Neural and behavioral effects of parent training on emotion recognition in mothers rearing children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

This randomized controlled study examined neurological changes in socioemotional processing skills through parent training in caregivers of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Thirty mothers of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder were stratified into parent training and non-parent training groups. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed during the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test, and parenting difficulties were evaluated using the Parenting Stress Index and the Parenting Scale, twice (before and after parent training). Only mothers in the parent training group showed a significant decrease in Parenting Stress Index and Parenting Scale scores. They also demonstrated increased activity in the left occipital fusiform gyrus during the task of estimating emotions from facial pictures. We presumed that these changes might reflect the potential impact of enrollment in parent training in reducing stress, which might have increased activation of the fusiform gyrus.

Beneficial Effects of Behavioral Parent Training on Inhibitory Control in Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Small-Scale Randomized Controlled Trial.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the beneficial effects of behavioral parent training (BPT), as an indirect type of psychosocial treatment, are extended to cognitive manifestations beyond behavioral symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Although previous studies of community families have shown an association between parenting quality and a child's cognitive functions, little is known about the effects of BPT on cognitive manifestations in children with ADHD. In this study, we focused on inhibitory control among cognitive domains, which is considered to be the most malleable to direct types of psychosocial treatment for ADHD. We hypothesized that inhibitory control is affected by BPT, which uses parents as the primary agents of change to help their children. Thirty school-age children (6-12 years old) with ADHD and their parents (mothers) participated and were randomly assigned to either the standard BPT or waitlist control group. Using two objective laboratory-based tasks of inhibitory control (i.e., go/no-go and single response selection tasks), we assessed baseline and post-treatment response inhibition to suppress task-irrelevant responses and response selection to select task-relevant responses. In addition to decreased ADHD symptoms and negative parenting, the BPT group exhibited significantly improved performance in the single response selection task, but not in the go/no-go task, compared with the waitlist control group. Although tentative, these findings partially support our hypothesis that BPT has beneficial effects on the cognitive inhibitory control of ADHD, highlighting the potential for supportive environmental modifications to advance cognitive development in children with ADHD.

Epigenetic Clock Deceleration and Maternal Reproductive Efforts: Associations With Increasing Gray Matter Volume of the Precuneus.

Reproductive efforts, such as pregnancy, delivery, and interaction with children, make maternal brains optimized for child-rearing. However, extensive studies in non-human species revealed a tradeoff between reproductive effort and life expectancy. In humans, large demographic studies have shown that this is the case for the most part; however, molecular marker studies regarding aging remain controversial. There are no studies simultaneously evaluating the relationship between reproductive effort, aging, and brain structures. We therefore examined the associations between reproductive efforts (parity status, number of deliveries, motherhood period, and cumulative motherhood period), DNA methylation age (mAge) acceleration (based on Horvath's multi-tissue clock and the skin & blood clock), and the regional gray matter volumes (obtained through brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using voxel-based morphometry) in 51 mothers aged 27-46 years of children in early childhood. We found that increasing reproductive efforts were significantly associated with decelerated aging in mothers with one to four children, even after adjusting for the confounding effects in the multiple linear regression models. We also found that the left precuneus gray matter volume was larger as deceleration of aging occurred; increasing left precuneus gray matter volume, on the other hand, mediates the relationship between parity status and mAge deceleration. Our findings suggest that mothers of children in early childhood, who have had less than four children, may benefit from deceleration of aging mediated via structural changes in the precuneus.

Increased resting-state activity in the cerebellum with mothers having less adaptive sensory processing and trait anxiety.

Child-rearing mothers with high levels of trait anxiety have a tendency for less adaptive sensory processing, which causes parenting stress. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this sensory processing and trait anxiety remain unclear. We aimed to determine the whole-brain spontaneous neural activity and sensory processing characteristics in mothers with varying parenting stress levels. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, we assessed mothers caring for more than one preschool aged (2-5 years) child and presenting with varying levels of sensory processing, trait anxiety, and parenting stress. Spontaneous neural activities in select brain regions were evaluated by whole-brain correlation analyses based on the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF). We found significant positive correlations between levels of sensory processing with trait anxiety and parenting stress. Mothers having less adaptive sensory processing had significantly increased resting-state network activities in the left lobule VI of the cerebellum. Increased fALFF values in the left lobule VI confirmed the mediation effect on the relationship between trait anxiety and sensory processing. A tendency for less adaptive sensory processing involving increased brain activity in lobule VI could be an indicator of maternal trait anxiety and the risk of parenting stress.

Neural Mechanisms of Parental Communicative Adjustments in Spoken Language.

