Livio Provenzi

University of Pavia | UNIPV · Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences

Infant sleep quality is increasingly regarded as an important factor for children long-term functioning and adaptation. The early roots of sleep disturbances are still poorly understood and likely involve a complex interplay between prenatal and postnatal factors. This study investigated whether exclusive breastfeeding during the first 6 months mod...

Climate change threatens environmental stability and human health, with limited research on younger children’s perceptions. This study examines Italian primary school children’s views on climate change to guide educational and policy strategies. Surveying 973 children (5–11 years) from different regions, findings showed high awareness (93%) and con...

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, both the public and researchers have raised questions regarding the potential impact of protective face-mask wearing on infants’ development. Nevertheless, limited research has tested infants’ response to protective face-mask wearing adults in real-life interactions and in neurodiverse populations. In addition, scarce a...

The manuscript explores value-based healthcare (VBHC) and its role in assessing healthcare quality beyond clinical metrics. It identifies four value types: personal, technical, allocative, and societal. Emphasizing the integration of diverse stakeholder perspectives, including patients, families, and clinicians, the study highlights the importance...

Introduction. Very preterm (VPT) birth is a major risk condition for child development and parental well-being, mainly due to multiple sources of stress (e.g., separation and pain exposure) during the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) stay. Early video-feedback (VF) interventions proved effective in promoting VOT infants’ development and parental...

Infant attention is a cognitive function that underlines sensory–motor integration processes at the interface between the baby and the surrounding physical and socio-relational environment, mainly with the caregivers. The investigation of the role of non-visual inputs (i.e., vocal and tactile) provided by the caregivers in shaping infants’ attentio...

The co-regulation of biological stress systems within the parent-infant dyad plays an important role in the development of infant stress regulation, affecting several physical and psychological processes across the lifespan. Infrared thermal imaging (ITI) allows to capture cutaneous temperature modulations under the control of the autonomic nervous...

Research on infant sleep quality has increased over the last few years. Sleep disturbances can start in the first year of life and have a massive impact on the parents' psychological well-being and the infant's cognitive and socio-emotional development. 1 The aetiology is complex and poorly understood, but there is mounting evidence for antenatal e...

Infants with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDs) show emotional, cognitive, and socio-interactive dysregulation that dramatically impacts parents’ caregiving behaviors. Early video-feedback interventions (VFIs) are effective in promoting sensitive parenting, which in turn supports infants’ development, even in the case of NDs. In the light of lim...

Parents of children with developmental disabilities face many challenges that can lead to emotional and affective problems, difficulties in caregiving, and partial mental representations about themselves and their children. A multi-component approach that includes the analysis of priority support goals and the planning of tailored therapeutic actio...

Parent-child interaction is essential to promote adaptive emotional, cognitive, and social development. The majority of previous research on parent-child interaction is largely dependent on face-to-face exchanges that require the interactive partners to visually recognize reciprocal communicative bids. Therefore, previous findings in the field can...

The Face-to-Face Still-Face (FFSF) paradigm is a well-acknowledged procedure to assess socio-emotional regulation in healthy and at-risk infants. Although it was developed mainly for research purposes, the FFSF paradigm has potential clinical implications for the assessment of socio-emotional regulation of infants with neurodevelopmental disabiliti...

Antenatal exposures to maternal stress and to particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) have been independently associated with developmental outcomes in early infancy and beyond. Knowledge about their joint impact, biological mechanisms of their effects and timing-effects, is still limited. Both PM2.5 and maternal...

The Rorschach inkblot test allows access to psychological processes that usually do not emerge in self-report measures and it has been widely used in clinical psychological and psychiatric settings. Recordings of brain activity during the administration of the Rorschach inkblots test could provide information on neural correlates of the underlying...

Individual health-related behavior is among the most influential yet modifiable factors affecting both climate change and chronic disease. To encourage behaviors bringing about environmental and health co-benefits, it is important to understand the underlying factors of behavior change for healthy and sustainable lifestyles. One area of potential o...

Background Prenatal maternal stress is a key risk factor for infants’ development. Previous research has highlighted consequences for infants’ socio-emotional and cognitive outcomes, but less is known for what regards socio-cognitive development. In this study, we report on the effects of maternal prenatal stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic on...

Maternal antenatal anxiety is an emerging risk factor for child emotional development. Both sex and epigenetic mechanisms, such as DNA methylation, may contribute to the embedding of maternal distress into emotional outcomes. Here, we investigated sex-dependent patterns in the association between antenatal maternal trait anxiety, methylation of the...

Maternal bonding is key for infant development and well-being. Research to date focused on prenatal bonding experience, with fewer studies looking at the postnatal period. Moreover, evidence suggests significant associations among maternal bonding, maternal mental health, and infant temperament. The joint impact of maternal mental health and infant...

