Epigenetic Protection: The Role of Caregiving Touch and Embodied Interactions in Early Experiences
Recent advances in epigenetics provide new perspectives for the bio-behavioral sciences and for understanding how early experience can affect infant’s developmental plasticity. Specifically, it has been established that early variations in parental care – especially through tactile experiences – can have a long-lasting impact on the infant’s stress regulation. Importantly, although caregiver’s sensitivity implies higher-order social cognitive skills such as mentalization, recent studies highlight that most of parenting relies on nonverbal, bodily based, interactive behavior which is a critical factor for dyadic socioemotional attunement. Recently it has been identified a system of affective touch sensitive nerves – called Ctactile afferents (CT) – in the skin that provide the neurobiological substrate for a touch system that encodes the emotional qualities of skin touch. In my talk, I will discuss the link between early caregiving touch and epigenetics variations, positing that mother-infant touch acts as an epigenetic protection mechanism. Understanding how maternal touch and body-to-body contact can shape the epigenome holds the potential to shed light on the mechanisms through which these early tactile experiences advance mental and physical health over the lifetime.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE SPEAKER
NAME: ROSARIO MONTIROSSO
AFFILIATION: 0-3 CENTER FOR THE AT-RISK INFANT, SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTE, IRCCS EUGENIO MEDEA, BOSISIO PARINI, LECCO, ITALY
Rosario Montirosso is director of the 0-3 Centre for the at-Risk Infant at the Scientific Institute, IRCCS Eugenio Medea in Bosisio Parini, (Italy). Since 2000 his research has been addressed to study of at-risk mother– infant dyads (e.g., prematurity, neurodevelopmental disability). In recent years he has expanded his research to include neuroendocrine and epigenetic changes associated with early adverse experiences. In clinical activity, he has been working on parent-infant relationship difficulties in at-risk infants for thirty years. In recent years, he has begun to investigate the effects of early parental intervention and affective touch on epigenetics variations in infants at-risk.