Attachment Figure's Regulation of Infant Brain and Behavior

Abstract

Altricial infants (i.e., requiring parental care for survival), such as humans and rats, form an attachment to their caregiver and receive the nurturing and protections needed for survival. Learning has a strong role in attachment, as is illustrated by strong attachment formed to non-biological caregivers of either sex. Here we summarize and integrate results from animal and human infant attachment research that highlights the important role of social buffering (social presence) of the stress response by the attachment figure and its effect on infant processing of threat and fear through modulation of the amygdala.Indeed, this work suggests the caregiver switches off amygdala function in rodents, although recent human research suggests a similar process in humans and nonhuman primates. This cross-species analysis helps provide insight and unique understanding of attachment and its role in the neurobiology of infant behavior within attachment.Keywords: attachment, mother-infant dyad, locus coeruleus, norepinephrine, amygdala, stress, learning, mother, infant People rely on emotional attachment to others for well-being and continue to form these important bonds throughout life. One of the most important bonds is that which is formed between a child and caregiver that channels the infant brain to develop and modify cognitive and emotional functioning. Here we focus on the infant within the infant-caregiver dyad and consider how animal models provide insight into the influence of the attachment figure on infant neurobehavioral function.While Freud highlighted the importance of the child's first social relationship (Freud, 1975(Freud, , 1976, it was not until the 1950s that our current 476 SULLIVAN view of attachment was established by the psychiatrist John Bowlby using attachment theory (Bowlby, 1958(Bowlby, , 1965(Bowlby, , 1969(Bowlby, , 1982. Bowlby's paradigm-shifting theoretical approach was a synthesis of Bowlby's Freudian psychoanalyst training, clinical observations of disturbed children, and emerging animal research on a young chick "imprinting" or bonding to parents. Overall, this perspective described a biological system for an infant's attachment to the caregiver and its importance for mental health, which was phylogenetically preserved and present across altricial species (i.e., those who require parental care for survival). Bowlby's clinical observations involved a group of maladjusted children, noting that their common early life history of being deprived of their mothers or other primary caregivers. This viewpoint was also evident in the work of Rene Spitz and James Robertson, which also showed the detrimental effects of separating the child from the primary caregiver during hospitalization or orphanage placement and the resultant extreme emotional distress. Bowlby's integration of the current animal research was also critically important to his formation of attachment theory. Indeed, Bowlby interacted with animal researchers who were attempting to better understand the infant-caregiver rel...

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