TY - JOUR
T1 - Maternal perinatal anxiety and neural responding to infant affective signals
T2 - Insights, challenges, and a road map for neuroimaging research
AU - Yatziv, Tal
AU - Vancor, Emily A.
AU - Bunderson, Madison
AU - Rutherford, Helena J.V.
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. EAV was supported by the Richard K. Gershon Endowed Medical Student Research Fellowship and the National Institutes of Health-NIDDK Medical Student Research Fellowship .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2021/12/1
Y1 - 2021/12/1
N2 - Anxiety symptoms are common among women during pregnancy and the postpartum period, potentially having detrimental effects on both mother and child's well-being. Perinatal maternal anxiety interferes with a core facet of adaptive caregiving: mothers’ sensitive responsiveness to infant affective communicative ‘cues.’ This review summarizes the current research on the neural correlates of maternal processing of infant cues in the presence of perinatal anxiety, outlines its limitations, and offers next steps to advance future research. Functional neuroimaging studies examining the neural circuitry involved in, and electrophysiological studies examining the temporal dynamics of, processing infant cues during pregnancy and postpartum are reviewed. Studies have generally indicated mixed findings, although emerging themes suggest that anxiety may be implicated in several stages of processing infant cues— detection, interpretation, and reaction— contingent upon cue valence. Limitations include inconsistent designs, lack of differentiation between anxiety and depression symptoms, and limited consideration of parenting-specific (versus domain-general) anxiety. Future studies should incorporate longitudinal investigation of multiple levels of analysis spanning neural, cognitive, and observed aspects of sensitive caregiving.
AB - Anxiety symptoms are common among women during pregnancy and the postpartum period, potentially having detrimental effects on both mother and child's well-being. Perinatal maternal anxiety interferes with a core facet of adaptive caregiving: mothers’ sensitive responsiveness to infant affective communicative ‘cues.’ This review summarizes the current research on the neural correlates of maternal processing of infant cues in the presence of perinatal anxiety, outlines its limitations, and offers next steps to advance future research. Functional neuroimaging studies examining the neural circuitry involved in, and electrophysiological studies examining the temporal dynamics of, processing infant cues during pregnancy and postpartum are reviewed. Studies have generally indicated mixed findings, although emerging themes suggest that anxiety may be implicated in several stages of processing infant cues— detection, interpretation, and reaction— contingent upon cue valence. Limitations include inconsistent designs, lack of differentiation between anxiety and depression symptoms, and limited consideration of parenting-specific (versus domain-general) anxiety. Future studies should incorporate longitudinal investigation of multiple levels of analysis spanning neural, cognitive, and observed aspects of sensitive caregiving.
KW - EEG/ERP
KW - Infant cues
KW - Maternal sensitivity
KW - Perinatal maternal anxiety
KW - fMRI
KW - fNIRS
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85115925867&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.09.043
DO - 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.09.043
M3 - Review article
C2 - 34563563
AN - SCOPUS:85115925867
VL - 131
SP - 387
EP - 399
JO - Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
JF - Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
SN - 0149-7634
ER -