Connecting the dots from maternal brain to offspring lifespan: birth, early experience, and the dyadic relationship across species

Since the publication of Ed Tronick’s Still Face Experiment roughly 50 years ago established the idea that the mother infant dyad is a dynamic co-regulatory system it has become ever more apparent that the maternal brain, the conditions of birth, and the early parent-child dyadic relationship are not separate research questions, they are sequential, mechanistically linked stages of a single developmental process whose consequences extend across the offspring’s lifespan. Yet maternal neuroendocrinology, perinatal and birth-intervention research, early-experience studies, and developmental and lifespan neuroscience have largely advanced in parallel rather than in dialogue.

A new generation of cross-species, cross-stage work is beginning to connect the dots. Neuroendocrine remodeling of the maternal brain primes both caregiving and the conditions of birth, with structural changes in social-cognitive regions detectable years after delivery in humans and homologous adaptations characterized in rodent and primate models. The birth experience, including birth interventions such as cesarean delivery and synthetic oxytocin administration, leave neural, epigenetic and behavioral signatures in mother and offspring alike, including altered neonatal DNA methylation in human cord blood and lasting changes in offspring oxytocin-receptor expression, social behavior, and pair-bonding capacity in biparental rodent models.

The early dyadic relationship is increasingly understood as an active developmental input that programs stress reactivity, social motivation, and neuropeptide-system function, extending classical maternal-care research toward a richer framework in which the mother–infant unit, rather than the mother alone, is the developmental driver. Longitudinal human cohorts and cross-species animal work are now tracing these effects into older age, where molecular signatures of early life continue to shape cognitive aging, social engagement, and resilience.

Early-life adversity has been shown to accelerate hippocampal aging and amyloid-related pathology in mice, while adverse childhood experiences predict accelerated cognitive aging and dementia risk in humans. Whether these trajectories are programmed by maternal physiology, perinatal events, or early-dyadic experience, and through what mechanisms, remains largely open.

This Research Topic gathers contributions that integrate across stages and scales, tracing how the maternal brain, the conditions of birth, and the early parent-child dyadic relationship jointly shape offspring trajectories from molecular and circuit-level mechanisms to behavior, cognition, and brain health across the lifespan, including aging.

We welcome both animal and human research, including rigorous human studies in their own right — neuroimaging, epigenetic and neuroendocrine profiling, and clinical investigation — and we are especially interested in studies that explicitly bridge stages: linking maternal-brain changes to offspring outcomes; tracking perinatal interventions into adolescence, adulthood, or aging; pairing longitudinal human cohorts with mechanistic animal experiments using shared paradigms; or testing whether mechanisms identified in biparental rodents generalize to non-human primates and humans. We also welcome perspective contributions on the origins of the field’s foundational ideas and paradigms.

Contributions may address, but are not limited to:

• Neuroendocrine and epigenetic remodeling of the maternal brain across the perinatal transition.
• Effects of cesarean delivery, synthetic oxytocin, and other perinatal interventions on offspring epigenome, brain, and behavior.
• Hormonal, epigenetic, and circuit-level mechanisms of mother–infant bonding.
• Sensitive periods and the developmental programming of social, emotional, and cognitive function.
• Long-term consequences of early experience on adolescent and adult brain and behavior: stress reactivity, attachment, social cognition, neuropsychiatric vulnerability.
• Cognitive and emotional aging as a developmental endpoint: how perinatal and early-dyadic experience shape later-life cognition, emotional regulation, and resilience.
• Cross-species translation from biparental rodent and primate models to human perinatal and developmental research.
• Methodological advances bridging stages and species: longitudinal cohorts, harmonized cross-species paradigms, translational frameworks.
• Translational and clinical implications for perinatal care, infant–parent interventions, and lifelong mental-health prevention.
• Historical and perspective accounts of the origins of foundational paradigms in maternal, perinatal, and early-dyadic research.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review

Keywords: maternal brain, developmental programming, mother-infant dyad, oxytocin, perinatal epigenetics, Early-life adversity, Parental care, still face

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.