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Substance Addiction Changes Mother’s Response to Infant
Summary: Substance addiction modifies they way a mother’s brain responds to her own child, a new study reports. Researchers found key reward regions of the brain appear to shut down in response to their own infant’s smiles in mothers with addictions.
Source: Baylor College of Medicine.
Maternal addiction and its effects on children is a major public health problem, often leading to high rates of child abuse, neglect and foster care placement. In a study published today in the journal Human Brain Mapping, researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Iowa found that a mother’s brain response to her own infant is modified in the presence of substance addiction.
“Unlike many mothers who find engaging with their infants to be a uniquely rewarding and gratifying experience, mothers with addictions, even when they are not actively using substances, may be less able to respond appropriately to their infants’ cues, finding them less intrinsically rewarding and more stress-provoking,” said Dr. Sohye Kim, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor and lead author of the study.
In this study, 36 mothers were recruited from an inpatient treatment facility for substance use disorders, and their infants were videotaped five months after delivery. Mothers underwent functional MRI (fMRI) scanning six months after delivery, while viewing happy and sad face images of their own infant.
Typically, seeing the smiling faces of their own infant is rewarding to mothers. This reward experience is what underlies and promotes the mother-infant attachment, which essentially motivates the mother to continue to care for the infant even when being a mother is extremely exhausting, Kim said.
Previous studies have shown that mothers without addictions illustrate strong activations in the dopamine-associated brain reward regions when seeing their infants’ happy faces. However, researchers discovered that mothers with addictions showed a striking pattern of decreased activation in these same brain regions when viewing happy face images of their own infant.
“Our results are particularly noteworthy in two respects: first, they were specific to cues from the mothers’ own infants and not unknown infants; and second, they were in response to what could arguably be considered the most rewarding cues from infants – their smiling faces. This is powerful because the smiling cue is probably the most rewarding cue one can get from one’s own infant, yet the key reward regions appear to be shut down in response to these cues in mothers with addictions,” Kim said.
The findings of this study suggest a neurobiological explanation of why mothers with addictions may find it difficult to comply with the demands of caring for their infants.
“The transition to motherhood is inherently stressful. It is the enhanced perceived reward value of infant cues, coupled with the sense of reward and pleasure experienced by the mother, that often help to sustain a mother’s attention and responsiveness to her infant during a critical developmental period,” Kim said. “When the functions of the dopamine- and oxytocin-associated maternal circuitry go awry, as our study has suggested here in the case of substance addictions, mothers may be compromised in their abilities to care for their infants, and the risk for abuse and neglect may rise.”
When mothers are involved in substance addiction, the repercussions extend to their children. Understanding the neurobiological relationship between substance addictions and impaired maternal responses may facilitate earlier and more refined interventions to help support mothers with substance addictions and the infants in their care, she said.
ABOUT THIS NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH ARTICLE
This is the first human study examining how the mother’s brain response to her own infant is modified in the presence of substance addiction. Other researchers involved in this investigation include Lane Strathearn from the University of Iowa, who was the senior author of the study, Udita Iyengar from King’s College in London, and Linda C. Mayes, Marc N. Potenza and Helen J. V. Rutherford all from Yale University.
Funding: This study was funded by the NIDA, R01 DA026437, R01 DA06025, and R01 DA02446.
Source: Jeannette Jimenez – Baylor College of Medicine
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Original Research: Abstract for “Mothers with substance addictions show reduced reward responses when viewing their own infant’s face” by Sohye Kim, Udita Iyengar, Linda C. Mayes, Marc N. Potenza, Helena J. V. Rutherford, and Lane Strathearn in Human Brain Mapping. Published online July 26 2017 doi:10.1002/hbm.23731
Baylor College of Medicine “Substance Addiction Changes Mother’s Response to Infant.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 27 July 2017.
<http://neurosciencenews.com/addiction-mother-child-response-7188/>.
<http://neurosciencenews.com/addiction-mother-child-response-7188/>.
Abstract
Mothers with substance addictions show reduced reward responses when viewing their own infant’s face
Maternal addiction constitutes a major public health problem affecting children, with high rates of abuse, neglect, and foster care placement. However, little is known about the ways in which substance addiction alters brain function related to maternal behavior. Prior studies have shown that infant face cues activate similar dopamine-associated brain reward regions to substances of abuse.
