early childhood development

Infants on the brain: U of T study explores the origins of mothers' bonds with their babies

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 19:14:34 +0000

Infants on the brain: U of T study explores the origins of mothers' bonds with their babies

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 12/04/2018 - 14:14

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The study by David Haley, an associate professor of psychology at U of T Scarborough, is among the first to look at whether functional changes in mothers’ brains during and after pregnancy are related to mother-infant bonding (photo by Don Campbell)

Don Campbell

Topic

Global Lens

early childhood development

Psychology

Research & Innovation

University of Toronto Scarborough

A new University of Toronto study has found mothers who show increased interest in infants while pregnant report stronger bonds with their babies after birth.

The study by David Haley, an associate professor of psychology at U of T Scarborough, is among the first to look at whether functional changes in mothers’ brains during and after pregnancy are related to mother-infant bonding, which is considered important for childhood development.

By contrast, past research – which also suggests the transition to motherhood triggers structural changes in the brain – has tended to focus on the postpartum period.

“Our findings support the idea that, over the course of pregnancy and early motherhood, the responses in the brain to infant facial cues actually change,” says Haley, who is also director of the Parent-Infant Research Lab.

“We found that some mothers showed more marked changes than others, and this variation is associated with reports of the strength of their emotional bonds with their babies.”

The study involved 39 pregnant women, ages 22 to 39, from various ethnic and educational backgrounds. Each of the women visited the lab twice – once in their third trimester and again three to five months after giving birth. During the visits, the women took part in a face-processing task where they were shown images of sad and happy infant and adult faces while their brain activity was measured using electroencephalography.

When responding to infant facial cues, the researchers observed increases in electrical activity in the part of the brain responsible for attention processes that occur within a fraction of a second.

“This goes to show that mothers are increasing their cortical receptivity, but what’s fascinating is that this increase seems to predict behavioural receptivity to their infants,” Haley says.

One surprising finding from the study is that a significant change in receptivity to infant facial cues was seen only among some mothers between pregnancy and the postnatal period.

“That was unexpected,” says Joanna Dudek, who earned her PhD in Haley’s lab and co-authored the research.

“It suggests the transition from pregnancy to motherhood is not a period of universal adaptive change in receptivity to infant facial cues.”

The mothers in the study were all shown unfamiliar infant faces, so Dudek says it’s unclear whether mothers who did not show a change in receptivity would do so if they were shown their own infants' faces after giving birth.

Haley says understanding how emotional and cognitive networks in the brain contribute to mother-infant bonding is an important area of study.

“There’s been a lot of research on the importance of forming close mother-infant bonds, but little is known about how this bond may start developing in the first place,” he says.

Why some mothers experience a change in receptivity and others don’t remains an open question. Haley says the mental and physiological health of the mother could play a role, pointing to recent research that shows stress can dampen and inhibit the neural responses to infant facial cues.

Unpacking why this happens is an important next step for the research, along with measuring whether there’s a change in mothers’ neural receptivity to infant facial cues beginning earlier in pregnancy.

There’s also good news for mothers who don’t show an increase in receptivity to infant facial cues. Past research has shown training can have an impact.

“There are studies showing that mothers can do it with infant stimuli, so it’s possible that mothers could learn to increase their attention bias towards their infant,” Haley says.

He adds that a topic for future research is whether attention increases gained through training can predict maternal bonding.

The study, which received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, is published in the journal, Child Development.

Why free preschool makes the most sense for families

ullahnor — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 16:08:37 +0000

Why free preschool makes the most sense for families ullahnor Fri, 04/27/2018 - 12:08

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Making preschool free will dramatically improve affordability for families across Ontario, Canada, and lead to a predicted increase of 40,000 parents in full-time employment (Shutterstock)

Gordon Cleveland

Topic

City & Culture

early childhood development

Economics

Faculty of Arts & Science

The Conversation

Subheadline

The Conversation with Gordon Cleveland

The Ontario Liberals recently announced a plan to offer free child care for preschoolers – from the age of 2.5 years until they start kindergarten – to every family that wants it by 2020.

Premier Kathleen Wynne also announced Thursday funding for new licensed child-care spaces in community locations – such as community centres, places of worship and Indigenous friendship centres – in support of this goal.

Many people find this approach surprising because child care for infants and toddlers is much more expensive than care for preschoolers. They question how tackling preschool spaces first makes sense as the best way to improve child-care affordability.

Indeed, Ontario’s NDP has vowed they will “do better” and make child care affordable and accessible to children of all ages, all at once.

I am an economist at the University of Toronto who has researched child-care policy for the last 30 years. As the main author of a new study, Affordable For All: Making Licensed Child Care Affordable in Ontario, which was commissioned by the government of Ontario, let me try to explain why free preschool really does make the most economic and social sense.

