Introduction: "Baby Blues" refers to a period of depression experienced by about 70% of women as their child is born one week after childbirth, manifested as crying, tiredness, and anxiety. Most women have no obvious signs or disappear quickly, but about 13% of women develop postpartum depression , which has become a public health problem that cannot be ignored. However, studies have shown that is just a subclinical level of depression, such as "Baby Blues", and can also affect early language development in infants.
Ten months of pregnancy is undoubtedly a huge challenge for women. However, "full term unloading" does not mean that the success is complete. The people's attention to "confinement" since ancient times also shows the importance of postpartum recuperation for pregnant women to both mother and baby. As the concept of postpartum recovery gradually penetrates into the public's psychology, problems such as postpartum urine leakage, postpartum depression, , etc. have become no longer ashamed to speak up.
There is no doubt that as the main caregiver of the baby, the recovery of the physical and mental state of a mother will not only affect her long-term health, but will also have a profound impact on the baby's growth and development. Past clinical studies on postpartum depression have shown that mothers' depression will have negative effects on children's cognitive development, social and emotional development, and language development. However, compared with postpartum depression with obvious depression symptoms or typical depression attacks, or "Baby Blues", which can be classified as its prodromal symptoms, not only affects a wider range of postpartum depression, nearly three-quarters of women will experience this emotional stage after childbirth, and are also more likely to be despised.
Although, except in a few cases, it will unfortunately develop postpartum depression, "Baby Blues" usually does not last too long and will improve on its own within about two weeks. But for newborn babies, the language basis will be established within the first few weeks, is this subclinical and universal "Baby Blues" still harmless? A research team from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science in Leipzig, Germany conducted a study on the association between mother's postpartum emotion and infant speech perception response. On September 21, 2022, the research results were published on JAMA Network Open (Figure 1) [1] under the title "Association of Postpartum Maternal Mood With Infant Speech Perception at 2 and 6.5 Months of Age". The results show that "Baby Blues" will also affect the development of babies themselves and their language abilities.
Figure 1 Research results (Photo source: [1])
Considering the characteristics of newborn babies, EEG measurement is the most convenient way to study the speech perception of infants. Mismatch negativity (MMN) or Mismatch response (MMR) is an event-related potential wave component in EEG signals, which can reflect the brain's perception of accidental changes under repeated auditory stimuli. , but unlike adults, which mainly manifests as negative waveforms, in the first year of life, it is usually observed that the mismatch reaction gradually changes from the positive waveform component of the "naive state" to the negative waveform component closer to the "maturity state". Past research has shown that the delay in the positive and negative transition of in infants is related to the risk of language disorders in the future, so the mismatch response is very suitable for studying the trajectory of early infant language development.
This cohort study recruited 46 mothers with German as the only language and 2-month-old babies at the beginning of the experiment, and 36 of them were followed up when the baby was 6.5 months old. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) was used to evaluate the emotional level of mothers at 2 months postpartum to exclude mothers who have (or have) clinically high levels of depression, and the scope of the study was limited to the subclinical level.
For infants' speech perception electrophysiological evaluation, the study applied the multi-character paradigm of semi-synthetic syllables, that is, using the standard syllable stimulation of syllables /ba/ (presentation probability 50%) as the basis, and different variant syllable stimulations were obtained by changing in different dimensions: syllables /ga/ (consonant changes), syllables /bu/ (vulsion changes), syllables /ba+/ (reducing 16Hz pitch over standard syllables), syllables /ba:/ (vulsions extend 100 milliseconds from standard syllables pronunciation).
Figure 2 Miscopic responses to speech perception in infants (Figure source: [1])
For the electrophysiological data obtained, three-factorial repeated-measures analysis of covariance was performed on infants of two age groups (2 months and 6.5 months) for the electrophysiological data obtained, syllable stimulation (standard syllables and four variants of syllables), time window and EEG measurement area. Subsequently, the statistically significant mismatch response effects found therein were moderated analysis to evaluate the relationship between postpartum maternal emotions and longitudinal changes in speech perception in infants between 2 and 6.5 months.
statistical results show that:
■ After controlling for other factors related to mother's emotions, no mother's EPDS score was found to be significantly correlated with the socio-economic background or the number of children in the family;
■ 2-month-old infants and 6.5-month-old infants had significant three-way interactions;
■ regulation analysis showed that the total variance of mismatch responses with only pitch changes in the four syllable variants can be significantly explained, but the intercept is not significant, indicating that the mismatch response develops from a positive waveform to a negative waveform between 2 and 6.5 months;
■ regulation analysis shows that the total variance of mismatch responses with only pitch changes in the four syllable variants can be significantly explained, but the intercept is not significant, indicating that between 2 and 6.5 months, the mismatch response develops from a positive waveform to a negative waveform;
■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ The more depressed the mother's emotions, the more likely the normal development of the mismatch reaction is to stagnate or even reverse changes (becoming more "naive") at the baby's 6.5 months old, and this association becomes significant when the mother's EPDS score is equal to or above 8.57 (Figure 3).
Figure 3 The development of mismatch response in infants at 2 to 6.5 months is linearly related to maternal emotions (Figure source: [1])
Although the mechanism behind it is unknown, this study clearly points out the relationship between subclinical level of depression emotional exposure and infant language perception maturity, especially in distinguishing syllable pitch. A mismatch reaction can reflect a person's ability to separate voices from each other. If the development of a mismatch reaction is delayed, it indicates that the risk of language disorders may increase in future life. Gesa, the first author of the study, said that this may be due to the fact that mothers with depression communicate with the baby using language with less tone changes, resulting in limited perceptions of different pitches in children. This perception is considered a prerequisite for further language development.
"To ensure the normal development of young children, even mothers who are mildly depressed but do not need treatment need to receive appropriate support." Schaadt said, but this does not necessarily have to be an organized intervention, "Sometimes it just requires more involvement from the father."
Written by | Feng Lixiao
Typeset | Qiao Weijun
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References:
[1]Schaadt G, Zsido RG, Villringer A, et al. Association of Postpartum Maternal Mood With Infant Speech Perception at 2 and 6.5 Months of Age. JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(9):e2232672. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.32672
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