Abstract
Literature about parenting traditionally focused on caring behaviors and parental representations. Nowadays, an innovative line of research, interested in evaluating the neural areas and hormones implicated in the nurturing and caregiving responses, has developed. The only way to permit a newborn to survive and grow up is to respond to his needs and in order to succeed it is necessary, first of all, that the adults around him understand what his needs are. That is why adults’ capacity of taking care of infants cannot disregard from some biological mechanisms, which allow them to be more responsive to the progeny and to infants in general. Many researches have proved that exist specific neural basis activating in response to infant evolutionary stimuli, such as infant cries and infant emotional facial expression. There is a sort of innate predisposition in human adults to respond to infants’ signals, in order to satisfy their need and allow them to survive and become young adults capable of taking care of themselves. This article focuses on research that has investigated, in the last decade, the neural circuits underlying parental behavioral responses. Moreover, the paper compares the results of those studies that investigated the neural responses to infant stimuli under different conditions: familiar versus unknown children, parents versus non-parents and normative versus clinical samples (depression, addiction, adolescence, and PTSD).
Highlights
Parents play an essential role in the survival and development of the infant and the dyadic relation between parents-infants represent the first, and most important, interaction for the baby
We divided the review in sections: the first section focuses on studies which have investigated the neural basis activated in women, who were mothers, in response to infant salient stimuli; the second section analyzed those studies which have investigated some hormonal factors which may influence, in some way, the neural response to the same stimuli in mothers; the third part focuses on the investigation about gender and parental status differences in response to infant stimuli; the last section discusses those studies which have investigated the fact of being a parent under clinical condition
The main aim of this review was to present what is known about the neurobiology of mothering to neuroimaging techniques; we have delineated the complexity and abundance of the mechanisms underlying and influencing parental behavior and its connected physiological, psychological and behavioral adaptations
Summary
Parents play an essential role in the survival and development of the infant and the dyadic relation between parents-infants represent the first, and most important, interaction for the baby. Adult– infant relationships has a long evolutionary history, which suggests that specific brain circuits might mediate adult responsiveness to infants (Caria et al, 2012; Esposito et al, 2013) The efficacy of such relationship depends, among other things, on certain children’s characteristics, such as facial expressions morphology and communicative signals (e.g., cry, laugh, gaze, gestures) that activates appropriate caregiving behaviors in the adults (Bornstein, 2002; Bornstein et al, 2008; Doi and Shinohara, 2012; Esposito et al, 2013). Measuring physiological and blood-oxygen-dependent signals in response to infant salient cues/stimuli fMRI allows collecting functional and structural data. This technique has optimal spatial resolution and it allows to se “where” the stimuli activate the neural circuitry. We divided the review in sections: the first section focuses on studies which have investigated the neural basis activated in women, who were mothers, in response to infant salient stimuli (infant faces and infant cries); the second section analyzed those studies which have investigated some hormonal factors (associated to the type of delivery, breastfeeding, assumption of hormones, etc.) which may influence, in some way, the neural response to the same stimuli in mothers; the third part focuses on the investigation about gender and parental status differences in response to infant stimuli; the last section discusses those studies which have investigated the fact of being a parent under clinical condition ( depression and addiction)
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