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Title: Mothers' unresolved trauma blunts amygdala response to infant distress

Author
item KIM, SOHYE - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item FONAGY, PETER - Baylor College Of Medicine
item ALLEN, JON - Baylor College Of Medicine
item STRATHEARN, LANE - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)

Submitted to: Social Neuroscience
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/13/2014
Publication Date: 3/17/2014
Citation: Kim, S., Fonagy, P., Allen, J., Strathearn, L. 2014. Mothers' unresolved trauma blunts amygdala response to infant distress. Social Neuroscience. 9(4):352-363.

Interpretive Summary: While the neurobiology of post-traumatic stress disorder has been extensively researched, much less attention has been paid to the brain mechanisms underlying more hidden but pervasive types of trauma (e.g., those involving disrupted relationships and insecure attachment). The study involved 42 first-time mothers who were enrolled during their pregnancy and participated in an interview that delved into their own childhood experiences and traumatic events encountered. From this the mothers were categorized into those with or without "unresolved trauma." We then looked at patterns of brain activation in the amygdala, a key brain region for processing emotion, when viewing pictures of their own and unknown baby faces. Mothers with unresolved trauma showed a markedly reduced amygdala response to pictures of their own infant in distress, but not to unknown infant faces. These mothers may, in a sense, be blocking their response to their infant's distress, because of memories of their own childhood trauma. The reduced brain responses in these mothers may also lead to impaired caregiving behavior, especially when their infants are distressed, which may have long-term effects on infant development.

Technical Abstract: While the neurobiology of post-traumatic stress disorder has been extensively researched, much less attention has been paid to the neural mechanisms underlying more covert but pervasive types of trauma (e.g., those involving disrupted relationships and insecure attachment). Here, we report on a neurobiological study documenting that mothers' attachment-related trauma, when unresolved, undermines her optimal brain response to her infant's distress. We examined the amygdala blood oxygenation level-dependent response in 42 first-time mothers as they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning, viewing happy- and sad-face images of their own infant, along with those of a matched unknown infant. Whereas mothers with no trauma demonstrated greater amygdala responses to the sad faces of their own infant as compared to their happy faces, mothers who were classified as having unresolved trauma in the Adult Attachment Interview (Dynamic Maturational Model) displayed blunted amygdala responses when cued by their own infants' sadness as compared to happiness. Unknown infant faces did not elicit differential amygdala responses between the mother groups. The blunting of the amygdala response in traumatized mothers is discussed as a neural indication of mothers' possible disengagement from infant distress, which may be part of a process linking maternal unresolved trauma and disrupted maternal caregiving.