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Cambridge, IASA

Kim Barthel, OTR

The Neurobiology of Attachment

Magic of Connection

Genes

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Genome

•  Malleable and flexible protein structure that bends and flows in response to the environment.

•  The attachment system is part of the environment and influences replicating micro gene transcription occurring every second of every day.

Even Rats More Cuddles = Less Stress

Michael Meaney: Experiments with rats who show either high or low levels of nurturing care through licking and grooming their offspring.

By studying the offspring who received different levels of care, research has shown that the kind of care a mother gives to her offspring alters the chemistry of the DNA in certain genes involved in the stress response!

Animals who received more licks and grooming produced fewer stress hormones when dealing with challenges or stressful situations than the rats who received less care.

Dr. Michael Meaney

Neurobiological Outcomes of Attachment in Action

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Telomeres •  Telomeres are like the plastic tips on

shoelaces preventing the chromosome ends from fraying and sticking to each other, which would scramble an organism’s genetic information to cause cancer, other diseases or death.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn

Chemistry of Attachment

Oxytocin • Chemical messenger released in the brain in response to social contact, but especially during skin to skin contact. • Roused by high levels of estrogen during pregnancy the number of oxytocin receptors multiplies dramatically near the end of pregnancy. • First important surge is during labor. Passage through the birth canal further heightens oxytocin levels in both mother and baby. • Causes a mother to become familiar with and prefer her baby’s odor. Once imprinted on the mother is calming and pain reducing for mom.

Children with oxytocin rich blood levels are curious and eager to make friends. When they encounter strangers and new situations, they’re less anxious, more confident and able to connect quickly.

Increases emotional resilience, increases ability to handle stress and decreases impulsivity!

The Chemistry of Love

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Smiles and Oxytocin

• Securely and insecurely attached mothers showed different patterns of brain response to their infants' photos.

• The securely attached women had greater activation in the reward-processing brain regions when they saw their children's smiling face as well as sad face.

• Insecurely attached women had activation in the reward regions only when they saw their children's happy face.

• Instead, their infant's sad face activated the brain regions associated with feelings of unfairness, pain, and disgust.

Dr. Lane Strathearn

Dopamine and Reward

•  Reward chemical; when we accomplish something – our brain triggers its release.

•  Notification of a novel stimulus: attention

•  Curiosity and creativity

Reward Circuitry

• The home of the dopamine circuits • Ventral tegmentum, nucleus accumbens, ventral pallidum and raphe nucleus are the reward circuit. • Spits out dopamine to enhance the feelings of pleasure and reward. • When paired with oxytocin, dopamine hardwires the brain to see attachment as pleasurable and positive!

Dr. Linda Mayes

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Rats Again

•  Repeated episodes of early maternal separation in rats result in altered dopamine functioning in infancy and adulthood (Meaney, Brake and Gratton, 2002), whereas elevated levels of licking and grooming behaviors are associated with increased dopamine receptor expression and enhanced dopamine production in moms (Champagne et al, 2004).

•  This is a profound finding!

Opiods Opiods (pleasure hormones) are natural chemicals reducing pain awareness and creating feelings of elation.

Opiod released in a child’s brain as a conditioned response to a parent’s warm hugs and kisses can be effective for helping reduce pain from a tumble or a disappointment.

Dr. Jaak Panksepp

Norepinephrine • Adrenaline is also produced during attachment. • This enhances energy and alertness in association with the pleasure of attachment. What a combination! • Norepinephrine helps organize the infant’s stress control system, and other hormonal controls. • It promotes learning about the environment.

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Gleaming and Beaming •  At the time of birth, mom and baby are flooded with adrenaline with

subsequent pupil dilation.

•  Sympathetic discharge resulting in sharper vision. Mothers giving birth have dilated pupils 5 times greater than normal!

•  “Gleaming and beaming” affect from the mother’s eyes at the moment of birth placed directly into the widely dilated eyes of the baby.

•  Biochemistry of affect occurs. Mom experiences a flood of dopamine with baby also experiencing a commensurate surge of chemistry. Sympathetic nervous system arousal.

•  This is the first awakening of the right orbitofrontal cortex which is filled with dopamine receptors oriented to novel stimuli. Growing the brain! Doesn’t happen on the left side of the brain.

Scientific America One person uses another’s pupil size as a source of information about that person’s feelings or attitudes; this process usually occurs at unconscious levels. Dilated pupils occur in states of pleasure and are an indicator of “interest”… Experiments have shown that women’s eyes dilate in response to a picture of a baby. Viewing dilated pupils elicits larger pupils in the observer. In a developmental study, infants smiled more when a female experimenter’s eyes were dilated rather than constricted.

