Frontiers: Original Research -Maternal Neural Responses to Infant Cries and Faces: Relationships with Substance Use

Frontiers: Original Research -Maternal Neural Responses to Infant Cries and Faces: Relationships with Substance Use

Nicole Landi^1,2*, Jessica Montoya³, Hedy Kober³, Helena J. V. Rutherford¹, W. Einar Mencl², Patrick D. Worhunsky³, Marc N. Potenza^1,3,4 and Linda C. Mayes¹

• ¹ Yale Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
• ² Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT, USA
• ³ Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
• ⁴ Department of Neurobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

Substance abuse in pregnant and recently post-partum women is a major public health concern because of effects on the infant and on the ability of the adult to care for the infant. In addition to the negative health effects of teratogenic substances on fetal development, substance use can contribute to difficulties associated with the social and behavioral aspects of parenting. Neural circuits associated with parenting behavior overlap with circuits involved in addiction (e.g., frontal, striatal, and limbic systems) and thus may be co-opted for the craving/reward cycle associated with substance use and abuse and be less available for parenting. The current study investigates the degree to which neural circuits associated with parenting are disrupted in mothers who are substance-using. Specifically, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural response to emotional infant cues (faces and cries) in substance-using compared to non-using mothers. In response to both faces (of varying emotional valence) and cries (of varying distress levels), substance-using mothers evidenced reduced neural activation in regions that have been previously implicated in reward and motivation as well as regions involved in cognitive control. Specifically, in response to faces, substance users showed reduced activation in prefrontal regions, including the dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortices, as well as visual processing (occipital lobes) and limbic regions (parahippocampus and amygdala). Similarly, in response to infant cries, substance-using mothers showed reduced activation relative to non-using mothers in prefrontal regions, auditory sensory processing regions, insula and limbic regions (parahippocampus and amygdala). These findings suggest that infant stimuli may be less salient for substance-using mothers, and such reduced saliency may impair developing infant-caregiver attachment and the ability of mothers to respond appropriately to their infants.

Keywords: fMRI, emotion, cry, parenting

Citation: Landi N, Montoya J, Kober H, Rutherford HJV, Mencl WE, Worhunsky PD, Potenza MN and Mayes LC (2011) Maternal neural responses to infant cries and faces: relationships with substance use. Front. Psychiatry 2:32. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2011.00032

Received: 03 March 2011; Paper pending published: 12 April 2011;
Accepted: 22 May 2011; Published online: 15 June 2011.

Edited by:

Rina Eiden, University at Buffalo, USA

Reviewed by:

Eamon McCrory, University College London, UK
Andrew James Gerber, Columbia University, USA

Copyright: © 2011 Landi, Montoya, Kober, Rutherford, Mencl, Worhunsky, Potenza and Mayes. This is an open-access article subject to a non-exclusive license between the authors and Frontiers Media SA, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and other Frontiers conditions are complied with.

*Correspondence: Nicole Landi, E 74 Yale Child Study Center, 230 South Frontage Road, New Haven, CT 06511, USA. e-mail: nicole.landi@yale.edu