Attachment Reminders Trigger Widespread Synchrony across Multiple Brains.

Infant stimuli elicit widespread neural and behavioral response in human adults, and such massive allocation of resources attests to the evolutionary significance of the primary attachment. Here, we examined whether attachment reminders also trigger cross-brain concordance and generate greater neural uniformity, as indicated by intersubject correlation. Human mothers were imaged twice in oxytocin/placebo administration design, and stimuli included four ecological videos of a standard unfamiliar mother and infant: two infant/mother alone (Alone) and two mother-infant dyadic contexts (Social). Theory-driven analysis measured cross-brain synchrony in preregistered nodes of the parental caregiving network (PCN), which integrates subcortical structures underpinning mammalian mothering with cortical areas implicated in simulation, mentalization, and emotion regulation, and data-driven analysis assessed brain-wide concordance using whole-brain parcellation. Results demonstrated widespread cross-brain synchrony in both the PCN and across the neuroaxis, from primary sensory/somatosensory areas, through insular-cingulate regions, to temporal and prefrontal cortices. The Social context yielded significantly more cross-brain concordance, with PCNs striatum, parahippocampal gyrus, superior temporal sulcus, ACC, and PFC displaying cross-brain synchrony only to mother-infant social cues. Moment-by-moment fluctuations in mother-infant social synchrony, ranging from episodes of low synchrony to tightly coordinated positive bouts, were tracked online by cross-brain concordance in the preregistered ACC. Findings indicate that social attachment stimuli, representing evolutionary-salient universal cues that require no verbal narrative, trigger substantial interbrain concordance and suggest that the mother-infant bond, an icon standing at the heart of human civilization, may function to glue brains into a unified experience and bind humans into social groups.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Infant stimuli elicit widespread neural response in human adults, attesting to their evolutionary significance, but do they also trigger cross-brain concordance and induce neural uniformity among perceivers? We measured cross-brain synchrony to ecological mother-infant videos. We used theory-driven analysis, measuring cross-brain concordance in the parenting network, and data-driven analysis, assessing brain-wide concordance using whole-brain parcellation. Attachment cues triggered widespread cross-brain concordance in both the parenting network and across the neuroaxis. Moment-by-moment fluctuations in behavioral synchrony were tracked online by cross-brain variability in ACC. Attachment reminders bind humans' brains into a unitary experience and stimuli characterized by social synchrony enhance neural similarity among participants, describing one mechanism by which attachment bonds provide the neural template for the consolidation of social groups.

The neural mechanisms and consequences of paternal caregiving.

In recent decades, human sociocultural changes have increased the numbers of fathers that are involved in direct caregiving in Western societies. This trend has led to a resurgence of interest in understanding the mechanisms and effects of paternal care. Across the animal kingdom, paternal caregiving has been found to be a highly malleable phenomenon, presenting with great variability among and within species. The emergence of paternal behaviour in a male animal has been shown to be accompanied by substantial neural plasticity and to be shaped by previous and current caregiving experiences, maternal and infant stimuli and ecological conditions. Recent research has allowed us to gain a better understanding of the neural basis of mammalian paternal care, the genomic and circuit-level mechanisms underlying paternal behaviour and the ways in which the subcortical structures that support maternal caregiving have evolved into a global network of parental care. In addition, the behavioural, neural and molecular consequences of paternal caregiving for offspring are becoming increasingly apparent. Future cross-species research on the effects of absence of the father and the transmission of paternal influences across generations may allow research on the neuroscience of fatherhood to impact society at large in a number of important ways.

Infants' salivary oxytocin and positive affective reactions to people.

Oxytocin is a neuropeptide positively associated with prosociality in adults. Here, we studied whether infants' salivary oxytocin can be reliably measured, is developmentally stable, and is linked to social behavior. We longitudinally collected saliva from 62 U.S. infants (44 % female, 56 % Hispanic/Latino, 24 % Black, 18 % non-Hispanic White, 11 % multiracial) at 4, 8, and 14 months of age and offline-video-coded the valence of their facial affect in response to a video of a smiling woman. We also captured infants' affective reactions in terms of excitement/joyfulness during a live, structured interaction with a singing woman in the Early Social Communication Scales at 14 months. We detected stable individual differences in infants' oxytocin levels over time (over minutes and months) and in infants' positive affect over months and across contexts (video-based and in live interactions). We detected no statistically significant changes in oxytocin levels between 4 and 8 months but found an increase from 8 to 14 months. Infants with higher oxytocin levels showed more positive facial affect to a smiling person video at 4 months; however, this association disappeared at 8 months, and reversed at 14 months (i.e., higher oxytocin was associated with less positive facial affect). Infant salivary oxytocin may be a reliable physiological measure of individual differences related to socio-emotional development.