During cultural transmission, caregivers typically adjust their form of speech according to the presumed characteristics of an infant/child, a phenomenon known as infant/child directed speech (IDS/CDS) or "parentese." Although ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) damage was previously found to be associated with failure in adjusting non-verbal communicative behaviors, little is known about the neural mechanisms of verbal communicative adjustments, such as IDS/CDS. In the current study, 30 healthy mothers with preschool-age children underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a picture naming task which required them to name an object for either a child or an adult. In the picture naming task, mothers exhibited a longer naming duration in the toward-child condition than the toward-adult control condition. Naming an object for a child, compared with naming it for an adult, resulted in greater involvement in the vmPFC and other regions (e.g., cerebellum) in the global caregiving network. In particular, the vmPFC exhibited task-related deactivation and decreased functional connectivity with the supplementary motor, precentral, postcentral, and supramarginal regions. These findings suggest that the vmPFC, which is included in the default mode network, is involved in optimizing communicative behaviors for the inter-generational transmission of knowledge. This function of the vmPFC may be considered as a prosocial drive to lead to prosocial communicative behaviors depending on the context. This study provides a better understanding of the neural mechanisms involved in communicative adjustments for children and insight into related applied research fields such as parenting, pedagogy, and education.

RETRACTED: Epigenetic modification of the oxytocin gene is associated with gray matter volume and trait empathy in mothers.

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/article-withdrawal). The Editor has concluded that the acceptance of this article was partly based upon the positive advice of an unreliable reviewer report. The report was provided to the journal by a reviewer suggested by the authors, and there were inappropriate communications between the authors and reviewer during the peer-review process. The Editor has therefore concluded that the review was not appropriate or independent. This manipulation of the peer-review process represents a clear violation of the fundamentals of peer review, our publishing policies, and publishing ethics standards. Apologies are offered to the readers of the journal that this deception was not detected during the submission process.

Intrinsic brain activity associated with eye gaze during mother-child interaction.

Mother-child interactions impact child social development and psychological health. This study focused on eye-gaze interactions, especially eye contact as synchronized gaze, which is an important non-verbal communication tool in human interactions. We performed brain-image analysis of mothers and children using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and quantitatively evaluated the quality of mother-child interactions using the Interaction Rating Scale to investigate how it is related to the frequency of mother-child eye contact. As a result, we found a positive correlation between the frequency of eye gaze and the right anterior insula (AI) or middle frontal gyrus in children and a positive correlation with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and precuneus/cuneus in mothers. Especially, when eye contact was made, the association with the right AI in children and ACC in mothers was retained, suggesting the involvement of the salience network responsible for modulating internal and external cognition. In addition, the frequency of eye contact was positively associated with the quality of mother-child interaction. These results suggest that the salience network is a major candidate for the neural basis involved in maintaining efficient eye contact and that it plays an important role in establishing positive mother-child interactions.

Less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in parents at risk of engaging in child physical abuse.

BACKGROUND: Parental physical punishment (e.g., spanking) of children can gradually escalate into child physical abuse (CPA). According to social-information processing (SIP) models of aggressive behaviors, distorted social cognitive mechanisms can increase the risk of maladaptive parenting behaviors by changing how parents detect, recognize, and act on information from their social environments. In this study, we aimed to identify differences between mothers with a low and high risk of CPA regarding how quickly they detect positive facial expressions. METHODS: Based on their use of spanking to discipline children, 52 mothers were assigned to a low- (n = 39) or high-CPA-risk group (n = 13). A single-target facial emotional search (face-in-the-crowd) task was used, which required participants to search through an array of faces to determine whether a target emotional face was present in a crowd of non-target neutral faces. Search efficiency index was computed by subtracting the search time for target-present trials from that for target-absent trials. RESULTS: The high-CPA-risk group searched significantly less efficiently for the happy, but not sad, faces, than did the low-CPA-risk group; meanwhile, self-reported emotional ratings (i.e., valence and arousal) of the faces did not differ between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with the SIP models, our findings suggest that low- and high-CPA-risk mothers differ in how they rapidly detect positive facial expressions, but not in how they explicitly evaluate them. On a CPA-risk continuum, less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in the initial processes of the SIP system may begin to occur in the physical-discipline stage, and decrease the likelihood of positive interpersonal experiences, consequently leading to an increased risk of CPA.

Subclinical maternal depressive symptoms modulate right inferior frontal response to inferring affective mental states of adults but not of infants.

BACKGROUND: Being a mother of young children increases the risk of depression characterised by deficits in inferring what a person is feeling, i.e., affective theory of mind (aToM). Despite the adverse consequences for mothers, children, families, and society as a whole, little is known of how the brain functions underlying aToM ability are affected by subclinical maternal depressive symptoms, and act as a risk indicator for major depressive disorders (MDD). METHODS: Thirty healthy mothers with varying levels of depressive symptoms underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing mind-reading tasks based on the emotional expressions of adult eyes and infant faces. RESULTS: In the adult eyes-based mind-reading task, mothers with more severe depressive symptoms showed less activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), a central part of the putative mirror neuron system (pMNS). This was unrelated to behavioural performance decline in the task. However, brain activation involved in the infant face-based mind-reading task was not affected by depressive symptoms. LIMITATIONS: Although aToM ability, assessed by mind-reading tasks, can be distinguished from empathy, these can be interacting functions of the pMNS, wherein they could mutually affect each other. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that functional activation of the right IFG, which underlies aToM ability, has variable vulnerability to maternal depressive symptoms according to the type of social signal. This functional decline of the right IFG may be a risk indicator for clinical maternal depression, which is associated with impaired social functioning and communication conflicts with family members and other social supporters.