Parenting Stress Undermines Mother-Child Brain-to-Brain Synchrony: A Hyperscanning Study

Abstract

Synchrony refers to the coordinated interplay of behavioural and physiological signals that reflect the bi-directional attunement of one partner to the other’s psychophysiological, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral state. In mother-child relationships, a synchronous pattern of interaction indicates parental sensitivity. Parenting stress has been shown to undermine mother-child behavioural synchrony. However, it has yet to be discerned whether parenting stress affects brain-to-brain synchrony during everyday joint activities. Here, we show that greater parenting stress is associated with less brain-to-brain synchrony in the medial left cluster of the prefrontal cortex when mother and child engage in a typical dyadic task of watching animation videos together. This brain region overlaps with the inferior frontal gyrus, the frontal eye field, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which are implicated in inference of mental states and social cognition. Our result demonstrates the adverse effect of parenting stress on mother-child attunement that is evident at a brain-to-brain level. Mother-child brain-to-brain asynchrony may underlie the robust association between parenting stress and poor dyadic co-regulation. We anticipate our study to form the foundation for future investigations into mechanisms by which parenting stress impairs the mother-child relationship.

Strangers, Friends, and Lovers Show Different Physiological Synchrony in Different Emotional States

“…The function of physiological synchrony in positive as opposed to negative emotional states remains uncertain. There is naivete in the assumption that synchrony is only commonly associated with positive emotional states [11,[15][16][17][18] as numerous contradictory findings challenge the generality of this principle [19][20][21][22]. For instance, events that precipitate negative emotional states, such as couple conflict, have been found to synchronize HRV and to elevate inflammatory compounds [19].…”

Maternal Anxious Attachment Style is Associated with Reduced Mother-Child Brain-to-Brain Synchrony During Passive TV Viewing

“…Normalised distance indexes were used so that the indexes ranged from 0 to 1. We used DTW analysis previously (Azhari et al, 2019), and it has also been used widely in the extant literature (Tuzcu & Nas, 2005;Rath & Manmatha, 2003;Myers & Rabiner, 1981;Rabiner et al, 1978)…”

“…Consequently, our first hypothesis is that dyads with anxiously attached mothers exhibit reduced brain-to-brain synchrony as mothers face greater difficulty matching to their child's emotional state. Our second hypothesis is that, similar to Azhari et al (2019), reduced synchrony would be observed in the medial left cluster. This cluster falls within the lateral PFC, an area which underlies cognitive mentalisation processes that is postulated to be more effortful for anxiously attached mothers (Fonagy & Luyten, 2009;Lieberman, 2007).…”

“…The present study extends (Azhari et al, 2019) and aims to investigate the influence of maternal attachment style on mother-child brainto-brain synchrony. Because brain-to-brain synchrony is believed to reflect matching mental states between members of the dyad (Azhari et al, 2019;Feldman, 2012), there is reason to believe that mother-child brain-to-brain synchrony might vary as a function of maternal attachment style. According to a model by Fonagy & Luyten, (2009), mentalisation can be distinguished into two processes that are adopted differentially based on adult attachment style: one is emotional and the other is cognitive mentalisation.…”

“…To compute hemoglobin levels for each channel, preprocessed signals were converted to changes in concentration of oxygenated (HbO) and deoxygenated hemoglobin (HbR) as a function of the modified Beer-Lambert law. The resulting haemodynamic signals were examined by two independent coders to inspect for any further artifacts.Cluster Grouping of ChannelsAs proximal regions of the PFC function in an interdependent manner, examining prefrontal responses in clusters rather than single channels lends a practical interpretation of the findings.Similar toAzhari et al (2019), the channels were divided into four groups based on their physical proximity to each other to form the frontal left, frontal right, medial left, and medial right clusters as reported inTable 2. The corresponding Brodmann areas for each cluster are depicted inFigure 3.…”