From Attachment to Chemistry

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The Chemistry of Regulation

•  When newborns gaze into their mother’s eyes a sympathetic nervous system response occurs emphasizing “arousal” within the system.

•  The baby then gaze averts and brings the autonomic nervous system into a parasympathetic response creating homeostasis within the system.

Attachment Brain Parts

From Cells to Structures

Cortical Structures

Orbito medial prefrontal Insula Cingulate

Primitive areas of the cortex

Somatosensory Cortex

Dr. Lou Cozolino

The Social Brain

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Severe distractibility, and inability to sustain attention, fractionated thought, disorganized, loss of insight, delusions

Poor impulse control, locomotor hyperactivity

Orbital Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Convergence Zone for polysensory and emotional information

Inhibition

Experience Dependent Right Brain Maturation

The Right Orbito Frontal Cortex

When you are deep in conversation, staring into someone’s eyes the right hemisphere is fully engaged!

Dr. Allan Schore

Right OFC

Imprinting of the earliest interactions with primary caregivers is the unconscious model form which all later emotional

reactions and interactions are formed.

From the moment we are born the ROFC begins to grow and entrain

Allan Schore, 2009

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Right Orbito-Frontal Cortex

•  Social intelligence, impulse control, attention and short term memory.

•  From all the information about the external environment and internal body states entering our brain, the OFC helps to decide what to focus upon.

•  Inhibits the lower centers in the brain where urgent emotional drives originate. The Brake of the Brain

•  When it is working smoothly, it can delay emotional reactions long enough to allow mature, more sophisticated responses to emerge.

Right Hemisphere

•  More densely connected to the autonomic nervous system.

•  It’s dominant for regulating the sympathetic nervous system and the fight-flight-fright response, as well as the oxytocin response.

•  The brain circuits that identify safety and danger, that produce feelings of attachment and the basic sense of self are formed in the right hemisphere during the preverbal and preconscious period.

•  Implicit memory processing

Insula Perceives non-verbal signals

Interoception and the capacity of the mind to focus awareness on the internal state of the body.

Insula transmits data from the body to the brain

Self-reflective capacity

Insula is highly activated by pain

Convergence zone of sensory information related to attachment

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Brainstem Structures

Amygdala: Appraises danger and mediates fight, flight, fright

Combined with ROFC and anterior cingulate guides decision making and adaptive responses based upon past experience.

Implicit Memory

Hippocampus: Organizes spatial, sequential and emotional learning and memory.

Explicit Memory

Hypothalamus: Translates conscious experience into bodily processes

HPA Axis

To brain stem

Fornix

Right Orbitofrontal gyrus

Stress Response

HPA axis regulates secretion of hormones involved with body’s response to stress and threat.

Cortisol becomes heightened during the stress response.

Cortisol is mediated by attachment.

Co-regulation function of attachment.

Oxytocin is an anti-cortisol

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When there is balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic functions we stay within our window of tolerance.

When the sympathetic branch is in ascendance, we may experience being overly stimulated.

When the parasympathetic branch takes over, we may feel withdrawn.

If both systems are overly activated a fairly intolerable, disorganizing sensation is created.

Freeze response

Autonomic Nervous System

Poly Vagal Theory Emphasizes an integrated social engagement system that regulates the muscles of the face and head involved in social engagement behaviors – gaze, facial expression, prosody of voice, gesture and processing of language.

Dampens sympathetic NS activity

3 Branches: Social Engagement Vagal Withdrawl Vagal Brake –

Freeze

Attachment System regulates the polyvagal pathway facilitating the development of the social engagement system.

Dr. Stephen Porges

Attachment Develops Immune Protection

Relationship enhances immunity!

Attachment affects mind and body

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Attachment is an Inter-Hemispheric Process

Left hemisphere must make meaning of information from the right hemisphere.

Affective and Cognitive information must be integrated.

Corpus Callosum

Creates coherence

Neurobiology of Therapy

The process of integrating brains and creating empathic inner communities rests in forming a collaboration with our patients that will foster the development of linkages between current dissociated neural nets/

community members, so that they can join the flow of the integrating mind.

In the ability to sit with presence and openness to another's’ pain with tolerance

allows them to tolerate their own pain incrementally over time through the

transforming neurobiology of attachment. Pat Crittenden, 2010

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Kim Barthel, OTR 5234 Hanover Place Victoria, B.C. V8Y 2C7 (250)479-5509 kimberly@labyrinthjourneys.com

Supporting conscious evolution of the human spirit