Presenter: Heidi Martinez
Mentor: Heidemarie Laurent
Oral Presentation
Major: Psychology
Past research has illuminated how the functioning of the subcortical and prefrontal regions of the brain is affected by a major depressive disorder, and how this in turn affects the maternal response to infant stimuli. In past behavioral studies, mothers who had both major depression and an anxiety disorder, a prevalent comorbidity in the clinical population, showed significantly more intrusive behaviors with their infants than mothers without anxiety. The current study explores how comorbid anxiety disorders impact specific patterns of maternal response. We hypothesized a difference in neural response to infant cries in mothers who are comorbidly diagnosed in comparison with mothers who suffer from depression without anxiety and in comparison to mothers with no diagnosis. This hypothesis was tested in a group of 22 high risk mothers exposed to their own infant’s cry sound during functional neuroimaging. Group comparisons of neural response to own infant cry (vs. a control sound) were examined. Fixed effects analysis revealed greater activation in several areas, including those associated with speech-related auditory processing and empathy, for those mothers with depression and anxiety as compared to mothers with depression and no anxiety disorder. Areas of emotion regulation and motivation showed greater activation for mothers in the control group. These neural activation patterns suggest that mothers with a comorbidity could benefit from therapies targeting the need to regulate their attention; an inhibition task, as compared to mothers with depression only who need to direct their attention as well, involving both behavioral activation and inhibition systems.