Family nurture intervention in the NICU increases autonomic regulation in mothers and children at 4-5 years of age: Follow-up results from a randomized controlled trial.

Although these preliminary follow-up results are based on approximately half of subjects originally enrolled in the RCT, they suggest that FNI-NICU led to healthier autonomic regulation in both mother and child, when measured during a brief face-to-face socioemotional interaction. A Pavlovian autonomic co-conditioning mechanism may underly these findings that can be exploited therapeutically.