to investigate the intrinsic functional connectivity (FC) pattern of the DMN anchored on posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) in postpartum women, especially the parous women using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI).

Methods

Twenty parous women, 26 primiparous women, and 30 nulliparous women were included for rs-fMRI scan. They were age and education well matched. A seed based FC method was conducted to reveal FC patterns with other brain regions using a region of interest in the PCC. The relationships between FC patterns and cognitive performance were further detected.

Results

Relative to primiparous women, parous women had significantly decreased FC primarily between the PCC and the right middle frontal gyrus and right parahippocampal gyrus. The decreased FC to the right parahippocampal gyrus in parous women was positively associated with the reduced DST scores (rho = 0.524, p = 0.031). Moreover, parous women compared with nulliparous women showed significantly decreased FC between the PCC and the left superior frontal gyrus and left middle frontal gyrus. The reduced FC to the left superior frontal gyrus in parous women was also positively associated with the lower DST scores (rho = 0.550, p = 0.022).

Conclusion

Our result highlights that women with second pregnancy revealed decreased FC between the DMN regions with the parahippocampal gyrus and prefrontal cortex, which was correlated with specific impaired cognitive function. This study may provide new insights into the neuropathological mechanisms of postpartum cognitive impairment and enhance our understanding of the neurobiological aspects during postpartum period.

Maternal socioeconomic disadvantage, neural function during volitional emotion regulation, and parenting

The transition to becoming a mother involves numerous emotional challenges, and the ability to effectively keep negative emotions in check is critical for parenting. Evidence suggests that experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage interferes with parenting adaptations and alters neural processes related to emotion regulation. The present study examined whether socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with diminished neural activation while mothers engaged in volitional (i.e., purposeful) emotion regulation. 59 mothers, at an average of 4 months postpartum, underwent fMRI scanning and completed the Emotion Regulation Task (ERT). When asked to regulate emotions using reappraisal (i.e., Reappraise condition; reframing stimuli in order to decrease negative emotion), mothers with lower income-to-needs ratio exhibited dampened neural activation in the dorsolateral and ventrolateral PFC, middle frontal and middle temporal gyrus, and caudate. Without explicit instructions to down-regulate (i.e., Maintain condition), mothers experiencing lower income also exhibited dampened response in regulatory areas, including the middle frontal and middle temporal gyrus and caudate. Blunted middle frontal gyrus activation across both Reappraise and Maintain conditions was associated with reduced maternal sensitivity during a mother-child interaction task. Results of the present study demonstrate the influence of socioeconomic disadvantage on prefrontal engagement during emotion regulation, which may have downstream consequences for maternal behaviors.

Neural correlates of empathy for babies in postpartum women: A longitudinal study

This study investigated the empathic response of postpartum women to babies in pain and the underlying neural mechanism. Postpartum women responded with more empathy and speed to babies over other stimuli compared to controls. Brain scans taken 3 months after birth showed more elevated activation in the Middle cingulate cortex/middle frontal gyrus (MCC/MFG) than the controls regardless of the task condition. When compared to the adult and neutral conditions, the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) region was consistently more activated when postpartum women saw babies than controls. In addition, higher activation levels in the PCC region for the baby condition significantly correlated with faster and more empathic responses to babies. Considering that PCC is a core region for the theory of mind or mentalizing which requires cognitive reasoning to understand others, these results suggest that PCC might be a pivotal neural locus facilitating cognitive efforts to empathize with babies during the postpartum period. In a follow‐up experiment at 12 months after birth, we were still able to observe higher activity in the MCC/MFG of postpartum women. However, previously observed PCC activation patterns disappeared 12 months after birth, despite the women's response patterns to babies still being maintained. These results suggest that the mentalizing process activated to empathize with babies in the early postpartum period becomes less cognitively demanding over time.