Late pregnancy oxytocin levels predict lower brain responses to infant cues at one-month postpartum
Poster No:
760
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Yun Xie1, Shannon Powers1, Rebekah Tribble1, Orna Zagoory2, Ruth Feldman2, Tom Yeh3, Pilyoung Kim1
Institutions:
1University of Denver, Denver, CO, 2Reichman University, Herzliya, Tel Aviv, 3University of Colorado - Boulder, Boulder, CO
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Oxytocin (OT) is widely theorized to be a hormone that is closely related to modalities of mammal affiliative behaviors (Ross & Young, 2009). The majority of studies found that OT exposure was related to more optimal affiliative behaviors including more sensitive parenting and elevated neural responses to infant cues (Levine et al., 2007; Riem et al., 2011). Another line of research indicated that OT was related to higher parenting stress and negative perinatal experiences, which were related to less sensitive parenting (Feldman et al., 2011; Prevost et al., 2014). The current study aimed to answer the question of how OT levels during late pregnancy predicted birthing parents' parenting and their neural responses to infant cry postnatally.
Methods:
61 pregnant individuals provided saliva OT samples during their late pregnancies. The samples were collected 40 minutes and 78 minutes after visit start time. Log-transformations of means of OT levels were conducted to improve normality.
After parity, birthing-parents (M±SD age=30.07±5.47 years, M±SD postpartum days=35.67±17.38) completed the infant cry task listening to different sounds in a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner. The infant cry task was consisted of 2 functional runs and 4 task conditions (own infant cry, own infant cry matched noise, control infant cry, and control infant matched noise) of 20-second stimulus blocks (Swain et al., 2008). Each run contained 5 trials per condition separated by fixations with randomized duration (M=10s, range=8-12s).
At around the same time postpartum, 10-minute videos was recorded during natural parent-infant interactions; trained researchers coded the interaction using the Emotional Availability scale (EA, Biringen, 2008). The EA scale yielded 4 adult subscales including Sensitivity, Structuring, Non-intrusiveness, and Non-hostility.
Preprocessing of functional MRI data was conducted using fMRI prep (version 22.0.02, (Esteban et al., 2019) and Analysis of Functional Neuroimages software (AFNI, version 23.0.02, (Cox, 1996). At group level, a whole-brain linear mixed effect model was conducted using 3dLME in AFNI (R. W. Cox, 1996). Between-subject log-transformed OT and within-subject variables (sound: cry vs. noise; identity: own vs. control) were entered in the model, controlling for postpartum months and sample collection time. Significant voxels within the whole brain were corrected for multiple comparisons with a cluster extended threshold of k≥16 with a height threshold of p<.001, equivalent to a whole brain corrected false positive probability of p<.05. This threshold was calculated with the 3dClustSim package with spatial autocorrelation function (ACF) option.
After parity, birthing-parents (M±SD age=30.07±5.47 years, M±SD postpartum days=35.67±17.38) completed the infant cry task listening to different sounds in a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner. The infant cry task was consisted of 2 functional runs and 4 task conditions (own infant cry, own infant cry matched noise, control infant cry, and control infant matched noise) of 20-second stimulus blocks (Swain et al., 2008). Each run contained 5 trials per condition separated by fixations with randomized duration (M=10s, range=8-12s).
At around the same time postpartum, 10-minute videos was recorded during natural parent-infant interactions; trained researchers coded the interaction using the Emotional Availability scale (EA, Biringen, 2008). The EA scale yielded 4 adult subscales including Sensitivity, Structuring, Non-intrusiveness, and Non-hostility.
Preprocessing of functional MRI data was conducted using fMRI prep (version 22.0.02, (Esteban et al., 2019) and Analysis of Functional Neuroimages software (AFNI, version 23.0.02, (Cox, 1996). At group level, a whole-brain linear mixed effect model was conducted using 3dLME in AFNI (R. W. Cox, 1996). Between-subject log-transformed OT and within-subject variables (sound: cry vs. noise; identity: own vs. control) were entered in the model, controlling for postpartum months and sample collection time. Significant voxels within the whole brain were corrected for multiple comparisons with a cluster extended threshold of k≥16 with a height threshold of p<.001, equivalent to a whole brain corrected false positive probability of p<.05. This threshold was calculated with the 3dClustSim package with spatial autocorrelation function (ACF) option.
Results:
We observed significant negative relationship between prenatal OT level and parental sensitivity controlling for sample collection time (β=-.76, p<.05). fMRI results indicated that higher prenatal OT levels were associated with dampened neural response to infant cry in the right Inferior Frontal gyrus (BA47; x,y,z=30,28,-7; k=25; r=-.32; p<.05; Figure 1) and the right Precentral gyrus (BA9; x,y,z=39, 3, 39;k=24; r=-.38; p<.01; Figure 2). However, prenatal OT was not related to postnatal brain activations to white noise.
Exploratory analysis revealed that higher brain activation to infant cry in the right Inferior Frontal Gyrus (r(59)=.35, p<.05), and the right Prefrontal Gyrus (r(59)=.32, p<.05) was related to higher parental sensitivity.
Exploratory analysis revealed that higher brain activation to infant cry in the right Inferior Frontal Gyrus (r(59)=.35, p<.05), and the right Prefrontal Gyrus (r(59)=.32, p<.05) was related to higher parental sensitivity.
·Figure 1. Right inferior frontal gyrus responses to infant cry (R IFG; BA47; x, y, z = 30, 28, -7; k=25) showing negative relationship with log-transformed OT levels (r=-.32, p<.05).
·Figure 2. Right Precentral Gyrus responses to infant cry (BA9; x, y, z = 39, 3, 39; k=24) showing negative relationship with log-transformed OT levels (r=-.32, p<.05).
Conclusions:
Our results implicated that the neural plasticity of the caregiving network during pregnancy and early postpartum was related to the function of the neuroendocrine OT system. Higher OT during late pregnancy predicted birthing-parents' dampened neural response to infant cry. These dampened responses were further related to lower parental sensitivity during a parent-infant interaction. OT might be an indicator of stress during the perinatal period in the current sample.
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotional Perception 1
Social Cognition
Lifespan Development:
Lifespan Development Other 2
Perception, Attention and Motor Behavior:
Perception: Auditory/ Vestibular
Keywords:
ADULTS
Development
Emotions
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Social Interactions
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
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