D-CARE/M-CARE: Parent–Child Interaction and Its Neurobiological Correlates

In this interdisciplinary and multimodal project on the neurobiological correlates of parent–child interaction, we are interested, among other aspects, in how parents’ mental models of their own childhood experiences (attachment representations), as well as those of their 5–6-year-old children, are related to different aspects of the parent–child relationship. The study was conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig (PI: Pascal Vrticka) in cooperation with several academic departments. It provided the opportunity, across two consecutive studies with a total of 140 parent–child dyads, to combine traditional, well-established attachment measures (interviews, story-completion tasks) with neuroscientific methods.

A central focus was the investigation of synchrony between both interaction partners as a dyadic measure—at the behavioural level as well as in terms of activity in frontal and temporal brain regions (interpersonal neural synchrony, INS). This synchrony was assessed during a cooperative problem-solving task using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning. In addition, this project allowed for the examination of research questions related to parental mentalising capacity and paternal role attitudes in relation to sensitive parenting behaviour during interaction. At a further assessment point, parental brain activity—for example, in response to children’s emotional stimuli—was also measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Current findings from the collaborative projects (PI: Pascal Vrticka, Essex) are illustrated here:

Neural synchrony between parents and children

Synced brains: Why being constantly tuned in to your child’s every need isn’t always ideal

A detailed description of the CARE studies (including D-/M-CARE), the cooperating partners involved, and publications can be found here: CARE Studies

Current status: Data collection completed.

FAU project contributors: Melanie Kungl, Gottfried Spangler, Sandra Gabler

Publications to date with FAU involvement:

Nguyen, T. & Kungl, M. T., Hoehl, S., White, L. O., & Vrtička, P. (2024). Visualizing the invisible tie: Linking parent–child neural synchrony to parents’ and children’s attachment representations. Developmental Science, 27(6), e13504.

Kungl, M.T.* & Gabler, S.*, White, L.O., Vrticka, P. & Spangler, G. (2024). Precursors and effects of parental reflective functioning: Links to caregivers’ attachment representations and behavioral sensitivity. Child Psychiatry and Human Development. 1-16.

Nguyen, T., Schleihauf, H., Kungl, M.T., Kayhan, E., Hoehl, S., & Vrtička, P. (2021). Interpersonal Neural Synchrony During Father–Child Problem Solving: An fNIRS Hyperscanning Study. Child Development. 92(4), e565-e580.