Recent Scientific Reports The study identified the presence of shared neural imprints between parents and their children when listening to stories.
Study: Parent-child pairs show common neural imprints while listening to stories. Image credit: Evgeny Atamanenko/Shutterstock.com
Record
The parent or caregiver is the most important person for a child. Parent-child interaction plays an important role in the child’s well-being, especially in the child’s cognitive development.
Behavioral and neuroimaging studies have shown that parent-child interactions help shape the child’s executive function system along with their limbic ability.
In addition, the emotional regulation of the parents determines the emotional characteristics of the child, which are related to his nervous systems.
A previous neurobiological model of parent-child interaction showed that a parent coordinates the child’s brain activity toward the execution of high-level cognitive and social processes.
Hyperscanning methods have been developed to better understand the neurobiological determinants of parent-child interaction.
These methods help synchronize the brain activity of a parent-child pair during their interaction, allowing researchers to better understand shared neurobiological activity.
Overscan data of parent-child pairs showed more emotional synchrony. For example, comparable resting-state neural connectivity profiles were observed between them while watching an emotional film.
In another study, scanner images showed similar neural activity between mothers and teenagers, that is, when the mothers saw their teenagers perform a difficult task.
In addition to overscanning methods, the Connectome-based Prediction Model (CPM) is another approach designed to understand within-group variability in the brain-behavior relationship.
This method can reliably predict a child’s cognitive abilities. A limited number of studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of the connectome (FC) footprint approach in differentiating individuals based on brain connectivity patterns.
About the study
This study hypothesized that biological parent-child pairs exhibit similar and unique patterns of functional connectivity, particularly those associated with affective and executive function systems.
Therefore, brain connectivity profiles obtained in a story-listening task could be used to identify parent-child pairs.
A diffusion map (DM) framework, which is a non-linear dimensionality reduction technique, was used to generate significant functional connectivity similarities between a parent and their child.
A total of thirteen Hebrew-speaking children, between the ages of 8 and 12, were recruited along with one of their biological parents.
The mean age of the parents was 42.4 years. All parent-child pairs recruited were Caucasian and from a relatively well-off socioeconomic background.
None of the participants had a history of neurological or developmental disorders. They underwent two separate computed neuroimaging scans with a maximum interval of one month between the two scans.
It should be noted that the participants were asked to listen to stories played during the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In addition, behavioral assessments were conducted in both sessions.
Study findings
Functional MRI data indicated the presence of shared neural determinants between parent-child biological dyads.
Importantly, similar intrabrain connectivity profiles were recorded during story listening that could be used to identify biological parent-child pairs.
Consistent with the results of previous studies, the current study showed increased brain-to-brain synchronization between individuals with similar characteristics.
This study also reflected the existence of similarities in brain activation during listening to stories among socially connected people. The highest number of parent-child FC similarities was observed in the DMN-frontoparietal (FP) node.
Previous studies have shown that the gestalt cortex is related to the creation of subjective perspectives. Brain similarities in FC could be due to shared perceptions that are evident through the interpretation of stories.
In a positive neuronal imprint, the highest involvement of the salient memory and cerebellum-cerebellum nodes was observed. This finding suggests that biological parents and children use similar cognitive and sensory brain networks that support cognitive monitoring and processing when listening to stories.
This study argued that, during listening comprehension, the parental cerebellum plays a key role in regulating the child’s language processing.
Furthermore, similar neural engagements occur between parent-child pairs when retrieving information from memory to support comprehension of stories.
This study used two Cognitive-Based Integrative (CBI) submodels, which showed that biological parent–child pairs share FC similarities and differences.
These could be used as an fMRI-based neural footprint. Future studies should focus on the extent of genetic and environmental factors that influence link similarity.
conclusions
The current study highlighted the presence of distinct functional correlates related to both cognitive and sensory networks that are shared between biological parent–child pairs during story listening.
He also documented evidence implicating the use of neural fingerprinting to identify biological parent-child relationships.
