Replication Data for: Parenting Stress Undermines Mother-Child Brain-to-Brain Synchrony: A Hyperscanning Study

Abstract

Synchrony refers to the coordinated interplay of behavioural and physiolog- ical signals that reflect the bi-directional attunement of each partner to the other’s emotional state. In mother-child relationships, a synchronous pattern of interaction indicates parental sensitivity. Parenting stress has been shown to undermine mother-child behavioural synchrony. However, it has yet to be discerned whether parenting stress affects brain-to-brain synchrony during everyday joint activities. Here, we show that greater parenting stress is as- sociated with less brain-to-brain synchrony in the medial left cluster of the prefrontal cortex when mother and child engage in a typical dyadic task of watching animation videos together. This region overlaps with the inferior frontal gyrus, the frontal eye field, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which are implicated in inference of mental states and social cognition. Our result demonstrates the adverse effect of parenting stress on mother-child emotional attunement to each other that is evident at a brain-to-brain level. Mother-child brain-to-brain asynchrony may underlie the robust association between parenting stress and poor dyadic co-regulation. We anticipate our study to form the foundation for future investigation into the mechanism by which parenting stress impairs the mother-child relationship.