Postpartum maternal bonding problems relate to aberrant neural processing of infant emotions: Results of an adapted fMRI emotional GoNoGo task.

Maternal bonding refers to the unique emotional connection between a mother and her baby that gradually develops during the peripartum period. However, 3-24% of women report bonding problems (BP), often accompanied by constraints for the mother-infant relationship, but not always depression, with consequences for child development. Our present study investigates the neural and behavioral patterns that underlie the processing of emotional infant stimuli at 3 months postpartum, with an additional exploratory perspective over the 1st year postpartum parallel to a neurofeedback intervention that took place between 3 and 6 months postpartum. Mothers with and without BP (N = 45) completed a newly developed Emotional Infant GoNoGo Task during fMRI scanning at 3, 6 and 12 months postpartum. Our results show that response inhibition towards emotional infant faces elicits stronger results than towards adult faces in all mothers, on a neural as well as on a behavioral level. The neural responses to emotional infant faces as compared to neutral faces are increased at 3 months postpartum in limbic structures such as the anterior cingulate and insula, as well as nucleus caudatus, indicating altered emotion processing in mothers with postpartum bonding problems. Explorative and preliminary analyses for 6 and 12 months postpartum found differences in neural and behavioral reactions between BP and healthy controls increase at 6 months and decrease again at 12 months, may point to an experience-based adaptive process of infant emotion processing in mothers with BP during the first year postpartum. Clinical prevention and intervention strategies for mothers with postpartum BP should therefore focus on emotion processing and regulation capacities, particularly during the first months postpartum.