Stressed-out parenting brain: Effects of parenting stress, depression and anxiety on caregivers' brain structure and...

Parenting stress (PS) arises when child-rearing becomes a stressor. Since the brain directs adaptation to stressors, we explored how the parenting brain adapts to PS in relation to depression and anxiety.

This study involved 167 primary caregivers (all mothers; mean [SD] age = 40.76 [3.09] years old) who completed the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) and Beck Depression/Anxiety Inventory (BDI/BAI) and underwent 3 T MR scanning. Structural and resting-state functional data were preprocessed using FreeSurfer and CONN. We conducted 1) partial correlation and multivariate linear regression analyses between psychological and brain structural measurements, and 2) seed-to-voxel analysis using left entorhinal cortex (L.ERC) as the seed. Lastly, structural equation modeling analyses were conducted to assess the statistical relationships between psychological and brain measurements.

L.ERC surface area was negatively correlated with BDI (r = -0.255, p-adjusted = 0.035). Mediation analyses indicated that PSI subscales indirectly associated with L.ERC via parent characteristic domain and BDI, while BDI was directly negatively associated with L.ERC (β = -0.32, p = 0.001). Resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) between L.ERC and a right occipital/precuneus cluster was negatively associated with BDI and PSI subscales. In the function-based model (fit: CFI = 0.993, RMSEA = 0.038), RSFCs loaded onto a latent brain function construct, and higher PS was associated with increased BDI, which in turn was associated with reduced RSFC (b = -0.36, p < 0.001).

Structural and functional aspects of the parenting brain were associated with PS, in conjunction with depression, rather than anxiety, reflecting the cumulative and enduring neurobiological effects of depression over transient effects of anxiety.