Maladaptive mother-child interactions in mothers with remitted major depression are associated with blunted amygdala responses to child affective facial expressions.

Background: Maternal depression is associated with difficulties in understanding and adequately responding to children's emotional signals. Consequently, the interaction between mother and child is often disturbed. However, little is known about the neural correlates of these parenting difficulties.

Relationship between Borderline Personality Disorder, Emotional Availability, and Cortisol Output in Mother-Child Dyads.

Background: Mothers with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often show altered emotional availability toward their own child and heightened stress vulnerability. The aims of the present study were (1) to examine total cortisol output in saliva during mother-child interaction in mothers with BPD and their children and (2) to test whether maternal nonhostility as a subscale of emotional availability mediates the relationship between maternal BPD and child total cortisol output.

Methods: We investigated 16 mothers with BPD and 30 healthy control mothers (HC) and 29 children of mothers with BPD and 33 children of HC mothers.

Dissociating maternal responses to sad and happy facial expressions of their own child: An fMRI study.

Background: Maternal sensitive behavior depends on recognizing one's own child's affective states. The present study investigated distinct and overlapping neural responses of mothers to sad and happy facial expressions of their own child (in comparison to facial expressions of an unfamiliar child).

Methods: We used functional MRI to measure dissociable and overlapping activation patterns in 27 healthy mothers in response to happy, neutral and sad facial expressions of their own school-aged child and a gender- and age-matched unfamiliar child.