Paradoxical associations between familial affective responsiveness, stress, and amygdala reactivity

Family and parenting factors are associated with emotion regulation neural function in early adolescent girls with elevated internalizing symptoms

A prominent tripartite model proposes that parent role modeling of emotion regulation, emotion socialization behaviors, and the emotional climate of the family are important for young people's emotional development. However, limited research has examined the neural mechanisms at play. Here, we examined the associations between family and parenting factors, the neural correlates of emotional reactivity and regulation, and internalizing symptoms in early adolescent girls. Sixty-four female adolescents aged 10-12 years with elevated internalizing symptoms completed emotional reactivity, implicit (affect labeling) and explicit (cognitive reappraisal) emotion regulation tasks during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Positive family emotional climate was associated with greater activation in the anterior cingulate and middle temporal cortices during emotional reactivity. Maternal emotion regulation difficulties were associated with increased frontal pole and supramarginal gyrus activation during affect labeling, whereas supportive maternal emotion socialization and positive family emotional climate were associated with activation in prefrontal regions, including inferior frontal and superior frontal gyri, respectively, during cognitive reappraisal. No mediating effects of brain function were observed in the associations between family/parenting factors and adolescent symptoms. These findings highlight the role of family and parenting behaviors in adolescent emotion regulation neurobiology, and contribute to prominent models of adolescent emotional development.

Amygdala responses to threat in violence-exposed children depend on trauma context and maternal caregiving

Early life adversity (ELA) has been linked with increased arousal responses to threat, including increased amygdala reactivity. Effects of ELA on brain function are well recognized, and emerging evidence suggests that caregivers may influence how environmental stressors impact children's brain function. We investigated the hypothesis that positive interaction between mother and child can buffer against ELA effects on children's neural responses to threat, and related symptoms. N = 53 mother-child pairs (children ages 8-14 years) were recruited from an urban population at high risk for violence exposure. Maternal caregiving was measured using the Parenting Questionnaire and in a cooperation challenge task. Children viewed fearful and neutral face stimuli during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Children who experienced greater violence at home showed amygdala sensitization, whereas children experiencing more school and community violence showed amygdala habituation. Sensitization was in turn linked with externalizing symptoms. However, maternal warmth was associated with a normalization of amygdala sensitization in children, and fewer externalizing behaviors prospectively up to 1 year later. Findings suggested that the effects of violence exposure on threat-related neural circuitry depend on trauma context (inside or outside the home) and that primary caregivers can increase resilience.

Early stressful experiences are associated with reduced neural responses to naturalistic emotional and social content in children

How do children's experiences relate to their naturalistic emotional and social processing? Because children can struggle with tasks in the scanner, we collected fMRI data while 4-to-11-year-olds watched a short film with positive and negative emotional events, and rich parent-child interactions (n = 70). We captured broad, normative stressful experiences by examining socioeconomic status (SES) and stressful life events, as well as children's more proximal experiences with their parents. For a sub-sample (n = 30), parenting behaviors were measured during a parent-child interaction, consisting of a picture book, a challenging puzzle, and free play with novel toys. We characterized positive parenting behaviors (e.g., warmth, praise) and negative parenting behaviors (e.g., harsh tone, physical control). We found that higher SES was related to greater activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex during parent-child interaction movie events. Negative parenting behaviors were associated with less activation of the ventral tegmental area and cerebellum during positive emotional events. In a region-of-interest analysis, we found that stressful life events and negative parenting behaviors were associated with less activation of the amygdala during positive emotional events. These exploratory results demonstrate the promise of using movie fMRI to study how early experiences may shape emotional, social, and motivational processes.

Normative range parenting and the developing brain: A scoping review and recommendations for future research

Studies of early adversity such as trauma, abuse, and neglect highlight the critical importance of quality caregiving in brain development and mental health. However, the impact of normative range variability in caregiving on such biobehavioral processes remains poorly understood. Thus, we lack an essential foundation for understanding broader, population-representative developmental mechanisms of risk and resilience. Here, we conduct a scoping review of the extant literature centered on the question, "Is variability in normative range parenting associated with variability in brain structure and function?" After removing duplicates and screening by title, abstract, and full-text, 23 records were included in a qualitative review. The most striking outcome of this review was not only how few studies have explored associations between brain development and normative range parenting, but also how little methodological consistency exists across published studies. In light of these limitations, we propose recommendations for future research on normative range parenting and brain development. In doing so, we hope to facilitate evidence-based research that will help inform policies and practices that yield optimal developmental trajectories and mental health as well as extend the literature on the neurodevelopmental impact of early life stress.

