Patterns of Infant Amygdala Connectivity Mediate the Impact of High Caregiver Affect on Reducing Infant Smiling: Discovery and Replication

BACKGROUND

Behavioral research indicates that caregiver mood disorders and emotional instability in the early months following childbirth are associated with lower positive emotionality and higher negative emotionality in infants, but the neural mechanisms remain understudied.

METHODS

Using resting-state functional connectivity as a measure of the functional architecture of the early infant brain, we aimed to determine the extent to which connectivity between the amygdala, a key region supporting emotional learning and perception, and large-scale neural networks mediated the association between caregiver affect and anxiety and early infant negative emotionality and positive emotionality. Two samples of infants (first sample: n = 58; second sample: n = 31) 3 months of age underwent magnetic resonance imaging during natural sleep.

RESULTS

During infancy, greater resting-state functional connectivity between the amygdala and the salience network and, to a lesser extent, lower amygdala and executive control network resting-state functional connectivity mediated the effect of greater caregiver postpartum depression and trait anxiety on reducing infant smiling (familywise error-corrected p < .05). Furthermore, results from the first sample were replicated in the second, independent sample, to a greater extent for caregiver depression than for caregiver anxiety.

CONCLUSIONS

We provide evidence of early objective neural markers that can help identify infants who are more likely to be at risk from, versus those who might be protected against, the deleterious effects of caregiver depression and anxiety and reduced positive emotionality.

Limbic white matter structural integrity at 3 months prospectively predicts negative emotionality in 9-month-old infants: a preliminary study

BACKGROUND

Little is known about how early alterations in white matter relate to clinically relevant behaviors such as emotional dysregulation. Thus, our goal was to examine how the white matter structural integrity of key limbic (i.e., uncinate fasciculus and cingulum) and commissural (i.e., forceps minor) bundles in 3-month-old infants prospectively predicts emotional regulation behaviors at 9 months.

METHODS

Three-month-old infants underwent multishell diffusion-weighted imaging. Following image processing, tractography was performed for each tract within each infant's native space (n=20). Measures of white matter integrity, including microstructure and morphology, were extracted from each tract. At 9 months, negative emotionality (NE) and positive emotionality (PE) were elicited using Laboratory Assessment of Temperament tasks. Elastic net regressions were performed for variable selection, which included white matter integrity variables from each of the 3 tracts, along with several covariates, including age, sex, use of public assistance, and the mother's depressive symptoms. Outcome variables were NE and PE composite scores evaluated in two separate models.

RESULTS

Notably, following hierarchical regression using elastic net-selected variables, uncinate structural integrity was the most robust predictor of NE (ß=-0.631, p=0.005).

LIMITATIONS

The sample size of our study is a limitation, however, as a preliminary study, our goal was to describe our findings to inform future, larger studies.

CONCLUSIONS

Greater uncinate structural integrity predicted lower NE, suggesting that greater uncinate structural integrity at 3 months allows greater emotional regulation capacity at 9 months. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate prospective brain-to-emotional behavior relationships in infants.

Personality differences in patients at three alcoholism treatment agencies

Results of personality inventories completed by patients in three alcoholism treatment and two control groups revealed differences between the personality profiles of these groups, suggesting that different types of programs attract different types of clients.

Salient differences between internal and external standards for hospitalizing opiate addicts

Drug addicts evaluated by the treatment staff prior to treatment were compared on several self-concept scales with those screened elsewhere by contract agencies. Persons committed directly to treatment demonstrated a greater degree of psychopathology and less middle-class identification than those found suitable after local pretreatment evaluation. Those evaluated elsewhere showed a significantly higher rate of failure to complete successfully the inpatient phase. The study has implications for any program where prescreening is done prior to coming to the institution and suggests the need for a final pretreatment evaluation a: the institution if successful completion of the program is to be maximized.