Duration of motherhood has incremental effects on mothers’ neural processing of infant vocal cues: a neuroimaging study of women

Abstract The transition to motherhood, and the resultant experience of caregiving, may change the way women respond to affective, infant signals in their environments. Nonhuman animal studies have robustly demonstrated that mothers process both infant and other salient signals differently from nonmo...

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Autores principales: Christine E. Parsons, Katherine S. Young, Mikkel V. Petersen, Else-Marie Jegindoe Elmholdt, Peter Vuust, Alan Stein, Morten L. Kringelbach
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Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2017
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/2b30ff7b015147d98be76b27e1c4a379
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:2b30ff7b015147d98be76b27e1c4a3792021-12-02T15:06:04ZDuration of motherhood has incremental effects on mothers’ neural processing of infant vocal cues: a neuroimaging study of women10.1038/s41598-017-01776-32045-2322https://doaj.org/article/2b30ff7b015147d98be76b27e1c4a3792017-05-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01776-3https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract The transition to motherhood, and the resultant experience of caregiving, may change the way women respond to affective, infant signals in their environments. Nonhuman animal studies have robustly demonstrated that mothers process both infant and other salient signals differently from nonmothers. Here, we investigated how women with and without young infants respond to vocalisations from infants and adults (both crying and neutral). We examined mothers with infants ranging in age (1–14 months) to examine the effects of duration of maternal experience. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that mothers showed greater activity than nonmothers to vocalisations from adults or infants in a range of cortical regions implicated in the processing of affective auditory cues. This main effect of maternal status suggests a general difference in vocalisation processing across infant and adult sounds. We found that a longer duration of motherhood, and therefore more experience with an infant, was associated with greater infant-specific activity in key parental brain regions, including the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala. We suggest that these incremental differences in neural activity in the maternal brain reflect the building of parental capacity over time. This is consistent with conceptualizations of caregiving as a dynamic, learning process in humans.Christine E. ParsonsKatherine S. YoungMikkel V. PetersenElse-Marie Jegindoe ElmholdtPeter VuustAlan SteinMorten L. KringelbachNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 7, Iss 1, Pp 1-9 (2017)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Medicine
R
Science
Q
spellingShingle Medicine
R
Science
Q
Christine E. Parsons
Katherine S. Young
Mikkel V. Petersen
Else-Marie Jegindoe Elmholdt
Peter Vuust
Alan Stein
Morten L. Kringelbach
Duration of motherhood has incremental effects on mothers’ neural processing of infant vocal cues: a neuroimaging study of women
description Abstract The transition to motherhood, and the resultant experience of caregiving, may change the way women respond to affective, infant signals in their environments. Nonhuman animal studies have robustly demonstrated that mothers process both infant and other salient signals differently from nonmothers. Here, we investigated how women with and without young infants respond to vocalisations from infants and adults (both crying and neutral). We examined mothers with infants ranging in age (1–14 months) to examine the effects of duration of maternal experience. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that mothers showed greater activity than nonmothers to vocalisations from adults or infants in a range of cortical regions implicated in the processing of affective auditory cues. This main effect of maternal status suggests a general difference in vocalisation processing across infant and adult sounds. We found that a longer duration of motherhood, and therefore more experience with an infant, was associated with greater infant-specific activity in key parental brain regions, including the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala. We suggest that these incremental differences in neural activity in the maternal brain reflect the building of parental capacity over time. This is consistent with conceptualizations of caregiving as a dynamic, learning process in humans.
format article
author Christine E. Parsons
Katherine S. Young
Mikkel V. Petersen
Else-Marie Jegindoe Elmholdt
Peter Vuust
Alan Stein
Morten L. Kringelbach
author_facet Christine E. Parsons
Katherine S. Young
Mikkel V. Petersen
Else-Marie Jegindoe Elmholdt
Peter Vuust
Alan Stein
Morten L. Kringelbach
author_sort Christine E. Parsons
title Duration of motherhood has incremental effects on mothers’ neural processing of infant vocal cues: a neuroimaging study of women
title_short Duration of motherhood has incremental effects on mothers’ neural processing of infant vocal cues: a neuroimaging study of women
title_full Duration of motherhood has incremental effects on mothers’ neural processing of infant vocal cues: a neuroimaging study of women
title_fullStr Duration of motherhood has incremental effects on mothers’ neural processing of infant vocal cues: a neuroimaging study of women
title_full_unstemmed Duration of motherhood has incremental effects on mothers’ neural processing of infant vocal cues: a neuroimaging study of women
title_sort duration of motherhood has incremental effects on mothers’ neural processing of infant vocal cues: a neuroimaging study of women
publisher Nature Portfolio
publishDate 2017
url https://doaj.org/article/2b30ff7b015147d98be76b27e1c4a379
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