Love on the developing brain: Maternal sensitivity and infants' neural responses to emotion in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

ABSTRACT: Infancy is a sensitive period of development, during which experiences of parental care are particularly important for shaping the developing brain. In a longitudinal study of N = 95 mothers and infants, we examined links between caregiving behavior (maternal sensitivity observed during a mother-infant free-play) and infants' neural response to emotion (happy, angry, and fearful faces) at 5 and 7 months of age. Neural activity was assessed using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), a region involved in cognitive control and emotion regulation. Maternal sensitivity was positively correlated with infants' neural responses to happy faces in the bilateral dlPFC and was associated with relative increases in such responses from 5 to 7 month

SUBMITTER: Stern JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11415551 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature