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Altered neural response to emotional faces in infants of mothers with depressed or anxious mood

Poster Session D - Monday, March 31, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Joyce Hu¹ (joycexin001@e.ntu.edu.sg), Hui Zhao¹, Cheryl Tan¹, Marchella Smith¹, Marcel Andre Hirt¹, Victoria Leong¹; ¹Nanyang Technological University

Up to 20% of new mothers experience postpartum mood disorders (Field, 2018) which is associated with 3-4 times elevated mental health risk in their infants (Lawrence et al., 2019). However, the neural mechanisms for intergenerational transmission of risk are still poorly understood, although altered affective cognition has been implicated. This study examines infants’ behavioral (gaze) and neural (EEG) responses to emotional faces (Happy, Sad, Fear, Anger) relative to a non-emotional Scrambled face control. Preliminary analyses on the first N=22 (out of 50) participants (mean age 6.73 months, SD 30.8 days, 12 M/10 F) revealed longer looking duration to Fearful relative to other faces (p=.0016). Further, significant group differences between infants of mothers with ‘No-depression/anxiety’ (CON) versus ‘Mild-depression/anxiety’ (DEP/ANX) were found. Controlling for baseline differences in individual gaze, infants in the DEP group showed an overall shorter looking than CON infants (p<.001). Pairwise-comparisons indicated significantly shorter looking at Sad faces (p=.0096). Cluster-based permutation analyses on the EEG response to Fearful faces identified an effect of maternal depression (p<0.05), corresponding to differences in the observed data ~300ms at 4-8Hz for the PO7 channel and ~250ms at 24-32Hz for the CP2 channel. To further investigate the neural mechanisms underlying infants’ behaviors, ERP and FAA analyses are currently underway. This study builds on prior research on the intergenerational transmission of mood disorders, suggesting a role for altered neural and attentional processing of emotional stimuli from 6 months of age.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Development & aging