Synchronous caregiving from birth to adulthood tunes humans' social brain.

Mammalian young are born with immature brain and rely on the mother's body and caregiving behavior for maturation of neurobiological systems that sustain adult sociality. While research in animal models indicated the long-term effects of maternal contact and caregiving on the adult brain, little is known about the effects of maternal-newborn contact and parenting behavior on social brain functioning in human adults. We followed human neonates, including premature infants who initially lacked or received maternal-newborn skin-to-skin contact and full-term controls, from birth to adulthood, repeatedly observing mother-child social synchrony at key developmental nodes. We tested the brain basis of affect-specific empathy in young adulthood and utilized multivariate techniques to distinguish brain regions sensitive to others' distinct emotions from those globally activated by the empathy task. The amygdala, insula, temporal pole (TP), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) showed high sensitivity to others' distinct emotions. Provision of maternal-newborn contact enhanced social synchrony across development from infancy and up until adulthood. The experience of synchrony, in turn, predicted the brain's sensitivity to emotion-specific empathy in the amygdala and insula, core structures of the social brain. Social synchrony linked with greater empathic understanding in adolescence, which was longitudinally associated with higher neural sensitivity to emotion-specific empathy in TP and VMPFC. Findings demonstrate the centrality of synchronous caregiving, by which infants practice the detection and sharing of others' affective states, for tuning the human social brain, particularly in regions implicated in salience detection, interoception, and mentalization that underpin affect sharing and human attachment.

Continuity of psychopathology v. resilience across the transition to adolescence: role of hair cortisol and sensitive caregiving.

BACKGROUND: The transition to adolescence implicates heightened vulnerability alongside increased opportunities for resilience. Contexts of early life stress (ELS) exacerbate risk; still, little research addressed biobehavioral mediators of risk and resilience across the adolescent transition following ELS. Utilizing a unique cohort, we tested biosocial moderators of chronicity in adolescents' internalizing disorders v. resilience. METHOD: Families exposed to chronic war-related trauma, v. controls, were followed. We utilized data from three time-points framing the adolescent transition: late childhood (N = 177, Mage = 9.3 years ± 1.41), early adolescence (N = 111, Mage = 11 0.66 years ± 1.23), and late adolescence (N = 138, Mage = 15.65 years ± 1.31). In late childhood and late adolescence children's internalizing disorders were diagnosed. At early adolescence maternal and child's hair cortisol concentrations (HCC), maternal sensitivity, and mothers' post-traumatic symptoms evaluated. RESULTS: War-exposed children exhibited more internalizing disorders of chronic trajectory and mothers were less sensitive and more symptomatic. Three pathways elucidated the continuity of psychopathology: (a) maternal sensitivity moderated the risk of chronic psychopathology, (b) maternal post-traumatic symptoms mediated continuity of risk, (c) trauma exposure moderated the association between child internalizing disorders at late childhood and maternal HCC, which linked with child HCC. Child HCC linked with maternal post-traumatic symptoms, which were associated with child disorders in late adolescence. CONCLUSION: Results demonstrate the complex interplay of maternal and child's biosocial factors as mediators and moderators of risk chronicity across the adolescent transition following trauma. Findings are first to utilize maternal and child's HCC as biomarkers of chronic stress v. resilience during adolescence, a period of neural reorganization and personal growth that shapes the individual's lifetime adaptation.

Father contribution to human resilience.

