The dual nature of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis regulation in dyads of very preterm infants and their mothers

The mother-infant dyad is meant to be an open, non-linear dynamic system in which mothers and infants reciprocally regulate their states in order to adjust to challenging and stressful conditions (Provenzi et al., 2015a,b; Tronick& Beeghly, 2011). The emergence of patterns of behavioral and biological rhythms co-regulation is key to this dyadic self-regulating system (Feldman, 2006; Welch, 2016). At the behavioral level, mother-infant coordination has been widely investigated (Provenzi et al., 2018) and conceptualized as a coupling of behavioral and affective states in a given moment (e.g., dyadic matching; Weinberg et al., 2006) and as the ongoing mutual regulation of individual trajectories in time (e.g., dyadic synchrony; Feldman et al., 2011).

Source: Psychoneuroendocrinology - October 12, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Livio Provenzi, Lorenzo Giusti, Monica Fumagalli, Susanna Frigerio, Francesco Morandi, Renato Borgatti, Fabio Mosca, Rosario Montirosso Source Type: research