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Intuitive Parenting: Understanding the Neural Mechanisms of Parents

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Intuitive Parenting: Understanding the Neural Mechanisms of Parents Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Intuitive parenting: understanding the neural mechanisms of parents’ adaptive responses to infants 1,2 2,4 2,5 Christine E Parsons , Katherine S Young , Alan Stein and 2,3 Morten L Kringelbach When interacting with an infant, parents intuitively enact a interactions between parent and infant. A typical range of behaviours that support infant communicative sequence occurs: parents establish a face-to-face posi- development. These behaviours include altering speech, tion and use rhythmic speech, simplified syntax and establishing eye contact and mirroring infant expressions and exaggerated pitch contours to establish eye contact. If are argued to occur largely in the absence of conscious intent. eye contact is established, the ‘greeting response’ can Here, we describe studies investigating early, pre-conscious frequently be observed. This begins with a bending neural responses to infant cues, which we suggest support backwards of the parent’s head, raised eyebrows and aspects of parental intuitive behaviour towards infants. This widely opened eyes, frequently followed by a smile work has provided converging evidence for rapid differentiation [3]. Parents stay in the centre of the infant’s visual of infant cues from other salient social signals in the adult brain. field at exactly the infant’s focal distance, and maintain In particular, the orbitofrontal cortex may be important in eye contact [1]. Throughout interactions, parents mir- supporting quick orienting responses and privileged ror the infant’s facial expressions, vocalisations and processing of infant cues, processes fundamental to intuitive even feeding movements, often expanding the original parenting behaviour. communication to include other cues. For example, an infant ‘pout’ will be mirrored by the parent’s mouth Addresses posture response may also involve vocal changes, eye- 1 Interacting Minds Center, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus brow and even shoulder movements (for review, see University, Denmark 2 Ref. [4]). Such complex mirroring is highly contingent Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7JX, UK 3 on the parent’s ability to perceive and discriminate Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Denmark infant cues and expressions. Here, we focus on the 4 Anxiety and Depression Research Center, Department of Psychology, parental side of the ‘mirror’, while acknowledging the UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA 5 infant’s role in these dyadic interactions. We also focus MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit on the postnatal period, while recognizing the emer- (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa gence of instinctive protective behaviours, such as avoidance of pathogens, even before birth [5]. Corresponding author: Parsons, Christine E ([email protected]. dk) Intuitive parental behaviours are considered universal, occurring across cultures [6] genders, ages, and even Current Opinion in Psychology 2017, 15:40–44 species (e.g., chimpanzees; [7]). For instance, the altera- This review comes from a themed issue on Parenting tions that parents make to their speech, ‘motherese’, [8] Edited by Marinus H van IJzendoorn and Marian J Bakermans- are common across cultures that differ widely in adult- Kranenburg directed speech [9]. This constellation of intuitive beha- viours serves to foster engagement between infant and parent, to provide appropriate stimulation and to scaffold the infant’s developing competencies [1]. Papousek and http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.02.010 Papousek also suggested that the particular time course of 2352-250X/ã 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. these behaviours allows the infant to perceive the contin- gency between their action and their parent’s behaviour. These intuitive behaviours are significant because they allow the adult to respond to the infant’s communicative signals in a quick, efficient way, without the need for Introduction extensive cognitive resources. There are a remarkable number of behaviours that parents engage in, often without conscious awareness, Over time, parents intuitively modify their communica- which support communicative development in their tion to accommodate improvements in the infant’s key infant. Papousek and Papousek [1,2] originally motor, cognitive and behavioural skills [10]. From around advanced evidence for a set of core parenting beha- 3 months, as infant vision and motor control improve, eye viours that adults intuitively enact during face-to-face contact diminishes, and instead interactions begin to Current Opinion in Psychology 2017, 15:40–44 www.sciencedirect.com Brain mechanisms of intuitive parenting Parsons et al. 41 incorporate play with objects, with repetitive action we suggest underlie aspects of our ‘intuitive’ behaviour games becoming routine [11–13]. Gradually, the parent towards infants, and specifically infant signals (for excel- begins to leave a time lag between the infant’s demands lent, more general reviews of the neurobiological basis and their response, and progressively increases this lag. parenting, see Refs. [17,18 ]). Three methods sensitive to Concurrently, the infant learns to anticipate the parent’s the temporal dynamics of brain responses, electroenceph- non-immediate response, and becomes increasingly tol- alography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and erant of delay, promoting their capacity to regulate their local field potential (LFP) recordings have provided own emotional experiences [14,15]. These tendencies of converging evidence for rapid differentiation of infant the parent organise the earliest social interactions of cues from other salient social signals in the adult brain. infancy, in which the infant is an active, biologically- Most of these studies have focused on adults’ responses to predisposed participant (for review, see Ref. [16]). key infant communicative signals, primarily facial expres- sions and vocalisations. Temporal dynamics of ‘intuitive parenting’ While original models of intuitive parenting emerged Upon hearing an infant vocalisation, adults naturally from micro-analyses of observed early interactions, we orient to the infant and vocalise to either soothe distress are beginning to understand aspects of these behaviours or for non-distress, provide positive melodies and imita- at a neurobiological level. Here, we describe studies tive feedback [2]. Emerging evidence suggests that infant investigating early, pre-conscious neural responses, which vocalisations can be detected by subcortical structures Figure 1 Parental brain network Frontal regions Subcortical regions Orbitofrontal cortex Basal Ganglia Cingulate cortex Periaqueductal Grey Medial prefrontal cortex Amygdala IFG (inferior frontal gyrus) Ventral tegmental area Temporal lobe regions Motor regions Superior Temporal Gyrus SMA (supplementary motor area) Superior Temporal Sulcus Premotor cortex Middle Temporal Gyrus Beyond 50 - 90ms 80 - 150ms ~130ms 170 - 180ms 200ms M1/SMA PAG STS/G, MTG OFC STS/G, MTG Preparatory motor Early detection of Cortical detection of Salience detection of responses, detailed infant voclizations infant cues infant cues sensory processing Current Opinion in Psychology Neurobiological correlates of intuitive parenting: early pre-conscious activity in response to infant cues across subcortical and cortical regions. Evidence of early detection (<100 ms) of infant cues has been observed in the PAG of the brainstem. Classical sensory processing ERPs (N100/ P100) may be modulated by features of infant facial expressions. At 130 ms, there is evidence of differentiation of infant from adult cues, localised to the OFC. Subsequently, further detailed processing of infant cues occurs in a comparable time frame to the initiation of preparatory motor responses. Beyond 200 ms, other regions of the parental brain (including parts of the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, as well as the basal ganglia) may support the initiation of responsive caregiving behaviour. www.sciencedirect.com Current Opinion in Psychology 2017, 15:40–44 Download English Version: https://daneshyari.com/en/article/5033581 Download Persian Version: https://daneshyari.com/article/5033581 Daneshyari.com.
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