The study, conducted by graduate student Alice Graham with her advisors Phil Fisher and Jennifer Pfeifer of the University of Oregon, found that infants respond to angry tone of voice, even when they\u2019re asleep<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Babies\u2019 brains are highly plastic, allowing them to develop in response to the environments and encounters they experience. But this plasticity comes with a certain degree of vulnerability \u2014 research has shown that severe stress, such as maltreatment or institutionalization, can have a significant, negative impact on child development<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Graham and colleagues wondered what the impact of more moderate stressors might be.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were interested in whether a common source of early stress in children\u2019s lives \u2014 conflict between parents \u2014 is associated with how infants\u2019 brains function<\/strong>,\u201d says Graham.<\/p>\n Graham and colleagues decided to take advantage of recent developments in fMRI scanning with infants to answer this question.<\/p>\n Twenty infants, ranging in age from 6 to 12 months, came into the lab at their regular bedtime. While they were asleep in the scanner, the infants were presented with nonsense sentences spoken in very angry, mildly angry, happy, and neutral tones of voice by a male adult<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cEven during sleep, infants showed distinct patterns of brain activity depending on the emotional tone of voice we presented,\u201d says Graham.<\/p>\n The researchers found that infants from high conflict homes showed greater reactivity to very angry tone of voice in brain areas linked to stress and emotion regulation<\/strong>, such as the anterior cingulate cortex, caudate, thalamus, and hypothalamus.<\/p>\n Previous research with animals has shown that these brain areas play an important role in the impact of early life stress on development<\/strong> \u2014 the results of this new study suggest that the same might be true for human infants.<\/p>\n According to Graham and colleagues, these findings show that babies are not oblivious to their parents\u2019 conflicts<\/strong>, and exposure to these conflicts may influence the way babies\u2019 brains process emotion and stress.<\/p>\n Support for this work was provided by the Center for Drug Abuse Prevention in the Child Welfare System (1-P30-DA023920); the Early Experience, Stress, and Neurobehavioral Development Center (1-P50-MH078105); a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (F31-10667639); and the Lewis Center for NeuroImaging at the University of Oregon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Association for Psychological Science press release: Being exposed to arguments between parents is associated with the way babies\u2019 brains process emotional tone of voice, according to a new… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,6,9],"tags":[78,42,13,162,160,74,12,62],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11744"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11797,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11744\/revisions\/11797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"dad](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/dad_with_baby.jpg\")
<\/a>Being exposed to arguments between parents is associated with the way babies\u2019 brains process emotional tone of voice<\/strong>, according to a new study to be published in Psychological Science<\/em>, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.<\/p>\n