Search

Social feedback, such as praise or critique, profoundly impacts our mood and social interactions. It is unknown, however, how parents experience praise and critique about their child and whether their mood and neural responses to such 'vicarious' social feedback are modulated by parents' perceptions of their child. Parents (n  = 60) received positive, intermediate and negative feedback words (i.e. personality characteristics) about their adolescent child during a magnetic resonance imaging scan. After each word, parents indicated their mood. After positive feedback their mood improved and activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus increased. Negative feedback worsened parents' mood, especially when perceived as inapplicable to their child, and increased activity in anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus. Parents who generally viewed their child more positively showed amplified mood responses to both positive and negative feedback and increased activity in dorsal striatum, inferior frontal gyrus and insula in response to negative feedback. These findings suggest that vicarious feedback has similar effects and engages similar brain regions as observed during feedback about the self and illustrates this is dependent on parents' beliefs of their child's qualities and flaws. Potential implications for parent–child dynamics and children's own self-views are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maternal antenatal depression strongly influences child mental health but with considerable inter-individual variation that is, in part, linked to genotype. The challenge is to effectively capture the genotypic influence. We outline a novel approach to describe genomic susceptibility to maternal antenatal depression focusing on child emotional/behavioral difficulties. Two cohorts provided measures of maternal depression, child genetic variation, and child mental health symptoms. We constructed a conventional polygenic risk score (PRS) for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (PRSADHD) that significantly moderated the association between maternal antenatal depression and internalizing problems at 60 months (p = 2.94 × 10−4, R2 =.18). We then constructed an interaction PRS (xPRS) based on a subset of those single nucleotide polymorphisms from the PRSADHD that most accounted for the moderation of the association between maternal antenatal depression and child outcome. The interaction between maternal antenatal depression and this xPRS accounted for a larger proportion of the variance in child emotional/behavioral problems than models based on any PRSADHD (p = 5.50 × 10−9, R2 =.27), with similar findings in the replication cohort. The xPRS was significantly enriched for genes involved in neuronal development and synaptic function. Our study illustrates a novel approach to the study of genotypic moderation on the impact of maternal antenatal depression on child mental health and highlights the utility of the xPRS approach. These findings advance our understanding of individual differences in the developmental origins of mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child-driven genetic factors can contribute to negative parenting and may increase the risk of being maltreated. Experiencing childhood maltreatment may be partly heritable, but results of twin studies are mixed. In the current study, we used a cross-sectional extended family design to estimate genetic and environmental effects on experiencing child maltreatment. The sample consisted of 395 individuals (225 women; M age = 38.85 years, rangeage = 7–88 years) from 63 families with two or three participating generations. Participants were oversampled for experienced maltreatment. Self-reported experienced child maltreatment was measured using a questionnaire assessing physical and emotional abuse, and physical and emotional neglect. All maltreatment phenotypes were partly heritable with percentages for h 2 ranging from 30% (SE = 13%) for neglect to 62% (SE = 19%) for severe physical abuse. Common environmental effects (c 2) explained a statistically significant proportion of variance for all phenotypes except for the experience of severe physical abuse (c 2 = 9%, SE = 13%, p =.26). The genetic correlation between abuse and neglect was ρg =.73 (p =.02). Common environmental variance increased as socioeconomic status (SES) decreased (p =.05), but additive genetic and unique environmental variances were constant across different levels of SES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child maltreatment has been associated with various cumulative risk factors. However, little is known about the extent to which genetic and environmental factors contribute to individual differences between parents in perpetrating child maltreatment. To estimate the relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to perpetrating maltreatment we used a parent-based extended family design. Child-reported perpetrated maltreatment was available for 556 parents (283 women) from 63 families. To explore reporter effects (i.e., child perspective on maltreatment), child reports were compared to multi-informant reports. Based on polygenic model analyses, most of the variance related to the perpetration of physical abuse and emotional neglect was explained by common environmental factors (physical abuse: c 2 = 59%, SE = 12%, p =.006; emotional neglect: c 2 = 47%, SE = 8%, p <.001) whereas genetic factors did not significantly contribute to the model. For perpetrated emotional abuse, in contrast, genetic factors did significantly contribute to perpetrated emotional abuse (h 2 = 33%, SE = 8%, p <.001), whereas common environment factors did not. Multi-informant reports led to similar estimates of genetic and common environmental effects on all measures except for emotional abuse, where a multi-informant approach yielded higher estimates of the common environmental effects. Overall, estimates of unique environment, including measurement error, were lower using multi-informant reports. In conclusion, our findings suggest that genetic pathways play a significant role in perpetrating emotional abuse, while physical abuse and emotional neglect are transmitted primarily through common environmental factors. These findings imply that interventions may need to target different mechanisms dependings on maltreatment type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rejection by parents is an important aspect of child maltreatment. Altered neural responses to social rejection have been observed in maltreated individuals. The current study is the first to examine the impact of experienced and perpetrated abuse and neglect on neural responses to social exclusion by strangers versus family using a multigenerational family design, including 144 participants. The role of neural reactivity to social exclusion in the intergenerational transmission of maltreatment was also examined. Exclusion by strangers was especially associated with increased activation in the left insula, while exclusion by a family member was mainly associated with increased activation in the ACC. Neural reactivity to social exclusion by strangers in the insula, ACC and dmPFC, was associated with experienced maltreatment but not with perpetrated maltreatment. In abusive parents, altered neural reactivity during exclusion was found in other brain areas, indicating different neural correlates of experienced and perpetrated maltreatment. Hence, no mechanisms could be identified that are involved in the transmission of maltreatment. Hypersensitivity to social rejection by strangers in neglected individuals underscores the importance to distinguish between effects of abuse and neglect and suggests that the impact of experiencing rejection and maltreatment by your own parents extends beyond the family context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In adults, cortisol levels show a pronounced 24-hour rhythm with a peak in the early morning. It is unknown at what age this early-morning peak in cortisol emerges during infancy, hampering the establishment of optimal dosing regimens for hydrocortisone replacement therapy in infants with an inborn form of adrenal insufficiency. Therefore, we aimed to characterize daily variation in salivary cortisol concentration across the first year of life., Methods: We conducted a systematic review followed by an individual participant data meta-analysis of studies reporting on spontaneous (i.e., not stress induced) salivary cortisol concentrations in healthy infants aged 0-1 year. A one-stage approach using linear mixed-effects modelling was used to determine the interaction between age and time of day on cortisol concentrations., Findings: Through the systematic review, 54 eligible publications were identified, reporting on 29,177 cortisol observations. Individual participant data were obtained from 15 study cohorts, combining 17,079 cortisol measurements from 1,904 infants. The morning/evening cortisol ratio increased significantly from 1.7 (95% CI: 1.3-2.1) at birth to 3.7 (95% CI: 3.0-4.5) at 6-9 months (p < 0.0001). Cosinor analysis using all available data revealed the gradual emergence of a 24-hour rhythm during infancy., Interpretation: The early-morning peak in cortisol secretion gradually emerges from birth onwards to form a stable morning/evening ratio from age 6-9 months. This might have implications for hydrocortisone replacement therapy in infants with an inborn form of adrenal insufficiency., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Endocrine Society.)

Objective: Schematic self-knowledge consists of internal representations that shape perceptions of how the self is related to one's surroundings and other people. These representations may include dysfunctional implicit self-evaluations, such as associations of the self with negative attributes like shame, in trauma-spectrum disorders. The current study examines whether a negative relational self-association, that is, linking the self with rejection, characterizes dissociation., Method: One hundred six community participants with diverse early interpersonal experiences and mental health outcomes were recruited. Implicit relational self-evaluation was assessed by single-target implicit association tests. Dissociation and common psychopathological and psychosocial correlates such as anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and adverse interpersonal experiences were measured using standardized scales., Results: Individuals with more dissociative symptoms responded faster when pairing self-pronouns with rejection-related words than with acceptance-related words. The correlation between dissociation and this self-rejection association remained significant when statistically controlling for adverse interpersonal experiences and for depression, anxiety, and self-esteem., Conclusion: A self-association with being rejected characterized individuals prone to dissociation. This dysfunctional implicit self-evaluation may bias perceptions of other people's attitudes toward themselves, prompting maladaptive social behaviors that can hinder the development and maintenance of relationships in dissociative people. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).