A burden on mothers

Child care is very expensive across Canada. A typical Ontario family could expect to pay at least $15,000 annually for an infant’s care, $13,000 for a toddler and $10,000 for a preschooler. If the family lives in Toronto or some other cities, fees can be considerably higher.

Our study, which the Ontario Liberals’ plan is based upon, found that more than 80 per cent of Ontario families with children of up to four years of age cannot afford the cost of licensed child care.

Many of those who can currently afford it are lower-income families lucky enough to obtain scarce subsidized spots.

On average, Ontario families spend over 23 per cent of their after-tax household income on licensed child-care services. On average, it amounts to 67 per cent of a mother’s take-home pay.

This is enough of a barrier to keep many mothers out of the labour force, and to compel others to cobble together part-time work or self-employment with unpaid care arrangements.

In other words, the child-care affordability crisis puts a real burden on families, especially on mothers.

Helping more families

Since nearly all families cannot afford child care, the solutions need to be comprehensive, not targeted.

It’s not enough to provide assistance only to low-income families; Ontario already has a child-care subsidy system that does that, and it only helps a small minority of families.

If the government puts money into preschool child care, it improves affordability for a very large number of Ontario families.

There are more than 100,000 Ontario children currently using preschool child care. There are another 60,000 to 100,000 likely to use it when it is made free. Licensed child care is very well accepted as positive for children and families once children reach 2.5 or three years of age. And far fewer families use infant or toddler care.

So if you want to make child care affordable for the maximum number of Ontario families, starting with children at preschool age is the way to go.

Think of it as moving the child-care affordability finish line. Right now, a child has to reach kindergarten before the crushing affordability burden diminishes. Making preschool child care free moves the finish line back to 2.5 years. For every child in Ontario.

Avoiding Quebec’s mistakes

Another key factor stems from the experience in Quebec. Quebec started its child-care reforms in the 1990s with great plans to build a high-quality system, with most children using high-quality community-based child-care centres called CPEs (Centres de la petite enfance) at $5 per day.

But the province made the mistake of offering these widely affordable child-care services before they had capacity to serve the explosion of demand.

The Quebec government then had to allow lower-quality, for-profit child-care centres to provide many services. They also had to dramatically expand home child care, a sector that often uses caregivers with little training or supervision.

Research studies found this child care to be of relatively low quality. This created several problems for children and families. On top of all this, middle- and higher-income families got a disproportionate share of the good quality CPE places.

So child care is very affordable in Quebec, but not of great quality. And the highest quality services are not fairly distributed among income groups.

It’s crucial for Ontario to avoid these missteps.

More parents in employment

At present, Ontario has only 14,000 infant spaces, about 45,000 toddler spaces and 110,000 preschool spaces. In other words, there is only capacity for about seven per cent of Ontario’s infants and about 32 per cent of toddlers but as much as 67 per cent of preschoolers.

If infant and toddler child care were made affordable tomorrow, there would be an instant Quebec-style crisis of too much demand and too little supply.

By channelling the new funding towards preschool-age children, Ontario has a much better chance of building a well-managed, publicly funded system of child-care services.

Making preschool child care free will dramatically improve affordability for Ontario families.

It will lead to a predicted increase of 40,000 parents in full-time employment. And it will increase net tax revenues and economic well-being.

There will still be child-care affordability problems at infant and toddler ages. However, as licensed capacity is built for preschoolers, the government can require complementary increases in infant and toddler capacity. As this capacity increases, additional improvements to affordability should be made.

Gordon Cleveland is an associate professor emeritus of economics at the University of Toronto

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

U of T researchers contribute to Lancet series on early childhood development

lavende4 — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 15:14:48 +0000

U of T researchers contribute to Lancet series on early childhood development

lavende4 Wed, 10/05/2016 - 11:14

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Stephen Lye, executive director of U of T’s Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development

Liam Mitchell

Author legacy

Liam Mitchell

Topic

Global Lens

Lancet

Medicine

early childhood development

Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development

University of Toronto researchers are making a major contribution to a new series on early childhood development by The Lancet, one of the world's oldest and best known general medical journals. The massive undertaking, which includes 45 authors from 22 global institutions, includes work from five U of T researchers – the most from any single institution.

This is the third time the journal has focused on early childhood development, which Professor Stephen Lye said is the result of the rapid pace of change and discovery in the field as well as the urgent need to act on those findings. Among the findings reported in the series, it was reported that an estimated 250 million children around the world face suboptimal development due to poverty and stunting alone. When other considerations such as maternal education and household violence are considered, that number can climb even higher.

“We have a growing understanding of the importance of early childhood development and the first 1000 days of life, beginning right from the fertilization of the egg, on brain development," said Lye, who is executive director of U of T’s Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development (FMIHD). "By the age of three, 85 per cent of brain development will be complete."

When children fail to reach their full potential, the consequences can include increased chronic disease, lower educational attainment and reduced wage earnings as an adult. It’s a challenge not just for individuals, but their entire society.

