Mothers,
put down your smart phones when caring for your babies! That's the message from
University of California, Irvine researchers, who have found that fragmented
and chaotic maternal care can disrupt proper brain development, which can lead
to emotional disorders later in life.
While
the study was conducted with rodents, its findings imply that when mothers are
nurturing their infants, numerous everyday interruptions -- even those as
seemingly harmless as phone calls and text messages -- can have a long-lasting
impact.
Dr.
Tallie Z. Baram and her colleagues at UCI's Conte Center on Brain Programming
in Adolescent Vulnerabilities show that consistent rhythms and patterns of
maternal care seem to be crucially important for the developing brain, which
needs predictable and continuous stimuli to ensure the growth of robust neuron
networks. Study results appear today in Translational
Psychiatry.
The
UCI researchers discovered that erratic maternal care of infants can increase
the likelihood of risky behaviors, drug seeking and depression in adolescence
and adult life. Because cell phones have become so ubiquitous and users have
become so accustomed to frequently checking and utilizing them, the findings of
this study are highly relevant to today's mothers and babies ... and tomorrow's
adolescents and adults.
"It
is known that vulnerability to emotional disorders, such as depression, derives
from interactions between our genes and the environment, especially during sensitive
developmental periods," said Baram, the Danette "Dee Dee"
Shepard Chair in Neurological Studies.
"Our
work builds on many studies showing that maternal care is important for future
emotional health. Importantly, it shows that it is not how much maternal care
that influences adolescent behavior but the avoidance of fragmented and
unpredictable care that is crucial. We might wish to turn off the mobile phone
when caring for baby and be predictable and consistent."
The
UCI team -- which included Hal Stern, the Ted & Janice Smith Family
Foundation Dean of Information & Computer Sciences -- studied the emotional
outcomes of adolescent rats reared in either calm or chaotic environments and
used mathematical approaches to analyze the mothers' nurturing behaviors.
Despite
the fact that quantity and typical qualities of maternal care were
indistinguishable in the two environments, the patterns and rhythms of care
differed drastically, which strongly influenced how the rodent pups developed.
Specifically, in one environment, the mothers displayed "chopped up"
and unpredictable behaviors.
During
adolescence, their offspring exhibited little interest in sweet foods or peer
play, two independent measures of the ability to experience pleasure. Known as
anhedonia, the inability to feel happy is often a harbinger of later
depression. In humans, it may also drive adolescents to seek pleasure from more
extreme stimulation, such as risky driving, alcohol or drugs.
Why
might disjointed maternal care generate this problem with the pleasure system?
Baram said that the brain's dopamine-receptor pleasure circuits are not mature
in newborns and infants and that these circuits are stimulated by predictable
sequences of events, which seem to be critical for their maturation. If infants
are not sufficiently exposed to such reliable patterns, their pleasure systems
do not mature properly, provoking anhedonia.
With
her UCI team, Baram is currently studying human mothers and their infants.
Video analysis of care, sophisticated imaging technology to measure brain
development, and psychological and cognitive testing are being employed to more
fully understand this issue. The goal is to see whether what was discovered in
rodents applies to people. If so, then strategies to limit chopped-up and
unpredictable patterns of maternal care might prove helpful in preventing
emotional problems in teenagers.
Article courtesy of
science daily
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