Stress-Sensitive Parental Brain Systems Regulate Emotion Response and Motivate Sensitive Child Care

Abstract

The mother-child relationship is central to early human development and provides the foundation that supports socioemotional functioning. Mothers with trauma exposure and mental illness histories are at risk for higher stress and impaired parental sensitivity. Sensitive parenting of children requires complex regulation of thoughts and behaviors such as vocalization. These form the first social bond that furnishes each individual with their capacity to flourish. After covering some basic neuroimaging design issues, this review concentrates on a selection of brain imaging studies, which examine the brain systems that govern human parenting – operationalized mostly as brain activity responses to infant cues – largely cries and pictures. Research highlights brain circuits that govern reflexive parenting behaviors, emotion response and regulation, executive function, empathy, and reflective function. Accordingly presented are recent studies that include fathers, mothers affected by psychopathology and treated with parenting intervention, circumstances of stress, poverty and issues of feeding and delivery, and also new methods including complex stimuli and hormone measures. Finally, future directions will be discussed, including the study interventions that influence parenting and support the importance of optimizing perinatal and neonatal care – future interventions may focus on optimizing maternal voice from a mechanistic brain perspective.