Supplemental Material
Neurosciences of Infant Mental Health Development: Recent Findings and Implications for Counseling Psychology
by A. Sampaio & K. Lifter, 2014, Journal of Counseling Psychology
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cou0000035
Summary Table: Neural Correlates of Infant Mental Health
Table S1
Infant mental health
Perception, experience, recognition of
emotion
Face specialization
Neural correlates
 2 months - distributed brain cortical activation that overlaps the adult face-processing
area (i.e., the fusiform face area and inferior occipital cortex)
 4-months - enhanced amplitude of N170 to direct gaze
Auditory specialization
 4 months - smaller P350 and increased N450 amplitudes to mother voice when
compared to unfamiliar voice
Recognize different emotional states
 4 months - increased Nc amplitude to happy expressions
 7-month-old infants:
- preferential attention to fearful expressions demonstrated by an increased Nc
amplitude
- integration of facial and vocal emotional information (ability to recognize
emotional content and affect across modalities)
Regulation of emotions
 5 months - more intense startle responses in response to angry facial emotional
expressions
 6 months - greater physiological reactivity in infants exposed to anger, in terms of
increased Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia
 7 months - angry prosody elicits a more negative ERP component than happy or
neutral prosody
 9 months - deceleration of the infant heart rate to infant-directed speech, independent
of affective content; increased EEG power in the frontal regions in response to fear, as
opposed to surprise and love/comfort
 6- to 12 month-old infants - BOLD increased activation of the rostral anterior
cingulate cortex, and subcortical regions as the caudate, thalamus and hypothalamus
when exposed to higher inter-parental conflict (very angry tone of voice)
Expression of emotions
 Newborn - lateralized brain response underlying stimulus-eliciting affective response
 10 months - greater left frontal relative activation in response to happy than sad video
stimuli, as well to mother than stranger approach
Attachment
 Birth-2 years - cortical surface expansion of the superior and medial temporal,
superior parietal, medial orbitofrontal, lateral anterior prefrontal, occipital cortices,
and postcentral gyrus that is relatively larger than other regions
 5–6 months - studies support a dynamic interplay between the maturation of the
“social brain,” involving the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala and temporal regions, and
the establishment of an attachment relationship
 8 months - increases in glucose uptake in these attachment-related brain regions,
including frontal and various association regions
Disruption of responsive caregiving
Neglect
 Studies in infants - abnormal cortisol secretion in maltreated infants
 Studies in children - children who are neglected show atypical EEG power
distribution, including lower absolute alpha power; abnormal activity in the amygdala
and hippocampus as a consequence of neglect
Maternal depression
 Infants of depressed mothers experience more negative expressions than infants of
non-depressed mothers, showing altered EEG signature, namely greater relative right
frontal activation
Multisensorial integration
Olfactory processing
 6 hr - 192 hr after birth - differential pattern of changes in blood flow over the left
orbitofrontal region when exposed to vanilla and colostrum smell; increased activation
of the orbitofrontal cortex to maternal breast milk odor when compared to formula
milk odor
Somatosensory processing
 Newborns
- Consistent neural responses (N1–P1–P2 and M60) distributed from posterior to
anterior regions, generated in the primary cortex
- fMRI evidence of an activation of the contralateral primary somatosensory
cortex to tactile stimulation
Visual processing
 Newborn - fast increase in synaptic density in the visual cortex in parallel with intense
myelination of the visual tracts
 1 month - early VEP components, such as N1, P1 and N2, play an important role in
healthy brain development, as the presence of these components are associated with
healthy visual stimuli processing
 6 months - positive P2 component that has been associated with good neural
maturation of the neonatal visual cortex
Auditory processing
 Newborns to 12 months - P150, N250, P350, and N450 peaks components were
identifiable both at birth and at 12 months
 3 months of age - increase in the positive amplitudes (the P150 and P350 peaks)
 6 months of age – increase in the N250 peak
 6 to 9 months of age – increase in the negativities (the N250 and N450)
 Between 9 and 12 months of age - ERP morphology similar to the adult: P150-N250N450 complex
Motor development
 Newborn - increased glucose metabolism in the primary sensorimotor cortex,
cingulate cortex, thalamus, brain stem, cerebellum, and hippocampal region
Language and cognitive development
 3 months - infants are able to discriminate speech presented in normal and reversed
order, exhibiting a greater functional activation of left temporal areas (similar to
adults) to speech stimuli and a right frontal activation when processing normal speech
 5 months - neural precursors (e.g. left dorsal prefrontal cortex) involved in joint
attention processes are already being activated
 9–10 months - neural signatures underlying infant attention allocation (increased Nc
amplitude) were evident when 9-month-old infants viewed objects after an interactive
joint attention task compared to a non-joint attention interaction