Fathers have been an important source of child endurance and prosperity since the dawn of civilization, promoting adaptation to social rules, defining cultural meaning systems, teaching daily living skills, and providing the material background against which children developed; still, the recent reformulation in the role of the father requires theory-building. Paternal caregiving is rare in mammals, occurring in 3-5% of species, expresses in multiple formats, and involves flexible neurobiological accommodations to ecological conditions and active caregiving. Here, we discuss father contribution to resilience across development. Our model proposes three tenets of resilience - plasticity, sociality, and meaning - and discussion focuses on father-specific contributions to each tenet at different developmental stages; newborn, infant, preschooler, child, and adolescent. Father's style of high arousal, energetic physicality, guided participation in daily skills, joint adventure, and conflict resolution promotes children's flexible approach and social competence within intimate bonds and social groups. By expanding children's interests, sharpening cognitions, tuning affect regulation, encouraging exploration, and accompanying the search for identity, fathers support the sense of meaning, enhancing the human-specific dimension of resilience. We end by highlighting pitfalls to paternal contribution, including absence, abuse, rigidity, expectations, and gender typing, and the need to formulate novel theories to accommodate the "involved dad."

The neurobiology of hatred: Tools of Dialogue© intervention for youth reared amidst intractable conflict impacts brain, behaviour, and peacebuilding attitudes.

Myths, drama, and sacred texts have warned against the fragile nature of human love; the closer the affiliative bond, the quicker it can turn into hatred, suggesting similarities in the neurobiological underpinnings of love and hatred. Here, I offer a theoretical account on the neurobiology of hatred based on our model on the biology of human attachments and its three foundations; the oxytocin system, the "affiliative brain", comprising the neural network sustaining attachment, and biobehavioural synchrony, the process by which humans create a coupled biology through coordinated action. These systems mature in mammals in the context of the mother-infant bond and then transfer to support life within social groups. During this transition, they partition to support affiliation and solidarity to one's group and fear and hatred towards out-group based on minor variations in social behaviour. I present the Tools of Dialogue© intervention for outgroup members based on social synchrony. Applied to Israeli and Palestinian youth and implementing RCT, we measured social behaviour, attitudes, hormones, and social brain response before and after the 8-session intervention. Youth receiving the intervention increased reciprocity and reduced hostile behaviour towards outgroup, attenuated the neural marker of prejudice and increased neural empathic response, reduced cortisol and elevated oxytocin, and adapted attitudes of compromise. These neural changes predicted peacebuilding support 7 years later, when young adults can engage in civil responsibilities. Our intervention, the first to show long-term effects of inter-group intervention on brain and behaviour, demonstrates how social synchrony can tilt the neurobiology of hatred towards the pole of affiliation.

Technologically-assisted communication attenuates inter-brain synchrony.

The transition to technologically-assisted communication has permeated all facets of human social life; yet, its impact on the social brain is still unknown and the effects may be particularly intense during periods of developmental transitions. Applying a two-brain perspective, the current preregistered study utilized hyperscanning EEG to measure brain-to-brain synchrony in 62 mother-child pairs at the transition to adolescence (child age; M = 12.26, range 10-14) during live face-to-face interaction versus technologically-assisted remote communication. The live interaction elicited 9 significant cross-brain links between densely inter-connected frontal and temporal areas in the beta range [14-30 Hz]. Mother's right frontal region connected with the child's right and left frontal, temporal, and central regions, suggesting its regulatory role in organizing the two-brain dynamics. In contrast, the remote interaction elicited only 1 significant cross-brain-cross-hemisphere link, attenuating the robust right-to-right-brain connectivity during live social moments that communicates socio-affective signals. Furthermore, while the level of social behavior was comparable between the two interactions, brain-behavior associations emerged only during the live exchange. Mother-child right temporal-temporal synchrony linked with moments of shared gaze and the degree of child engagement and empathic behavior correlated with right frontal-frontal synchrony. Our findings indicate that human co-presence is underpinned by specific neurobiological processes that should be studied in depth. Much further research is needed to tease apart whether the "Zoom fatigue" experienced during technological communication may stem, in part, from overload on more limited inter-brain connections and to address the potential cost of social technology for brain maturation, particularly among youth.

Investigating default mode network connectivity disruption in children of mothers with depression.

