• Mothers who deliver their babies naturally are more responsive to their cries than those who deliver by C-section, finds a study in the October Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (Vol. 49, No. 10). Yale Child Study Center psychiatrist James Swain, MD, PhD, compared fMRI brain scans from mothers two to three weeks after giving birth. He found that when they heard their children's cries, those who delivered vaginally showed greater activity in brain regions that regulate emotion and empathy and contribute to habitual thoughts and behaviors. With the number of C-sections performed hitting record highs, these findings may shed new light on parent-infant attachment and risks for postpartum depression, Swain says.
• A three-year National Science Foundation study at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee shows that confidence about performance in science and math is more important for young girls than having an early interest in these subjects. "Interest in science or math plays a role," says Nadya Fouad, PhD, a UWM educational psychology professor and co-investigator of the study, but early confidence-building experiences, guided by parents and teachers, are particularly influential on science and math interest in younger girls.
• Research by Columbia University neuroscientists finds that people who are most successful in warding off negative emotions activate brain pathways from the prefrontal cortex to the nucleus accumbens more than those who are unsuccessful at stopping negative emotions. In an article in the journal Neuron (Vol. 59, No. 6), researchers gathered MRI data as participants viewed a series of aversive photos, such as a mutilated human hand and a malnourished child. Their research sheds light on the basic brain mechanisms involved in reducing or enhancing negative emotions, and may eventually provide a greater understanding of such psychiatric disorders as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, they say.
• Teens who experience insomnia are more than twice as likely to develop depression in early adulthood than adolescents without sleep problems, finds a study in the October issue of Sleep (Vol. 31, No. 10). Researchers also found that insomnia predicted higher levels of alcohol, marijuana and cocaine use among teens.
• Engaged women—but not men—with divorced parents report less commitment to and confidence in their own marriages, compared with children of non-divorced parents, finds a study in the October Journal of Family Psychology (Vol. 22, No. 5). This may be because women are typically more relationship-oriented than men and, as a result, are more affected by their parents' marital dissolution, researchers suggest.
• Two-year-olds with autism look less at people's eyes and more at their mouths, and the degree of eye-looking predicts the severity of a child's social disability, finds a Yale School of Medicine study in the Archives of General Psychiatry (Vol. 65, No. 8). Researchers used eye-tracking technology to monitor how 2-year-olds look at the faces of caregivers playing children's games such as peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake. They found that the less toddlers focused on their caregivers' eyes, the more severely disabled they were. Lead author, neuroscience graduate student Warren Jones, says the findings may aid in the detection of autism in infancy.
—A. Novotney
