BACKGROUND Maternal substance use and addiction has been associated with negative consequences for parenting and may increase addiction vulnerability in the developing child. Neuroimaging research suggests that substance use may decrease the reward of caring for infants and heighten stress reactivity to affective infant cues. METHODS Thirty-two substance-using mothers and twenty-two non-substance-using mothers were presented with emotional face and cry stimuli generated from their own and a demographically matched unknown infant during fMRI scanning. Between-group differences in neural activity during task performance were assessed using whole-brain, mixed-effects models corrected for multiple comparisons (voxel-level p < 0.001, pFWE<0.05). RESULTS Relative to non-substance-using mothers, substance-using mothers exhibited greater activation when viewing their own infant's face as compared to an unknown infant's face across multiple brain regions, including superior medial frontal, inferior parietal, and middle temporal regions. Substance-using mothers also had a decreased response to sad infant faces in the ventral striatum relative to the non-substance-using mothers. Neural responses to own vs. unknown infant cries did not significantly differ between substance-using and non-substance-using mothers. CONCLUSIONS Findings suggest overlapping cortical and subcortical brain regions implicated in responding to infant faces, with activation differences related to infant familiarity, emotional expression, and maternal substance use. While prior work has focused on attenuated neural responses to infant cues, greater attention is needed toward understanding the increased reactivity to affective infant cues observed in substance-using mothers.

中文翻译：

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与母亲物质使用相关的婴儿面孔的不同反应：一项探索性研究。


背景技术母体物质使用和成瘾与养育子女的负面后果有关，并且可能增加发育中的儿童成瘾的脆弱性。神经影像学研究表明，物质使用可能会降低照顾婴儿的回报，并增加对婴儿情感线索的压力反应。方法 在功能磁共振成像扫描期间，向 32 名使用药物的母亲和 22 名不使用药物的母亲展示由她们自己和人口统计上匹配的未知婴儿产生的情绪面孔和哭泣刺激。使用经过多重比较校正的全脑混合效应模型评估任务执行过程中神经活动的组间差异（体素水平 p < 0.001，pFWE <0.05）。结果 相对于不使用物质的母亲，使用物质的母亲在观看自己婴儿的脸部时，与观察未知婴儿的脸部相比，在多个大脑区域（包括上内侧额叶、下顶叶和中颞叶区域）表现出更大的激活。与不使用药物的母亲相比，使用药物的母亲腹侧纹状体对悲伤的婴儿面孔的反应也有所减弱。使用药物和不使用药物的母亲对自己和未知婴儿哭声的神经反应没有显着差异。结论 研究结果表明，对婴儿面孔的反应涉及皮质和皮质下大脑区域的重叠，其激活差异与婴儿熟悉程度、情绪表达和母体物质使用有关。虽然之前的工作主要集中在对婴儿线索的减弱的神经反应上，但需要更多地关注理解在使用药物的母亲中观察到的对情感婴儿线索的反应性增加。