How do parents and infants synchronize their brains? What happens to brain-to-brain synchrony when developmental risk conditions (e.g., preterm birth) are present?

This study applies the EEG hyperscanning technique to the study of parent-infant interaction to investigate how the brain of parents and infants couple together and resonate second-by-second. By enrolling a group of preterm infants and their mothers, this study will highlight the presence of potential alterations in brain-to-brain synchrony in at-risk conditions.

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Funders: Italian Ministry of Health, Fondazione Banca del Monte di Lombardia.

Partners: IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia; Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia.

Publications

Can we support parents of children with developmental risk or disabilities by engaging them in remote video-feedback supportive interventions?

Video-feedback support for parents is effective to promote parental wellbeing, caregiving skills, and child development. Nonetheless, the resources needed for extensive video-feedback programs in hospitals or at home are huge and not all families can access this kind of support. In this project, we deliver video-feedback support to parents of children with developmental risk or disabilities online using PCs, tablets, or smartphones.

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Funder: Italian Ministry of Health

Partners: IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia

Publications

How is maternal prenatal stress experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic affecting women's wellbeing and their infants' developmental trajectories?

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A network of ten neonatologies from Northern Italy is involved in the study. We follow-up infants from birth to 12 months for emotional, social, and cognitive development outcomes. Moreover, we explore the role of epigenetic regulation of specific stress-related target genes in mediating the relationship between maternal stress and infants' outcomes with a longitudinal perspective.

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Funders: Italian Ministry of Health, Fondazione Roche Italia.

Partners: IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia; ten neonatology units in Northern Italy.

Publications

Is caregivers' mask-wearing really affecting the ability of young children to elaborate and process emotional signals in daily life interactions? 

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There is a general concern about the short- and long-term effects of mask-wearing by adults who take care of young infants and children. We know that face processing is key to emotional elaboration and regulation. Nonetheless, we don't know if hiding details behind the mask is resulting in significant alterations of emotional regulation and socio-cognitive skills. In this study, we explore how siblings of children with autism and age-matched controls interact with an adult wearing a protective mask.

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Funder: Italian Ministry of Health

Partners: IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia; IRCCS E. Medea, Bosisio Parini.

Publications

How does the presence of children's visual impairment affect the quality of the early interaction with the caregiver and the capacity of parents to read their communicative signals?

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In this research project, we explore whether (and how) the presence of child visual impairment affects the way mothers behave during the interaction. We take advantage of eye-tracking techniques, in order to focus on mothers' visual exploration of their children's communicative signals and emotional states.

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Funder: Italian Ministry of Health

Partners: IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia; Italian Institute of Technology, Genova

Publications

How do socio-cognitive skills emerge in low-vision infants who lack key visual hints to build social and interactive expectations? 

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Many of the early precursors of social cognition - e.g., pointing, social referencing, anticipation of intentions - strongly rely on visual cues that the infants receive from the environment. But what happens when an infant presents a severe low-vision condition? In this study, we test early socio-cognitive abilities using auditory clues during a natural parent-infant interaction.

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Funder: Italian Ministry of Health

Partners: IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia; University of Milano-Bicocca

Publications

Is infants' visual and manual exploration of the physical world linked with their language and communicative skills? Does the parenting environment contribute to the embedding of exploration into communication development?​

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The use of head-mounted cams while studying parent-infant interaction will be adopted to explore how dyadic visual and manual exploration of known and unknown objects at 18 months facilitates the emergence of language skills at 24 months in full-term and preterm infants. 

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Funders: Italian Ministry of Health

Partners: IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia

Publications