Abstract
Nurturing behavior may be critically influenced by the interplay of different hormones. The neuropeptide oxytocin is known to promote maternal behavior and its reduction has been associated with postpartum depression risk and child neglect. Contrariwise, the observed decrease in testosterone level during early parenthood may benefit caretaking behavior, whereas increased testosterone may reduce attention to infants. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the interactive influence of testosterone and oxytocin on selective attention to and neural processing of the baby schema (BS). 57 nulliparous women performed a target detection task with human faces with varying degree of BS following double-blinded placebo-controlled oxytocin administration in a between-subjects design. Our results support the idea that oxytocin enhances attention to the BS. Oxytocin had a positive effect on activation of the inferior frontal junction during identification of infant targets with a high degree of BS that were presented among adult distractors. Further, activation of the putamen was positively correlated with selective attention to the BS, but only in women with high endogenous testosterone who received oxytocin. These findings provide initial evidence for the neural mechanism by which oxytocin may counteract the negative effects of testosterone in the modulation of nurturing behavior.
Highlights
The survival of the offspring is crucial for one’s reproductive success
We found that OT-treated women with high endogenous T exhibited an attentional preference for the natural baby schema (BS) compared to OT-treated women with low endogenous T but these results remained on statistical trend level [Bonferroni-corrected statistical threshold was p ≤ 0.0166 (t27 = 1.86, p = 0.03; one-tailed, a priori hypothesis based on6)]
The current study investigated the influence of exogenous OT and its interaction with endogenous T on brain activity during processing of infant faces, which varied in the intensity of BS
Summary
The survival of the offspring is crucial for one’s reproductive success. Newborns may carry specific features that act as key stimulus, which automatically captures attention and motivates actions such as caretaking. Attention to infant stimuli increased after OT administration, but only in women with high endogenous T This suggests that OT may oppose the negative effects of T on nurturing behavior in women[6]. Implicit association tasks have the advantage that the degree of attentional capture by an infant as opposed to an adult face can be determined implicitly by the mean reaction time (RT) of the participant, with a shorter RT indicating faster attentional processing of the baby schema and increased action. Previous neuroimaging studies combined passive viewing and explicit evaluation tasks (e.g., cuteness perception on a Likert-Scale), which are more vulnerable to experimenter demand effect These studies do not allow the assessment of the mechanism that promotes faster reactions to infants. Building on previous findings[6] we hypothesized that OT administration would compensate the negative effects of high endogenous T on attentional processing of the BS, probably through the modulation of activation in key nodes of the mesolimbic reward system
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