Effects of Parenting Environment on Child and Adolescent Social-Emotional Brain Function

The caregiving environment that children and adolescents experience is critically important for their social-emotional development. Parenting may affect child social-emotional outcomes through its effects in shaping the child's developing brain. Research has begun to investigate effects of parenting on child and adolescent brain function in humans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Here we review these initial studies. These studies find associations between parenting behavior and child and adolescent functional activation in neural networks involved in emotional arousal, emotion regulation (ER), reward processing, cognitive control, and social-emotional information processing. Findings from these studies suggest that higher negative parenting and lower positive parenting are generally associated with heightened activation in emotional arousal networks in response to negative emotional stimuli in youth. Further, findings indicate that lower positive parenting is associated with higher response in reward processing networks to monetary reward in youth. Finally, findings show that lower positive parenting predicts lower activation in cognitive control networks during cognitive control tasks and less adaptive neural responses to parent-specific stimuli. Several studies found these associations to be moderated by child sex or psychopathology risk status and we discuss these moderating factors and discuss implications of findings for children's social-emotional development.

An ecological approach to understanding the developing brain: Examples linking poverty, parenting, neighborhoods, and the brain

We describe an ecological approach to understanding the developing brain, with a focus on the effects of poverty-related adversity on brain function. We articulate how combining multilevel ecological models from developmental science and developmental psychopathology with human neuroscience can inform our approach to understanding the developmental neuroscience of risk and resilience. To illustrate this approach, we focus on associations between poverty and brain function, the roles parents and neighborhoods play in this context, and the potential impact of developmental timing. We also describe the major challenges and needed advances in these areas of research to better understand how and why poverty-related adversity may impact the developing brain, including the need for: a population neuroscience approach with greater attention to sampling and representation, genetically informed and causal designs, advances in assessing context and brain function, caution in interpretation of effects, and a focus on resilience. Work in this area has major implications for policy and prevention, which are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A review of associations between parental emotion socialization behaviors and the neural substrates of emotional reactivity and regulation in youth

As highlighted by Eisenberg, Cumberland, and Spinrad (1998), parents play a critical role in children's socioemotional development, in part, by shaping how children and adolescents process, respond to, and regulate their emotions (i.e., emotional reactivity/regulation). Although evidence for associations between parenting behavior and youth's emotional processing has relied primarily on behavioral measures of emotion, researchers have begun to examine how parenting is related to the neural substrates of youth's reactivity and regulation. This article reviews a growing literature linking parental behavior with structural brain development as well as functional activity and connectivity in neural regions supporting emotional reactivity/regulation during infancy, childhood, and adolescence. By focusing on normative parental behaviors, we evaluate the evidence for associations between typical variations in caregiving and neural processes thought to support youth's emotional reactivity/regulation. The purpose of this review is to (1) extend the model put forth by Eisenberg and colleagues to consider the ways that parenting behaviors are related to neural substrates of youth's emotional reactivity and regulation; (2) review the empirical evidence for associations between parenting, particularly parental "emotion-related socialization behaviors" (ERSBs), and neural substrates of youth's emotional reactivity/regulation; and (3) recommend future directions for this emerging area of research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Hormesis in Health and Chronic Diseases

'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger'. Hormesis, the paradoxical beneficial effects of low-dose stressors, can be better defined as the biphasic dose-effect or time-effect relationship for any substance. Here we review hormesis-like phenomena in the context of chronic diseases for many substances, including lifestyle factors and endocrine factors. Intermittent or pulsatile exposure can generate opposite effects compared with continuous exposure. An initial exposure can elicit an adaptive stress response with long-lasting protection against subsequent exposures. Early-life stress can increase resilience in later life and lack of stress can lead to vulnerability. Many stressors are naturally occurring and are required for healthy growth or homeostasis, which exemplifies how 'illness is the doorway to health'.

Maternal overprotection in childhood is associated with amygdala reactivity and structural connectivity in adulthood

Recently, we reported that variability in early-life caregiving experiences maps onto individual differences in threat-related brain function. Here, we extend this work to provide further evidence that subtle variability in specific features of early caregiving shapes structural and functional connectivity between the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in a cohort of 312 young adult volunteers. Multiple regression analyses revealed that participants who reported higher maternal overprotection exhibited increased amygdala reactivity to explicit signals of interpersonal threat but not implicit signals of broad environmental threat. While amygdala functional connectivity with regulatory regions of the mPFC was not significantly associated with maternal overprotection, participants who reported higher maternal overprotection exhibited relatively decreased structural integrity of the uncinate fasciculus (UF), a white matter tract connecting these same brain regions. There were no significant associations between structural or functional brain measures and either maternal or paternal care ratings. These findings suggest that an overprotective maternal parenting style during childhood is associated with later functional and structural alterations of brain regions involved in generating and regulating responses to threat.