Abstract
Background
This study first examined how mothers with and without depression differ in neural
activation in response to adolescents’ affective faces. Second, it examined the extent
to which these neural activation patterns are related to observed positive and aggressive
parenting behavior.
Methods
Mothers with and without depression (based on self-reported symptoms and treatment
history; n = 77 and n = 64, respectively; meanage = 40 years) from low-income families completed an interaction task with their adolescents
(meanage = 12.8 years), which was coded for parents’ aggressive and positive affective behavior.
During functional magnetic resonance imaging, mothers viewed blurry, happy, sad, and
angry faces of unfamiliar adolescents, with an instruction to either label the emotion
or determine the clarity of the image.
Results
The depression group showed less activation in the posterior midcingulate than the
control subject group while labeling happy faces. Higher activation in the insula
and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (PFC) was related to less positive parenting behavior.
Ventrolateral PFC activation was most pronounced when labeling negative emotions,
but stronger ventrolateral PFC response to happy faces was associated with more aggressive
parenting behavior.
Conclusions
This demonstrates the association between parents’ neural responses to adolescent
faces and their behavior during interactions with their own adolescents, with relatively
low insula and dorsomedial PFC activation supporting positive parenting and affect-dependent
response in the ventrolateral PFC as being important to limit aggressive behavior.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 17, 2022
Accepted:
June 2,
2022
Received in revised form:
May 24,
2022
Received:
February 28,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Journal Pre-ProofIdentification
Copyright
© 2022 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
