The impact of depression on mothers' neural processing of their adolescents' affective behavior

Abstract

Depression affects neural processing of emotional stimuli and could, therefore, impact parent-child interactions. However, the neural processes with which mothers with depression process their adolescents' affective interpersonal signals and how this relates to mothers' parenting behavior are poorly understood. Mothers with and without depression (N = 64 and N = 51, respectively; Mage = 40 years) from low-income families completed an interaction task with their adolescents (Mage = 12.8 years), which was coded for both individuals' aggressive, dysphoric, positive and neutral affective behavior. While undergoing fMRI, mothers viewed video clips from this task of affective behavior from their o..