BACKGROUND: Exposure to maternal major depressive disorder (MDD) bears long-term negative consequences for children's well-being; to date, no research has examined how exposure at different stages of development differentially affects brain functioning. AIMS: Utilising a unique cohort followed from birth to preadolescence, we examined the effects of early versus later maternal MDD on default mode network (DMN) connectivity. METHOD: Maternal depression was assessed at birth and ages 6 months, 9 months, 6 years and 10 years, to form three groups: children of mothers with consistent depression from birth to 6 years of age, which resolved by 10 years of age; children of mothers without depression; and children of mothers who were diagnosed with MDD in late childhood. In preadolescence, we used magnetoencephalography and focused on theta rhythms, which characterise the developing brain. RESULTS: Maternal MDD was associated with disrupted DMN connectivity in an exposure-specific manner. Early maternal MDD decreased child connectivity, presenting a profile typical of early trauma or chronic adversity. In contrast, later maternal MDD was linked with tighter connectivity, a pattern characteristic of adult depression. Aberrant DMN connectivity was predicted by intrusive mothering in infancy and lower mother-child reciprocity and child empathy in late childhood, highlighting the role of deficient caregiving and compromised socio-emotional competencies in DMN dysfunction. CONCLUSIONS: The findings pinpoint the distinct effects of early versus later maternal MDD on the DMN, a core network sustaining self-related processes. Results emphasise that research on the influence of early adversity on the developing brain should consider the developmental stage in which the adversity occured.

Chronic early trauma impairs emotion recognition and executive functions in youth; specifying biobehavioral precursors of risk and resilience.

Exposure to chronic early trauma carries lasting effects on children's well-being and adaptation. Guided by models on resilience, we assessed the interplay of biological, emotional, cognitive, and relational factors in shaping two regulatory outcomes in trauma-exposed youth: emotion recognition (ER) and executive functions (EF). A unique war-exposed cohort was followed from early childhood to early adolescence. At preadolescence (11-13 years), ER and EF were assessed and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), biomarker of parasympathetic regulation, was quantified. Mother-child dyadic reciprocity, child's avoidance symptoms, and cortisol (CT) were measured in early childhood. Trauma-exposed youth displayed impaired ER and EF abilities. Conditional process analysis described two differential indirect paths leading from early trauma to regulatory outcomes. ER was mediated by avoidance symptoms in early childhood and modulated by cortisol, such that this path was evident only for preadolescents with high, but not low, CT. In comparison, EF was mediated by the degree of dyadic reciprocity experienced in early childhood and modulated by RSA, observed only among youth with lower RSA. Findings pinpoint trauma-related disruptions to key regulatory support systems in preadolescence as mediated by early-childhood relational, clinical, and physiological factors and highlight the need to specify biobehavioral precursors of resilience toward targeted early interventions.

Oxytocin reactivity to the therapeutic encounter as a biomarker of change in the treatment of depression.

Depression affects millions worldwide, thus underscoring the urgent need to optimize health care practices. To better understand the processes involved in psychotherapy gains, studies have emphasized the need to complement subjective reports with objective measures, in particular biological markers. Oxytocin (OT) has been proposed as a potential biomarker in the treatment of depression given its involvement in depression-related psychological and physiological functions and the formation of close relationships. Here, we assessed whether OT reactivity to therapeutic encounters (absolute and/or directional reactivity) is linked to improvements in depressive symptoms from session to session during psychotherapy. A total of 284 saliva samples were collected from 30 adult clients who underwent 16 sessions of manualized psychodynamic psychotherapy for depression in a university setting. Salivary OT was measured before and after five preselected sessions distributed evenly throughout the therapy. The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) was administered at the beginning of each session. Multilevel growth models indicated that clients exhibiting greater absolute OT reactivity showed greater improvement in depressive symptoms throughout treatment. Directional reactivity was not associated with depressive symptom change. In addition, clients with higher baseline OT levels displayed less change in depressive symptoms. These findings highlight reactivity of the OT system, in either direction, as an important feature of the treatment response. Consistent with recent models of the neurobiology of resilience, OT reactivity appears to serve as an important biomarker of psychotherapy gain in the treatment of depression. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Human attachments shape interbrain synchrony toward efficient performance of social goals.

