Parent-child synchrony and psychopathology

I like to present studies that utilize technology not available to the average clinician. Su et al. (2024) published “Atypical Child–Parent Neural Synchrony is Linked to Negative Family Emotional Climate and Children’s Psychopathological Symptoms” in American Psychologist. Here are the edited abstract and impact statements:

Family emotional climate is fundamental to children’s well-being and mental health. Family environments filled with negative emotions may lead to increased psychopathological symptoms in the child through dysfunctional child–parent interactions. Single-brain paradigms have uncovered changes in brain systems and networks related to negative family environments, but how the neurobiological reciprocity between child and parent brains is associated with children’s psychopathological symptoms remains unknown. Here, we first investigated the relation between family emotional climate and children’s psychopathological symptoms in 395 child–parent dyads. Using a naturalistic movie-watching functional magnetic resonance imaging technique in a subsample of 50 child–parent dyads, we further investigated the neurobiological underpinnings of how family emotional climates are associated with children’s psychopathological symptoms through child–parent neural synchrony. Children from negative family emotional climate experienced significantly more severe psychopathological symptoms. In comparison to child–stranger dyads, child–parent dyads exhibited higher intersubject correlations in the dorsal and ventral portions of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and greater concordance of activity with widespread regions critical for socioemotional skills. Critically, negative family emotional climate was associated with decreased intersubject functional correlation between the ventral-mPFC and the hippocampus during movie watching in child–parent dyads, which further accounted for higher children’s internalizing symptoms. Together, our findings provide insights into the neurobiological mechanisms that negative family environments can cause and maintain psychopathological symptoms in children through atypical child–parent neural synchrony. This has important implications for a better understanding of how child–parent connections may mediate the relation between environmental risks and developmental outcomes. 

Our study provides a neurobiological account of how negative family emotional climate influences children’s internalizing symptoms through atypical brain-to-brain concordance in child–parent dyads. This work can inform dyad-based prevention and intervention strategies to improve children’s psychological well-being.

I like fMRI studies as evidence of what’s going on in the brain. I thought this study was important in contrasting child-stranger and child-parent neural synchrony. It may be important that negative family emotional climate is associated with decreased intersubject functional correlation between ventral-mPFC and the hippocampus which relates to internalizing symptoms.