CEHP Seminar - Prof. Ruth Feldman

Title: Synchrony-Enhancing Intervention for Postpartum Depression Impacts Brain and Behaviour and Reduces Clinical Symptoms

Abstract:

Postpartum depression has become a global pandemic, impacting 15-18% of women in industrial societies. Postpartum depression carries long-term negative consequences for children’s mental health, sociality, and brain development and adults reared by depressed mothers are prone to loneliness, dysfunctional oxytocin and immune response, and disruptions to the brain basis of attachment. After presenting our longitudinal study on children of postnatally-depressed mothers from birth to adulthood, I introduce the In-Synch intervention. It is an eight-week, video-feedback dyadic intervention that helps mothers build synchrony through a behavior-based approach along pre-determined session topics. I will show the effects of the intervention on maternal and child social behavior and synchrony, oxytocin, and two-brain communication and its usefulness in alleviating the mother’s depressive symptoms. I end by discussing our current effort to use AI tools to pinpoint the relational disruption in postpartum depression.

Ruth Feldman, PhD is the Simms-Mann professor and director of Center of Developmental, Social, and Relationship Neuroscience at Reichman University, Israel, with joint appointments at Yale Child Study Center and University College London. Her empirical research and theoretical models focus on the neurobiology of attachments, biobehavioral synchrony, and the biology of resilience. Her studies on oxytocin, the maternal and paternal brain, kangaroo care, and inter-brain synchrony are widely publicized and impact social policy. In several birth-to-adulthood studies she mapped the effects of premature birth, maternal depression, and chronic trauma on brain and behavior. Her studies and conceptual models have been translated to interventions and her observational tools for assessing social interactions are used in 34 countries. Dr. Feldman was named highly-cited researcher, Leader in Psychology and Neuroscience, and World Expert in parenting research, and received the Graven’s Award, the Society of Reproductive and Infant Psychology Award, and the EMET prize, Israel’s highest prize in arts and sciences.