“We’ve been able to recalibrate the data to get a clearer picture of those who are affected and the reasons why,” said Lye, who is also a senior investigator of the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital and a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, physiology and medicine at U of T. "What we see is that these problems are not being equitably distributed around the world. Sub-Sahara Africa and India are especially impacted."

The series also reported that a more integrated approached is needed to tackle the challenges associated with suboptimal childhood development.

“In the past, we all tended to approach the problem through our particular sector," Lye said. "The health sectors focused largely on infection. Nutritional scientists focused on nutrition. And educators focused on early childhood education. But what we’ve found is that there isn’t a medical part of the brain, or a nutrition part, or an education part. Children need a more holistic approach. And in many ways, that’s what we’re already doing at U of T through the Fraser Mustard Institute. We need to keep breaking down silos and work together to improve the state of childhood development."

The series was led by Professor Linda Richter from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and supported by a working committee that included Lye and Zulfiqar A. Bhutta, a professor in the department of nutritional science and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health as well as co-director of the Centre for Global Child Health at The Hospital for Sick Children. Stephen Matthews, director of research at the FMIHD and professor of physiology, was also a co-author.

The series was launched at a conference on Oct. 5 hosted by UNICEF, the World Bank and the World Health organization entitled “Advancing Early Childhood Development: from Science to Scale,” where Lye delivered remarks. It comes just ahead of the Human Capital Summit: Investing in the Early Years for Growth and Productivity, hosted by the World Bank on Oct. 6. That conference will bring together leaders from foundations, United Nations agencies and governments from around the world. It follows a meeting of international finance ministers, many of whom are expected to attend the conference, including Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau.

Currently one-third of countries have early childhood development policies, but while funding is increasing, the delivery and quality of programs remain in question. It’s hoped that research findings will help inform new policies and programs to deliver support.

“New science is leading to a greater recognition that we need to develop a life cycle approach to early childhood development," Lye said. "These first years are critical, but we will soon need to turn our attention to adolescent health and well-being as well as pre-conception health, as they will be the next generation of parents."

Mats Sundin Foundation to support early childhood development research

lavende4 — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 18:37:38 +0000

Mats Sundin Foundation to support early childhood development research

lavende4 Mon, 09/26/2016 - 14:37

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Mats Sundin is accelerating research into the crucial first 2000 days of life

Carolyn Morris

Author legacy

Carolyn Morris

Faculty of Medicine

Mats Sundin

early childhood development

Hockey legend Mats Sundin is accelerating research into the crucial first 2000 days of life. Through The Mats Sundin Foundation, the former Toronto Maple Leafs captain and NHL star is building on his valuable support for the Mats Sundin Fellowship — an elite research exchange between the University of Toronto and Karolinska Institutet in his native Stockholm, Sweden, launched in 2012.

“It’s an Olympic training camp for the brightest young minds,” says Sundin. Each year, two postdoctoral fellows — one in Stockholm and one in Toronto — are paired with leading scientists, scholars and clinicians from both institutions to investigate early childhood development through a two-year biomedical research placement.

The University of Toronto and Karolinska Institutet are leaders in this field — in tracing the origins of disease back to the crucial period of time from conception to age five, or the first 2000 days of life. In particular, U of T and Karolinska scientists are examining the intricate interaction between our genes and our environment within this key timeframe. Their findings will inform efforts to promote healthy pregnancy and infancy, and ultimately improve lifelong health outcomes, and prevent disease.

“The early environment of the fetus and infant can have major influences on cardiovascular, metabolic and mental health later in life,” says U of T Physiology Professor Stephen Matthews, the University of Toronto academic lead for the exchange.

The need for more research in this area is huge. Chronic diseases are on the rise, expected to cost the world $47 trillion and cause 25 million deaths a year by 2030, according to a 2011 World Economic Forum report. By examining the environmental drivers interacting with our genetic code and changing the “expression” of genes and our susceptibility to disease, we can learn to prevent these diseases early on. And by investing in a new generation of scientists, we can strengthen and accelerate this vital research.

“I am convinced that these students will grow to become international stars in these fields and pursue groundbreaking projects leading to improved health and health care,” says Karolinska Molecular Neurodevelopment Senior Scientist Ola Hermanson, the program’s academic lead in Stockholm.

The budding researchers are also learning a collaborative approach to science.

“The future of research is collaborative,” says U of T Faculty of Medicine Dean Trevor Young. “Not only have the Sundin fellows already made important findings, they are becoming immersed in this collaborative network of researchers who are working together to improve human health.”

“I feel so proud to be supporting these two incredible universities,” says Sundin. As he pointed out when first launching the fellowship: “Every player knows we have a responsibility to pass on our skills and knowledge to the next generation — that’s how the sport moves forward, and science as well.”