# A Randomized Controlled Trial to Improve Mother-Infant Synchrony Among Women with Childhood Adversity

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA · 2020 · $464,719

## Abstract

Childhood adversity (e.g., abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction), is a common experience significantly
contributing to the leading causes of death and increased US economic health burdens. Childhood adversity
causes long-term alterations on the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems well into adulthood, including
dampening of the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT). A healthy OXT system facilitates responsive social engagement
and promotes maternal-infant (M-I) synchrony (reciprocal gaze, affect speech, and touch). Optimal M-I
synchrony fuels early brain development and prevents low empathy, disruptive behavior, poor social adaptation,
cognitive deficits, and psychopathology in children. We posit that mothers with childhood adversity will have
more difficulty with M-I synchrony, due in part to a dampened OXT system, and will benefit from interventions
that improve responsive, nurturing, engagement by epigenetic regulation of the OXT system. Most interventions
are costly, complex, and time-consuming. We aim to fill this gap by testing whether a simple early behavioral
intervention (ATVV) will improve OXT system function and M-I synchrony in mothers with childhood adversity.
The ATVV (Auditory, Tactile, Visual, Vestibular) is a 15-minute behavioral intervention consisting of infant-
directed speech, moderate touch massage, eye to eye gaze, and horizontal rocking. We extend the known
success of ATVV with preterm infants to full-term infants. We will compare M-I synchrony at 3 postnatal months
in 250 first-time mothers (and their full-term infants) randomized to apply ATVV daily from birth to 3 months (n =
125) or receive infant care education in an attention control group (n = 125). We apply a rigorous measure of
M-I synchrony that micro-codes video-recorded M-I behavior quantifying shared gaze, affect, speech, and touch.
Coding requires only 3-minutes of interaction and is valid when infants can reliably interact starting by 3 months
of age. We will also assess ATVV's effect on maternal and infant peripheral OXT level, a known biomarker of
M-I synchrony. OXT levels relate to quality of M-I synchrony, yet we extend this knowledge to identify an
epigenetic role of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR). We will analyze maternal plasma for OXTR methylation,
OXTR gene expression, OXTR protein, and oxytocin peptide in late pregnancy, and at 1, 2, and 3 postnatal
months (along with infant saliva OXT). In summary, aims are to 1) determine effects of daily ATVV, compared
with an attention control group, from birth to 3 postnatal months on behavioral and physiologic measures of M-I
synchrony in mothers with childhood adversity, and 2) for the first time identify molecular mechanisms in the
OXT system underlying M-I synchrony in maternal plasma. Regression based methods (including covariates)
will assess ATVV effects on M-I synchrony and OXT measures, and identify relations among M-I synchrony and
oxytocin measures. Clustering methods will be used to discover molecul...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10200225
- **Project number:** 7R01NR018828-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
- **Principal Investigator:** ALEECA F BELL
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $464,719
- **Award type:** 7
- **Project period:** 2020-03-30 → 2024-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10200225

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10200225, A Randomized Controlled Trial to Improve Mother-Infant Synchrony Among Women with Childhood Adversity (7R01NR018828-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10200225. Licensed CC0.

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