The human brain has undergone massive expansion across primate evolution through life amidst multi-layered social attachments; within families, among friends, and between clan members and this enabled humans to coordinate their brains with those of others toward the execution of complex social goals.  We examined how human attachments facilitate efficient, resource-sensitive performance of social goals by balancing neural and behavioral synchrony. Using hyperscanning EEG, we collected neural data from male-female pairs in three groups (N=158, 79 pairs); long-term couples, best friends, and unfamiliar group members, during two ecologically-valid naturalistic tasks; motor coordination and empathy giving.  Across groups and tasks, neural synchrony was supported by behavior coordination and orchestrated multiple neural rhythms.  In the goal-directed motor task, interbrain synchrony implicated beta and gamma rhythms localized to sensorimotor areas. Couples showed the highest neural synchrony combined with greatest behavioral synchrony and such brain-behavior linkage resulted in speedy performance, conserving energy in the long run.  The socially-oriented empathy task triggered neural synchrony in widely-distributed sensorimotor and bilateral temporal regions, integrated alpha, beta, and gamma rhythms, and implicated brain-behavior complementarity; couples displayed the highest behavioral synchrony combined with lowest neural synchrony toward greatest felt support while strangers exhibited the opposite pattern.  Findings suggest that human attachments provide a familiar backdrop of temporal regularities, required for the brain's allostatic function, and interbrain and behavioral synchrony are sculpted by familiarity and closeness toward resource-sensitive performance of survival-related social goals, toiled by two.

From mothers to children and back: Bidirectional processes in the cross-generational transmission of anxiety from early childhood to early adolescence.

BACKGROUND: Maternal psychopathology and caregiving behavior are linked with child anxiety and these associations may be particularly salient when families face mass trauma together and members influence each other's symptomatology and resilience. Despite the well-known mother-to-child effects, less research addressed the longitudinal bidirectional effects of maternal and child's anxiety symptoms on each other. METHODS: Mothers and children exposed to chronic war-related trauma from Sderot, Israel, and comparison group were followed at three time-points; Early childhood (T1:N = 232, MAge = 2.76 years), late childhood (T3:N = 176, MAge = 9.3 years), and early adolescence (T4:N = 110, MAge = 11.66 years). At each time-point maternal and child's anxiety symptoms were evaluated via questionnaires and maternal sensitivity was coded from videotaped observations of parent-child interactions. Bidirectional associations were examined using traditional cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) and CLPM with random intercepts (RI-CLPM). RESULTS: Trauma-exposed mothers and children exhibited more anxiety symptoms and lower maternal sensitivity. Cross-lagged panel models revealed cross-time bidirectional associations between maternal anxiety and child anxiety from early to late childhood. Child anxiety at each time-point predicted maternal anxiety and maternal sensitivity at the next stage; however, maternal sensitivity did not show longitudinal associations with child anxiety, highlighting children's role in shaping caregiving. CONCLUSIONS: Findings demonstrate bidirectional cross-generational influences of mother and child on each other's anxiety in contexts of trauma and pinpoint early childhood as a sensitive period for such mutual influences. Children's increased anxiety following trauma appears to be further exacerbated via its impact on increasing maternal anxiety and compromising sensitive caregiving, underscoring the potential benefits of parental and mother-child interventions for trauma-exposed populations.

Physiological and social synchrony as markers of PTSD and resilience following chronic early trauma.

OBJECTIVE: Although resilience is a key topic in clinical theory and research, few studies focused on biobehavioral mechanisms that underpin resilience. Guided by the biobehavioral synchrony frame, we examined the dynamic interplay of physiological and behavioral synchrony as marker of risk and resilience in trauma-exposed youth. METHODS: A unique cohort of war-exposed versus control children was followed at four time-points from early childhood to preadolescence and child posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) repeatedly assessed. At preadolescence (11-13 years), mother and child were observed in several social and nonsocial tasks while cardiac data collected and measures of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and RSA synchrony computed. The social interactive task was microcoded for behavioral synchrony and the second-by-second balance of behavioral and physiological synchrony was calculated. War-exposed preadolescents were divided into those diagnosed with PTSD at any time-point across childhood versus resilient children. RESULTS: Group differences in behavioral synchrony, RSA synchrony, and their interplay emerged. PTSD dyads exhibited the tightest autonomic synchrony combined with the lowest behavioral synchrony, whereas resilient dyads displayed the highest behavioral and lowest autonomic synchrony. Hierarchical Linear Model analysis pinpointed two resilience-promoting mechanisms. First, for resilient and control dyads, moments of behavioral synchrony were coupled with decreased RSA synchrony. Second, only among resilient dyads, moments of behavioral synchrony increased child RSA levels. CONCLUSION: Findings specify mechanisms by which biobehavioral synchrony promotes resilience. As children grow, the tightly coupled mother-child physiology must be replaced by loosely coordinated behavioral attunement that buttresses maturation of the child's allostatic self-regulation. Our findings highlight the need for synchrony-based interventions to trauma-exposed mothers.