Antenatal exposures to maternal stress and to particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 μm (PM 2.5 ) have been independently associated with developmental outcomes in early infancy and beyond. Knowledge about their joint impact, as well as possible biological mechanisms of their effects, is still limited. Both PM 2.5 and mate...

Individual behavior is one of the most influential factors affecting both environmental change and chronic disease development. To encourage behaviors bringing about environmental and health co-benefits, it is important to understand the underlying factors of behavior change for healthy and sustainable lifestyles. One area of potential overlap conc...

The quality of family interactions may be a critical factor for restrictive eating disorders (REDs). Adolescent patients with RED have interpersonal problems that can be inferred by observing their behaviours during family interactions. To date, the assessment of the association among RED severity, interpersonal problems, and patients’ interactive...

From the very beginning of their life, human beings are immersed in a social and interactive environment that contributes to shaping their social and cognitive development under typical and at-risk conditions. In order to understand human development in its bidirectional relationship with the social environment, we need to develop a "complexity-sen...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected healthcare professionals’ lives. We investigated the potential mental health risk faced by healthcare professionals working in neonatal units in a multicentre cross-sectional observational study. Methods We included all healthcare personnel of seven level-3 and six level-2 neonatal units i...

Background A growing body of research provides evidence for social and behavioral problems observed among adolescents with psychosis and also as precursors of vulnerability to psychosis, long before the illness onset, especially in females patients. As such, the main aim of the current study was to investigate from a patient perspective the presenc...

Background Face-to-face visual contact is a key component of the early parent-child interaction, therefore a visual impairment condition of the parent or the child represents a risk factor for dyadic patterns' development. Aims The study presents a critical single case of a blind father and a 18-month-old visually impaired child. The study aims to...

Background High levels of mental health problems have been consistently reported among neonatal healthcare professionals. While studies suggest that personality, coping strategies and safety culture might contribute to the psychological wellbeing of healthcare professionals, they have not been systematically investigated in low-risk (i.e., neonatal...

In the pediatric context, parents’ and patients’ engagement in the care process is strongly rec- ommended and could be pursued using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), which therefore become useful for planning and monitoring treatments. Nevertheless, few data are available from families of children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as...

Objectives The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a particularly adverse and stressful environment for expecting mothers, possibly enhancing feelings of anxiety and parenting stress. The present work assesses mothers' anxiety levels at delivery and parenting stress after 3 months as moderated by home-visiting sessions. Methods Women (n = 177) in their...

Stress exposure during pregnancy is critically linked with maternal mental health and child development. The effects might involve altered patterns of DNA methylation in specific stress-related genes (i.e., glucocorticoid receptor gene, NR3C1, and serotonin transporter gene, SLC6A4) and might be moderated by the gestational timing of stress exposur...

Introduction Previous studies applying the Lausanne Trilogue Play (LTPc), a semi-structured method for observing family dynamics, highlighted dysfunctional interaction patterns in the families of individuals affected by restrictive eating disorders (REDs). Family-centered approaches are considered the first-line treatment for severe cases of REDs i...

Background Sex-specific differences in DNA methylation of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) have been shown in adults and are related to several mental disorders. Negative affectivity early in life is a trans-diagnostic risk marker of later psychopathology and is partly under genetic control. However, sex-specific variations in OXTR methylation (OX...

Recent research suggests that early physical touch provided by caregivers may play a critical role in cognitive and affective development. The discovery of the C-tactile fibers – which selectively respond to low-speed physical stimulations, such as maternal affectionate touch and caresses – opened a promising field of research into the physiologica...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic is a collective trauma that may expose susceptible individuals to high levels of stress. Pregnant women represent a high-risk population, considering that pregnancy is a period of heightened neuroplasticity and susceptibility to stress through epigenetic mechanisms. Previous studies showed that the methylation statu...

Adolescents diagnosed with Restrictive Eating Disorders (REDs) are at risk for alexithymia. REDs patients’ families show dysfunctional interactive patterns, and childhood family environment influences alexithymia development. We aimed to assess the relationship between family dysfunctional interactive patterns and patients’ alexithymia in a sample...

Stress exposure during pregnancy is critically linked with maternal mental health and child development. The effects might involve altered patterns of DNA methylation in specific stress-related genes (i.e., glucocorticoid receptor gene, NR3C1 , and serotonin transporter gene, SLC6A4 ) and might be moderated by the gestational timing of stress expos...

Aim: To describe the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions on the caregiving activities and psychological well-being of fathers with infants admitted to neonatal units. Methods: Cross-sectional study using adapted COPE-IS and COPE-IU tools. Participants' recruitment occurred online via social media and parents' associations. Online survey in Engli...

