The mother’s attunement to her infant’s emotional needs influences her use of touching behaviors during mother–infant interactions. Moreover, maternal touch appears to modulate infants’ physiological responses to affective touch. However, little is known about the impact of maternal sensitivity on infants’ touch processing at a brain level. This study explored the association between maternal sensitivity when infants (N = 24) were 7 months old and their patterns of cortical activation to touch at 12 months. Brain activation was measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Changes in oxy-hemoglobin (HbO2) and deoxy-hemoglobin (HHb) concentrations were measured in the left somatosensory cortex and right temporal cortex while infants received two types of tactile stimulation—affective and discriminative touch. Results showed that a lower maternal sensitivity was associated with a higher HbO2 response for discriminative touch over the temporal region. Additionally, infants of less sensitive mothers tended to present a higher response in HbO2 for affective touch over the somatosensory region. These findings suggest that less sensitive interactions might result in a lower exposure to maternal touch, which can be further related to infants’ neural processing of touch.

中文翻译：

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母亲对触摸的敏感性和婴儿神经反应：一项 fNIRS 研究

母亲对婴儿情感需求的协调会影响她在母婴互动中使用触摸行为。此外，母亲的触摸似乎可以调节婴儿对情感触摸的生理反应。然而，人们对母亲的敏感性对婴儿大脑层面的触觉处理的影响知之甚少。这项研究探讨了婴儿 (N = 24) 7 个月大时母亲的敏感性与其 12 个月大时皮质激活触摸模式之间的关联。使用功能性近红外光谱测量大脑激活。当婴儿接受两种类型的触觉刺激——情感触摸和辨别触摸时，测量了左侧体感皮层和右侧颞叶皮层的氧合血红蛋白（HbO2）和脱氧血红蛋白（HHb）浓度的变化。结果表明，母亲敏感性较低与颞区辨别性触摸的较高 HbO2 反应相关。此外，敏感度较低的母亲所生的婴儿往往对体感区域的情感触摸表现出较高的 HbO2 反应。这些发现表明，不太敏感的互动可能会导致较少接触母亲的触摸，这可能与婴儿对触摸的神经处理进一步相关。