Significance Childhood poverty has been linked to emotion dysregulation, which is further associated with negative physical and psychological health in adulthood. The current study provides evidence of prospective associations between childhood poverty and adult neural activity during effortful attempts to regulate negative emotion. Adults with lower family income at age 9 exhibited reduced ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity and failure to suppress amygdala activation at age 24. Chronic stressor exposure across childhood mediated the relations between family income at age 9 and prefrontal cortex activity. The concurrent adult income, on the other hand, was not associated with neural activity. The information on the developmental timing of poverty effects and neural mechanisms may inform early interventions aimed at reducing health disparities.

Brain networks that govern parental response to infant signals have been studied with imaging techniques over the last 15 years. The complex interaction of thoughts and behaviors required for sensitive parenting of offspring enable formation of each individual’s first social bonds and critically shape infants’ behavior. This review concentrates on magnetic resonance imaging experiments which directly examine the brain systems involved in parental responses to infant cues. First, we introduce themes in the literature on parental brain circuits studied to date. Next, we present a thorough chronological review of state-of-the-art fMRI studies that probe the parental brain with a range of baby audio and visual stimuli. We also highlight the putative role of oxytocin and effects of psychopathology, as well as the most recent work on the paternal brain. Taken together, a new model emerges in which we propose that cortico-limbic networks interact to support parental brain responses to infants for arousal/salience/motivation/reward, reflexive/instrumental caring, emotion response/regulation and integrative/complex cognitive processing. Maternal sensitivity and the quality of caregiving behavior are likely determined by the responsiveness of these circuits toward long-term influence of early-life experiences on offspring. The function of these circuits is modifiable by current and early-life experiences, hormonal and other factors. Known deviation from the range of normal function in these systems is particularly associated with (maternal) mental illnesses – commonly, depression and anxiety, but also schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Finally, we discuss the limits and extent to which brain imaging may broaden our understanding of the parental brain, and consider a current model and future directions that may have profound implications for intervention long term outcomes in families across risk and resilience profiles.

Although tailored health interventions can be more effective in eliciting positive behavior change then generic interventions, the underlying neural mechanisms are not yet understood. Ninety-one smokers participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session and a tailored smoking-cessation program. We found that increases in activations in self-related processing regions, particularly dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, to tailored messages predicted quitting during a 4-month follow-up.

Mothers need to make caregiving decisions to meet the needs of children, which may or may not result in positive child feedback. Variations in caregivers' emotional reactivity to unpleasant child-feedback may be partially explained by their dispositional empathy levels. Furthermore, empathic response to the child's unpleasant feedback likely helps mothers to regulate their own stress. We investigated the relationship between maternal dispositional empathy, stress reactivity, and neural correlates of child feedback to caregiving decisions. In Part 1 of the study, 33 female participants were recruited to undergo a lab-based mild stressor, the Social Evaluation Test (SET), and then in Part 2 of the study, a subset of the participants, 14 mothers, performed a Parenting Decision Making Task (PDMT) in an fMRI setting. Four dimensions of dispositional empathy based on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index were measured in all participants—Personal Distress, Empathic Concern, Perspective Taking, and Fantasy. Overall, we found that the Personal Distress and Perspective Taking were associated with greater and lesser cortisol reactivity, respectively. The four types of empathy were distinctly associated with the negative (vs. positive) child feedback activation in the brain. Personal Distress was associated with amygdala and hypothalamus activation, Empathic Concern with the left ventral striatum, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), and supplemental motor area (SMA) activation, and Fantasy with the septal area, right SMA and VLPFC activation. Interestingly, hypothalamus-septal coupling during the negative feedback condition was associated with less PDMT-related cortisol reactivity. The roles of distinct forms of dispositional empathy in neural and stress responses are discussed.

Background The neurosteroid allopregnanolone is a potent allosteric modulator of the GABA(A) receptor with anxiolytic properties. Exogenous administration of allopregnanolone reduces anxiety, and allopregnanolone blockade impairs social and affective functioning. However, the neural mechanism whereby allopregnanolone improves mood and reduces anxiety is unknown. In particular, brain imaging has not been used to link neurosteroid effects to emotion regulation neurocircuitry. Methods To investigate the brain basis of allopregnanolone’s impact on emotion regulation, participants were administered 400mg of pregnenolone (N=16) or placebo (N=15) and underwent 3T fMRI while performing the Shifted-Attention Emotion Appraisal Task (SEAT), which probes emotional processing and regulation. Results Compared to placebo, allopregnanolone was associated with reduced activity in the amygdala and insula across all conditions. During the appraisal condition, allopregnanolone increased activity in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex and enhanced connectivity between the amygdala and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, an effect that was associated with reduced self-reported anxiety. Conclusions These results demonstrate that in response to emotional stimuli, allopregnanolone reduces activity in regions associated with generation of negative emotion. Furthermore, allopregnanolone may enhance activity in regions linked to regulatory processes. Aberrant activity in these regions has been linked to anxiety psychopathology. These results thus provide initial neuroimaging evidence that allopregnanolone may be a target for pharmacological intervention in the treatment of anxiety disorders, and suggest potential future directions for research into neurosteroid effects on emotion regulation neurocircuitry.