A recent study in Boston points to one chemical that plays an important role in the development of the healthy mother-child bond. The study was conducted by Shir Atzil and Lisa Feldman Barrett and her colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital. It was published in the journal PNAS of the National Academy of Sciences
The bond between the mother and her baby has been shown to have many positive health effects, especially for the child's development, but there are many unknown factors about the process.
A recent study in Boston points to one chemical that plays an important role in the development of the healthy mother-child bond.
The study was conducted by Shir Atzil and Lisa Feldman Barrett and her colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital. It was published in the journal PNAS of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dopamine is by far the most familiar chemical in the brain. It causes feelings of pleasure, motivation, and many other feelings. Previous studies in rodents have suggested that dopamine plays a role in the maternal bond, but the researchers wanted to better understand the relationship in humans, a study that has not been done before, the study authors note.
Nineteen mothers and their children aged 4-24 months participated in the study. During home visits, members of the research team collected video recordings of the mothers and their children. After that, the mothers underwent brain imaging with a special device that combines in one scan PET imaging that measures the chemical reaction of dopamine in the mother's brain, and an fMRI scan that can measure activity in brain networks in the mother's brain.
During the scans, the mothers watched a video showing their baby and a video showing an unfamiliar baby, in random order. The scans revealed that mothers secrete dopamine in response to their baby in different brain areas, in a way that is related to the mother's behavior.
"The more the mother's behavior is synchronized and coordinated with the baby's needs, the stronger the dopamine response to the baby in the mother's brain. Mothers who reacted less adaptively to their babies also secreted less dopamine when watching videos of their babies. This provides us with clues about the role of dopamine in mother-child bonding and social motivation, and what goes wrong in situations of postpartum pathology, such as postpartum depression, for example," said the leader of the study, Dr. Shir Atzil.
In an interview with the Hidaan website, Dr. Atzil, who in the meantime has returned to Israel and is opening her own laboratory in the Department of Psychology at the Hebrew University, explains: "Before we showed the mothers films of their babies, we examined the interaction of the mother and the baby together and then we used the behavior as a predictor (predictor) for the mother's brain function, that is, we linked the behavior The mother of brain function.
To this end, we used a device that combines both PET and MRI built by our research partner at the Boston hospital, and allowed us to test the function of the brain network associated with socialization, and at the same time also monitor the secretion of dopamine within the network and in the brain in general.
Why exactly these two indicators - it has been shown in the past that this network is related to how many friends and family members you have. We had the hypothesis that this network is specifically related to maternal bonding and with regard to dopamine there is evidence from animals that dopamine is involved in maternal bonding but it has never been shown in humans.
This means that if we want to characterize the maternal brain or the brain basis of the maternal attachment, little research has been done in humans and even this little has been done using FMRI and this is the first time that we add the chemical component in the brain that is critical to the functioning of the brain. The brain works through chemical transmission and this is the first time we show the involvement of dopamine in the context of complex social behavior.
What happens during postpartum depression?
It is known that in postpartum depression the synchronization between the mother and the baby is damaged. Our study, which shows the involvement of dopamine in ophimal and syncolic bonding between mother and baby, raises the possibility that dopamine is involved in pathological bonding processes and this is of course a hypothesis, an empirical question that needs to be tested.
Where this behavior is impaired, dopamine may also be involved.
The areas where we saw the dopamine are the reward areas, this strengthens the connection, at least the apparent validity between friendship problems and other motivational processes such as reactivity to food, drugs, gambling and money, some of which did show the involvement of dopamine. It may be that social motivation and reinforcement use the same brain infrastructure as reinforcement from food, drugs and money.
I did the work for a post doctor in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital. In the summer I am opening a laboratory in the Department of Psychology at the Hebrew University. Investigates the brain basis of attachment and love processes.