Here, we report on a functional MRI study documenting that mothers with addictions demonstrate reduced activation of reward regions when shown reward-related cues of their own infants. Thirty-six mothers receiving inpatient treatment for substance addiction were scanned at 6 months postpartum, while viewing happy and sad face images of their own infant compared to those of a matched unknown infant.
When viewing happy face images of their own infant, mothers with addictions showed a striking pattern of decreased activation in dopamine- and oxytocin-innervated brain regions, including the hypothalamus, ventral striatum, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex—regions in which increased activation has previously been observed in mothers without addictions.
Our results are the first to demonstrate that mothers with addictions show reduced activation in key reward regions of the brain in response to their own infant’s face cues.
“Mothers with substance addictions show reduced reward responses when viewing their own infant’s face” by Sohye Kim, Udita Iyengar, Linda C. Mayes, Marc N. Potenza, Helena J. V. Rutherford, and Lane Strathearn in Human Brain Mapping. Published online July 26 2017 doi:10.1002/hbm.23731
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Muscling in on Development
By Dr Francis Collins
Twice a week, I do an hour of weight training to maintain muscle strength and tone. Millions of Americans do the same, and there’s always a lot of attention paid to those upper arm muscles—the biceps and triceps. Less appreciated is another arm muscle that pumps right along during workouts: the brachialis. This muscle—located under the biceps—helps your elbow flex when you are doing all kinds of things, whether curling a 50-pound barbell or just grabbing a bag of groceries or your luggage out of the car.
Now, scientific studies of the triceps and brachialis are providing important clues about how the body’s 40 different types of limb muscles assume their distinct identities during development [1]. In these images from the NIH-supported lab of Gabrielle Kardon at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, you see the developing forelimb of a healthy mouse strain (top) compared to that of a mutant mouse strain with a stiff, abnormal gait (bottom).
In each strain, you see the lateral triceps and brachialis muscles (purple), other types of muscle (red) and tendons (green). However, in the healthy mouse, the lateral triceps and brachialis muscles are distinct, which gives the forelimb its flexibility; while in the mutant mouse, the two muscles are fused and indistinct, limiting the forelimb’s function.
The mice with the abnormal lateral triceps and brachialis have a mutation in a gene called Tbx3, which codes for a transcription factor that switches other genes off and on. If you follow this blog, you know that a lot of exciting research is currently focused on transcription factors, including how precise combinations of transcription factors can turn skin cells into blood stem cells or be used to make neurons.
The work of Kardon and her colleagues suggest that transcription factors might also play a key role in the development of specific types of muscle cells. That could be a major lead in efforts to regenerate muscle after injury, and treat or prevent inherited diseases involving limb muscles.
In fact, the Tbx3 gene is already known to be mutated in humans with a rare condition called ulnar-mammary syndrome (UMS). People with UMS are born with various developmental anomalies, most notably, a range of serious limb abnormalities affecting the forearms. In 1999, Michael Bamshad, a researcher now at the University of Washington, Seattle, published a paper that characterized the physical effects of Tbx3 mutations, including a description of skeletal abnormalities in the arms of a male born with UMS [2].
At Kardon’s urging, Bamshad contacted this UMS patient, who agreed to visit NIH’s Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD, for additional tests with Carsten Bönnemann of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Because of anatomical differences between mice and humans, Bönnemann and his colleagues didn’t think the patient would have malformed muscles. However, the patient was found to be missing the lateral triceps in his right arm. The finding serves as an excellent example of mouse genetics informing studies of human disease and development.
Interestingly, Kardon and colleagues group found Tbx3 isn’t switched on within the muscle cells themselves. The crucial signal, instead, appears to be sent out during an early stage of human development, with Tbx3 being expressed in the connective tissue surrounding the lateral triceps and brachialis muscles. This finding suggests that connective tissue may play a vital role by laying down a scaffold that specifies muscle patterns within the human body.
By the way, there’s one more NIH connection to this work. Kardon’s team produced this image, featured in the University of Utah’s 2016 Research as Art competition, using a free software program, called FluoRender, that was developed by another NIH-supported team at the University of Utah. FluoRender enables researchers to take a series of 2D photos from a scanning confocal microscope and turn them into amazingly informative 3D imagery.