Mother-newborn EEG connectivity during affectionate touch and impact of hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy

Mothers are the first, natural communication partners of their newborn babies, who are born wired for social connection. One of the main ways that mothers and their newborn babies communicate is through affectionate physical touch—skin-to-skin care and gentle stroking—which is crucial for the mother-infant relationship and for infant neurodevelopment across the lifespan. Very little is known, however, about how mothers’ and newborn babies’ brains respond to and engage during different modes of affectionate touch in healthy or vulnerable populations. I designed the Brain Activation in Mother and BabY (BAMBY) study to assess mothers’ and babies’ neural responses to affectionate touch in the days after birth. I recruited and studied 37 mother-newborn dyads, recording hyperscanning electroencephalography across social (mother and baby skin-to-skin) and nonsocial (mother and baby separate) contexts and across socially encoded (static touch and slow stroking) and non-socially encoded (fast stroking) touch types. I present the first evidence of event-related desynchronisation and of increased functional connectivity in the human newborn brain in social compared to nonsocial contexts and during socially compared to non-socially encoded touch types, and I show that these responses are sleep state-dependent. Mothers’ brains also showed neonatal state-matching, where mother functional connectivity was adjusted to newborns’ sleep states. Additionally, I present the first evidence of a mother-newborn inter- brain neural network measurable just after birth that is responsive to these social and touch cues and dependent on the baby’s sleep state. Finally, I present preliminary evidence that neural connectivity may be associated with cortisol changes during skin-to-skin care and with newborn neurophysiological responses. Hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE), a brain injury caused by lack of oxygen and blood flow to the brain, disrupts early neurodevelopment. I conducted a systematic review of HIE outcomes, and I found that HIE newborns are at increased risk of disrupted socioemotional, behavioural, and psychological development—the foundation of which is laid at the start of life. I piloted the BAMBY study in a cohort of four HIE mother-newborn dyads and present preliminary evidence of enhanced functional neural connectivity during gentle, slow stroking maternal touch. Together, these findings highlight the rich complexity of mother-newborn interaction at the neural level across salient neonatal cues, demonstrate the importance and efficacy of characterising these dynamics following HIE, and provide support for maternal touch interventions in healthy and HIE populations.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Kromm, Grace

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Austin, Topun

• affectionate touch
• electroencephalography
• hyperscanning
• hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy
• mother-infant interaction
• neonatal period
• neural connectivity
• neural synchrony
• newborn brain
• newborn sleep

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/ec48789e-e173-43fb-b622-24afac84a100/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.110229

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/370894