Specific Maternal Brain Responses to Their Own Child’s Face: An fMRI Meta-Analysis

Publication Date

3-2019

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Maternal brain, Own child, Infant face, Left hemisphere, Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Meta-analysis

Abstract

How special is her own child to a mother? Research that has focused on mothers’ brain responses to their own child has revealed the involvement of multiple subcortical and cortical brain regions, but less is known about which brain regions are systematically activated across these studies. This meta-analysis aims to identify specific neural regions associated with “own child” compared to “other child”. To ensure the consistency of the types of child stimuli across studies, the analysis focused on studies using neutral to positive visual stimuli of own and other children. Viewing their own child is associated with enhanced cerebral activation in cortical and subcortical regions including the midbrain, amygdala, striatum, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and insula. These regions are involved in reward and maternal motivation and promoting approach behavior as well as caregiving. Interestingly, own child faces activate regions in the left hemisphere more than in the right hemisphere in mothers. The current results may support the better understanding of deviation from expected maternal brain responses to own child, which could further inform neurological markers for innovative parental screening and intervention.

Copyright Date

12-14-2018

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by Elsevier Inc. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Rigo, P., Kim, P., Esposito, G., Putnick, D. L., Venuti, P., & Bornstein, M. H. (2019). Specific maternal brain responses to their own child’s face: An fMRI meta-analysis. Developmental Review, 51, 58-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2018.12.001

Accepted Manuscript is openly available through the "Link to Full Text" button.

The published Version of Record is available at libraries through Compass or Worldcat.

Rights Holder

Elsevier Inc.

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

Language

English (eng)

Publication Title

Developmental Review

Volume

51

First Page

58

Last Page

69

ISSN

1090-2406

PubMed ID

30872887

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