Salivary C-reactive protein-a possible predictor of serum levels in pediatric acute respiratory illness.

Identifying the etiology of an acute respiratory infection in children is a well-known challenge. In this study, we evaluated the correlation between salivary C-reactive protein (CRP) and its serum counterpart, which is known to be higher in bacterial infections but necessitates a venipuncture. Salivary and serum CRPs were measured in children with an acute respiratory illness, aged 2 months to 18 years. Pearson's correlation coefficients were used to measure correlation. Discrimination of the salivary CRP levels for predicting serum levels above 100 mg/L was calculated and compared to serum CRP levels. Sensitivity and specificity were similarly calculated. Salivary CRP was measured in 104 samples. Levels correlated significantly and positively with serum CRP levels (r = 0.670, p<0.001). Area under the curve for predicting serum CRP levels of 100 mg/L was 0.848. For a salivary CRP concentration above 32,610 ng/L, the sensitivity and specificity were 69% and 93%, respectively, for accurately predicting a serum CRP level ≥100 mg/L.Conclusions: Salivary CRP can be used in the pediatric acute setting due to its high specificity for predicting elevated serum levels without the need for venipuncture. Further studies are required to achieve higher sensitivity rates. What is known: • Salivary C-reactive protein has shown correlation to its serum counterpart, mainly in healthy children, adults, and ill neonates. What is new: • In a large population of children with acute respiratory illness, aged 2 months to 18 years, salivary C-reactive protein showed high specificity for predicting elevated serum levels, thus indicating its potential as a diagnostic tool.

Social Behavior as a Transdiagnostic Marker of Resilience.

The recent shift from psychopathology to resilience and from diagnosis to functioning requires the construction of transdiagnostic markers of adaptation. This review describes a model of resilience that is based on the neurobiology of affiliation and the initial condition of mammals that mature in the context of the mother's body and social behavior. The model proposes three tenets of resilience-plasticity, sociality, and meaning-and argues that coordinated social behavior stands at the core sustaining resilience. Two lines in the maturation of coordinated social behavior are charted, across animal evolution and throughout human development, culminating in the mature human reciprocity of empathy, mutuality, and perspective-taking. Cumulative evidence across ages and clinical conditions and based on our behavioral coding system demonstrates that social reciprocity, defined by plasticity at the individual, dyadic, and group levels, denotes resilience, whereas the two poles of disengagement/avoidance and intrusion/rigidity characterize specific psychopathologies, each with a distinct behavioral signature. Attention to developmentally sensitive markers and to the dimension of meaning in human sociality may open new, behavior-based pathways to resilience.

Early maternal and paternal caregiving moderates the links between preschoolers' reactivity and regulation and maturation of the HPA-immune axis.

While early caregiving and child's temperamental dispositions work in concert to shape social-emotional outcomes, their unique and joint contribution to the maturation of the child's stress and immune systems remain unclear. We followed children longitudinally from infancy to preschool to address the buffering effect of early parenting on the link between temperamental dysregulation and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)-immune axis in preschool-aged children. Participants included 47 typically developing children and their 94 parents in both mother-father and two-father families followed across the first 4-years of family formation. In infancy, we observed parent-infant synchrony and measured parental oxytocin; in preschool, we observed temperamental reactivity and self-regulation and assessed children's cortisol and secretory Immunoglobulin A (s-IgA), biomarkers of the stress and immune systems. Greater self-regulation and lower negative emotionality were associated with lower baseline s-IgA and cortisol, respectively. However, these links were defined by interactive effects so that preschoolers with low self-regulation displayed higher s-IgA levels only in cases of low parent-infant synchrony and negative emotionality linked with greater baseline cortisol levels only when parental oxytocin levels were low. Results emphasize the long-term stress-buffering role of the neurobiology of parental care, demonstrate comparable developmental paths for mothers and fathers, and delineate the complex developmental cascades to the maturation of children's stress-management systems.

