Experimental manipulation of infant temperament affects amygdala functional connectivity

The Power of Smiling: The Adult Brain Networks Underlying Learned Infant Emotionality

The perception of infant emotionality, one aspect of temperament, starts to form in infancy, yet the underlying mechanisms of how infant emotionality affects adult neural dynamics remain unclear. We used a social reward task with probabilistic visual and auditory feedback (infant laughter or crying) to train 47 nulliparous women to perceive the emotional style of six different infants. Using functional neuroimaging, we subsequently measured brain activity while participants were tested on the learned emotionality of the six infants. We characterized the elicited patterns of dynamic functional brain connectivity using Leading Eigenvector Dynamics Analysis and found significant activity in a brain network linking the orbitofrontal cortex with the amygdala and hippocampus, where the probability of occurrence significantly correlated with the valence of the learned infant emotional disposition. In other words, seeing infants with neutral face expressions after having interacted and learned their various degrees of positive and negative emotional dispositions proportionally increased the activity in a brain network previously shown to be involved in pleasure, emotion, and memory. These findings provide novel neuroimaging insights into how the perception of happy versus sad infant emotionality shapes adult brain networks.

Becoming uniquely human? Comparing chimpanzee to human infancy

Does comparing behavioral development between chimpanzees and humans during infancy hold the key to understanding what is uniquely human? Recent work shows that while many behaviors emerge at similar ages in chimpanzees, human infants develop behavioral traits underpinning our prosocial and ultra-cooperative nature at a much accelerated rate.

Psychometric properties of Arabic translated temperament instrument

Background

Investigating temperament has been a multi-subject exercise that attempts to determine the contribution of temperament to additional measurable phenomena like behavior. The existing research not only evaluates temperament as a variable with the ability to influence additional characteristics but has included interventions that can result in adapted outcomes. Develop an Arabic translation of the Infant Characteristics Questionnaire (ICQ).

Purpose

Examine the psychometric properties of the translation and establish modified criteria for evaluating the questionnaire.

Methods

Cross sectional design was used. Translation of the ICQ was achieved through translation/back translation. The population that used the ICQ translation on convenience sample of 40 Arabic-speaking women with children between the ages of 3–12‐months old; this same group also completed a demographic survey.

Results

The internal consistency of the translated instrument was almost equivalent to or higher than the reported from the United States (US) review. The alpha coefficients calculated from subscales varied between .47 and .87.

Conclusion

This research study described the translation of the ICQ into the Arabic language for use in the research and clinical setting. The ICQ is a useful tool for evaluating infant difficulty by describing and summarizing parents’ ratings.

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In nursing for infants, the parent-child, is very significant and is often understood as bilateral, correlative and interdependent.

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Infant temperament is described as regularities in responding to different situations, and reflect a infant's behavioral characteristics.

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The information gathered from infant-temperament questionnaires can help health care professionals inform parents of interventions for improving infant temperament.

The emergence of emotionally modern humans: implications for language and learning

According to the Cooperative Breeding Hypothesis, apes with the life-history attributes of those in the line leading to the genus Homo could not have evolved unless male and female allomothers had begun to help mothers care for and provision offspring. As proposed elsewhere, the unusual way hominins reared their young generated novel phenotypes subsequently subjected to Darwinian social selection favouring those young apes best at monitoring the intentions, mental states and preferences of others and most motivated to attract and appeal to caretakers. Not only were youngsters acquiring information in social contexts different from those of other apes, but they would also have been emotionally and neurophysiologically different from them in ways that are relevant to how humans learn. Contingently delivered rewards to dependents who attracted and ingratiated themselves with allomothers shaped their behaviours and vocalizations and transformed the way developing youngsters learned from others and internalized their preferences. This article is part of the theme issue 'Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals'.

Changes in Cortical Sensitivity to Infant Facial Cues From Pregnancy to Motherhood Predict Mother-Infant Bonding

The transition to motherhood triggers changes in human brain structure that may facilitate mother-infant bonding. Although much research on maternal cortical responses to infant faces has focused on the postpartum period, no previous study has examined whether longitudinal functional changes in the maternal cortex during pregnancy and postpartum are associated with mother-infant bonding. Using electroencephalography, prenatal to postnatal changes in cortical sensitivity (P1, P2, late positive potential, N170 event-related potentials) to infant and adult faces were examined in relation to reported mother-infant bonding in 40 mothers (M_age  = 30.5 years). Prenatal to postnatal increases in P1 and P2 responses to infant faces predicted stronger bonding. Findings suggest that cortical changes in attention allocation rather than in face-specific encoding enhance bonding.