Schedule of Events | Symposia

Maternal Postpartum Resting-state Functional Connectivity Associated with Disrupted Mother-infant Interaction

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

Yingying Ye^1,2,3 (psyyeyingying@163.com), Kyoko Ohashi^2,3, Alaptagin Khan^2,3, Michelle Bosquet Enlow^2,4, Karlen Lyons-Ruth^2,5, Martin Teicher^2,3; ¹Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China, ²Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, ³Developmental Biopsychiatry Research Program, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts, USA, ⁴Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, ⁵The Family Studies Laboratory, Cambridge Hospital, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Introduction: Multiple theories have proposed hypothetical circuits influencing maternal behavior, emphasizing connections between the prefrontal, orbitofrontal, and cingulate cortices, and subcortical regions. However, these circuits or functional connectivity have rarely been examined in humans. This is a crucial question, as it may reveal the neural mechanisms shaping maternal disrupted behavior, offering insights for the development of future interventions. Method: Mothers of newborns and their infants were recruited from the Boston area. At four months postpartum, mother-infant dyads participated in the Still-Face Paradigm. Resting-state MRI scans were obtained on 92 mothers, with high-quality resting-state scans and still-face data available for 83 mothers. Nineteen a-priori defined ROIs were selected to calculate ROI-to-ROI connectivity, and FDR correction was applied at the ROI level. Result: The results showed that maternal disrupted behavior was significantly associated with connectivity between the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG) and the insular cortex (IC; ps = 0.005~0.031), the right superior frontal gyrus (SFG; p = 0.028), right putamen (p = 0.028), as well as the left caudate (p = 0.030). Meanwhile, significant connectivity between the right putamen and both sides of the IC (ps = 0.028~0.035) was also associated with maternal disrupted behavior. Conclusion: These findings reveal that the circuit involving regions such as the anterior cingulate gyrus, insular cortex, putamen, and caudate is altered in association with maternal disrupted behavior.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Other