Dopamine in the medial amygdala network mediates human bonding.

Research in humans and nonhuman animals indicates that social affiliation, and particularly maternal bonding, depends on reward circuitry. Although numerous mechanistic studies in rodents demonstrated that maternal bonding depends on striatal dopamine transmission, the neurochemistry supporting maternal behavior in humans has not been described so far. In this study, we tested the role of central dopamine in human bonding. We applied a combined functional MRI-PET scanner to simultaneously probe mothers' dopamine responses to their infants and the connectivity between the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), the amygdala, and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which form an intrinsic network (referred to as the "medial amygdala network") that supports social functioning. We also measured the mothers' behavioral synchrony with their infants and plasma oxytocin. The results of this study suggest that synchronous maternal behavior is associated with increased dopamine responses to the mother's infant and stronger intrinsic connectivity within the medial amygdala network. Moreover, stronger network connectivity is associated with increased dopamine responses within the network and decreased plasma oxytocin. Together, these data indicate that dopamine is involved in human bonding. Compared with other mammals, humans have an unusually complex social life. The complexity of human bonding cannot be fully captured in nonhuman animal models, particularly in pathological bonding, such as that in autistic spectrum disorder or postpartum depression. Thus, investigations of the neurochemistry of social bonding in humans, for which this study provides initial evidence, are warranted.

Oxytocin as a biomarker of the formation of therapeutic alliance in psychotherapy and counseling psychology.

The therapeutic alliance is one of the most consistent predictors of therapeutic change, including symptom reduction and improvement in wellbeing and quality of life, across a variety of mental health interventions. Yet, little is known about its biological mechanisms. Oxytocin (OT) has been suggested as a biological mechanism by which bonds are formed and strengthened across species. This article is intended to demonstrate the potential of OT as a biomarker of therapeutic change in psychotherapy and counseling psychology, especially of the therapeutic alliance. We delineate three main potential paths of investigation based on the most recent research on OT in parent-child and romantic partner dyads. For each path, we provide a detailed explanation for whom, when, and how OT should be measured. Each path is illustrated using data collected in a randomized controlled trial of psychotherapy for major depressive disorder. These illustrations demonstrate the great potential of OT as a biomarker of (a) trait-like characteristics of the patients and the therapists, (b) the processes of therapeutic change, and (c) the dyadic synchrony between patients and their therapists. The potential clinical contribution of OT as a biomarker for each of these three paths is further demonstrated using a case study. Practical suggestions and directions for future research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Dialogue intervention to youth amidst intractable conflict attenuates stress response to outgroup.

Encounter with outgroup has been shown to elicit physiological stress response and when outgroup is perceived as threatening to one's own family and community, stress is higher. In such contexts, becoming familiar and learning to empathize with the other side may reduce stress. Building on the long-lasting Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we developed an eight-week group intervention focused on dialogue and empathy and tested it within a randomized controlled trial. Eighty-eight Israeli-Jewish and Arab-Palestinian adolescents (16-18 years) were randomly assigned to intervention or control groups. Before(T1) and after(T2) intervention, one-on-one interaction with outgroup member was videotaped, cortisol levels assessed five times during a 2.5-hour session involving exposure to outgroup stimuli, and adolescents were interviewed regarding national conflict. Intervention reduced cortisol response to social contact and reminders of outgroup (F = 4.92, p = .032, Eta2 = 0.109). This HPA-activity suppression was defined by two pathways. First, intervention had a direct impact on cortisol decrease; and second, intervention increased youth's behavioral empathy during one-on-one interaction with outgroup member and this empathic response mediated the effect of intervention on cortisol reduction. Adolescents' belief in the potential for reconciliation at T1 predicted greater empathy at T2. Our study provides the first evidence-based intervention for youth growing up amidst intractable conflict and demonstrates its impact on adolescents' physiological stress response to outgroup. Results contribute to research on the neurobiology of ingroup/outgroup relations, highlight the key role of dialogical empathy and social interactions for interventions targeting youth, and emphasize the importance of enhancing motivation for social inclusion for initiating positive behavioral and physiological processes. Clinical Trials Registry (NCT02122887; https://clinicaltrials.gov).