Psychiatry - August 2008 - (Page 34)

FIGURE 3. Baby stimuli are internalized and activate motivation and neurohormonal circuits that drive corticolimbic modules: (i) reflexive caring circuits from animal models of parenting of chiefly subcortical location, (ii) cognitive systems including mirroring and mentalization, and (iii) emotion and alarm systems from limbic circuits to cortical areas that regulate habitual behaviors. Figure adapted from Swain JE, Lorberbaum JF. Imaging the human parental brain. In: Bridges R (ed). Neurobiology of the Parental Brain. Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 2008:83–100. of the baby’s mind to predict needs and plan behavior.50–53 Finally, other alarm/emotion-preoccupation anxiety systems might be activated to increase arousal and regulate parental worries and habitual responses in coordination with memory systems. These emotional circuits might include the ventral tegmental area, striatum, amygdala, insula, cingulate cortex, and OFC.5,41 Thus, reflexive, cognitive, and emotional modules would interact with each other in the experience of parental love and attachment formation, and work together to generate coordinated hormonal, autonomic, and behavioral output required for parenting (via motor cortex and hypothalamus. The output would also feed back to sensory systems during dynamic interactions with the infant2 to generate new input. 34 Psychiatry 2008 [ A U G U S T ] Each of these corticolimbic modules requires investigation with specific experiments. Thus, it appears that some fundamental aspects of an “own” babyresponse system begin to emerge in the first few weeks postpartum and include the anterior cingulate, amygdala, basal ganglia, parahippocampal areas, and frontal areas. This is under study in our lab in groups of first time and veteran parents of both genders. Combinations of well-controlled stimuli and sensitive psychometric data promise to clarify the specific importance of these brain circuits in mediating normal parental behavior, and promise to allow us to develop meaningful endophenotypes for improved early detection and treatment of peripartum mental health problems, such as postpartum depression and anxiety. Understanding the brain basis of risks and resilience to these postpartum conditions is of great importance because they can have profound effects on the quality of parent-infant interactions and longterm health of the infant.54,55 REFERENCES 1. Winnicott DW. The theory of the parent-infant relationship. Int J Psychoanal. 1960;41:585–595. Benoit D, Parker KC, Zeanah CH. Mothers’ representations of their infants assessed prenatally: stability and association with infants’ attachment classifications. J Child Psychol Psychiatry.1997;38(3):307–313. Zeanah CH, Scheeringa M, Boris N. Parenting styles and risks in the vulnerable infant. Curr Opin 2. 3.

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Psychiatry - August 2008

Psychiatry - August 2008 Editor’s Message Editorial Advisory Board Contents Borderline Personality Disorder: Are Proliferative Symptoms Characteristic? Short-acting versus Long-acting Medications for the Treatment of ADHD Baby Stimuli and the Parent Brain: Functional Neuroimaging of the Neural Substrates of Parent-Infant Attachment These Boots Are Made for Stalking: Characteristics of Female Stalkers Managing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in the Emergency Department Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Hypoxia, and Metabolic Syndrome in Psychiatric and Nonpsychiatric Settings Improving the Quality of Life in Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease The Process of Getting New Drugs to Market Journal Watch Classified Advertising Information for Authors

Psychiatry - August 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.