Increased child-evoked activation in the precuneus during facial affect recognition in mothers

Abstract

Successful parenting requires constant inferring of affective states. Especially vital is the correct identification of facial affect. Previous studies have shown that infant faces are processed preferentially compared to adult faces both on the behavioural and the neural level. This study aims to specifically investigate the child-evoked neural responses to affective faces and their modulation by motherhood and attention to affect. To do so, we used a paradigm to measure neural responses during both explicit and implicit facial affect recognition in mothers and non-mothers using child and adult faces. Increased activation to child as compared to adult faces was found for mothers and non-mothers in face processing areas (bilateral fusiform gyri) and areas associated with social understanding (bilateral insulae and medial superior frontal gyrus) when pooling implicit and explicit affect recognition. This child-evoked activation was modulated by motherhood with an increase in mothers as compared to non-mothers in the left precuneus. Additionally, explicitly recognising the affect led to increased child-evoked activation in the medial superior frontal gyrus as in both mothers and non-mothers. These results suggest preferential treatment of affective child over adult faces, which is modulated by motherhood and attention to affect.