The dynamic systems (DS) theory has been previously applied to the regulatory processes that characterize the parent-child dyad. These processes provide infants with adequate flexibility to respond and adapt to environmental stimulations and sufficient stability to develop and maintain coherent self-organization. The State Space Grid (SSG) tool was...

Human parenting is a fundamental educational context including complex caregiving tasks finalized to nurture and protect young children [...]

Introduction. Infants with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDs) show emotional, cognitive and sociointeractive dysregulation dramatically impacting on caregiving behaviour. Early video-feedback interventions (VFIs) are effective in promoting sensitive parenting, which in turn supports infants’ development, even in case of ND. In the light of limit...

Il presente articolo presenta due studi riguardanti l’esperienza di lockdown durante l’emer- genza Covid-19 in genitori di bambini con disabilità. Il primo studio ha indagato, tramite un que- stionario online, l’impatto dell’emergenza sanitaria e dell’interruzione dei servizi di riabilitazione sul benessere di 84 caregiver. Le preoccupazioni per il...

La psicobiologia dello sviluppo studia i meccanismi neurofisiologici, neuroendocrini ed epigenetici che regolano i processi evolutivi nello sviluppo tipico e in condizioni di rischio evolutivo. È un’area di ricerca relativamente recente, in rapida espansione e le cui molteplici implicazioni scientifiche e cliniche stanno modificando il modo in cui...

Parents of children with developmental disabilities face many daily challenges that can lead to emotional and affective problems, difficulties in caregiving, and partial mental representations about themselves and their children. The multi-faceted nature of these parents’ needs requires a multi-component approach that should include the analysis of...

Self-limited Epilepsy with Centrotemporal Spikes (ECTS) is a self-limiting childhood epilepsy with an overall good prognosis. The neurocognitive profile of ECTS shows various degrees of neuropsychological impairment, with speech impairment and executive dysfunction being the most prominent. This review aimed to clarify the executive function (EF) p...

The COVID-19 pandemic is a collective trauma that is threatening citizens' mental health resulting in increased emotional stress, reduced social support, and heightened risk for affective symptoms. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of antenatal pandemic-related emotional stress and perceived social support on the symptoms of depres...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic represents a collective trauma that may have enduring stress effects during sensitive periods, such as pregnancy. Prenatal stress may result in epigenetic signatures of stress-related genes (e.g., the serotonin transporter gene, SLC6A4) that may in turn influence infants’ behavioral development. Methods In April 20...

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a collective trauma that may have enduring stress effects during sensitive periods, such as pregnancy. Prenatal stress may result in epigenetic signatures of stress-related genes (e.g., the serotonin transporter gene, SLC6A4) that may in turn influence infants’ behavioral development. In April 2020, we launched a lo...

Background Parent-child interaction is essential to promote adaptive emotional, cognitive, and social development. The majority of previous research on parent-child interaction is largely dependent on face-to-face exchanges that require the interactive partners to visually recognize reciprocal communicative bids. Therefore, previous findings in the...

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global traumatic experience for citizens, especially during sensitive time windows of heightened plasticity such as pregnancy and neonatal life. Pandemic-related stress experienced by mothers during pregnancy may act as an early risk factor for infants' regulatory capacity development by altering maternal psychosocial wel...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected healthcare professionals’ lives. We investigated the potential mental health risk faced by healthcare professionals working in neonatal units in a multicentre cross-sectional observational study. Methods We included all healthcare personnel of 7 level-3 and 6 level-2 neonatal units in Tusc...

Following school closures due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, for some months, children received only distance learning. The effects of this approach, however, are not clear for children with dyslexia. We conducted a cross-sectional comparison between children with and without dyslexia after the so-called “lockdown” and a comparison between pre- and po...

As fathers are increasingly involved in childcare, understanding the neurological underpinnings of fathering has become a key research issue in developmental psychobiology research. This systematic review specifically focused on (1) highlighting methodological issues of paternal brain research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and...

The present study presents an investigation of family functioning in the families of adolescents with severe restrictive eating disorders (REDs) assessed before and 6 months after a multidisciplinary family treatment program that combined psychodynamic psychotherapy, parental role intervention, and triadic or family-centered interventions. Nutritio...

Background Joubert Syndrome (JS) is a rare inherited neurodevelopmental disorder defined by a characteristic cerebellar and brainstem malformation (i.e. the molar tooth sign) and variable organ involvement. The aim of the present study was to describe functional limitations and disabilities in a large sample of adult patients with a diagnosis of JS...

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a collective trauma that may have enduring stress effects during sensitive periods, such as pregnancy. Prenatal stress may result in epigenetic signatures of stress-related genes (e.g., the serotonin transporter gene, SLC6A4 ) that may in turn influence infants’ behavioral development. In April 2020, we launched a l...