Neural circuits underlying crying and cry responding in mammals

Abstract

Crying is a universal vocalization in human infants, as well as in the infants of other mammals. Little is known about the neural structures underlying cry production, or the circuitry that mediates a caregiver's response to cry sounds. In this review, the specific structures known or suspected to be involved in this circuit are identified, along with neurochemical systems and hormones for which evidence suggests a role in responding to infants and infant cries. In addition, evidence that crying elicits parental responses in different mammals is presented. An argument is made for including 'crying' as a functional category in the vocal repertoire of all mammalian infants (and the adults of some species). The prevailing neural model for crying production considers forebrain structures to be dispensable. However, evidence for the anterior cingulate gyrus in cry production, and this structure along with the amygdala and some other forebrain areas in responding to cries is presented.

Nonlinguistic vocalizations from online amateur videos for emotion research: A validated corpus

“…In addition, human vocalizations could be traced down to their evolutionary roots by comparing them with the vocalizations of our nearest primate relatives (Brudzynski, 2014;Ross, Owren, & Zimmermann, 2009;Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010). Evidence of phylogenetic parallels strongly supports the claim that certain nonlinguistic vocalizations correspond to innate call types, and such evidence is indeed becoming available for both laughter (Ross et al, 2009) and crying (Newman, 2007). Naturalistic human vocalizations recorded in real-life contexts are particularly valuable for phylogenetic reconstruction, because they are more likely to be produced unintentionally, bypassing language-like and culture-specific modifications.…”

“…This learning may even happen in utero, so that newborn babies already cry with the typical prosody of their mother's native language (Mampe, Friederici, Christophe, & Wermke, 2009). However, such variation by no means prevents the basic acoustic type from being recognized as crying (Newman, 2007), just as the pant-hoots of wild chimpanzees are readily recognizable as pant-hoots, although subtle group-specific acoustic differences have been described (Crockford, Herbinger, Vigilant, & Boesch, 2004).…”

The effects of unrelated offspring whistle calls on capybaras (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris)

“…Many examples have showed that infant mammals evolved signals to maintain maternal responsiveness (Gonzalez-Mariscal and Rosenblatt, 1996;Charrier et al, 2002), to alert parents about pup separation (Kober et al, 2007) or imminent attacks by predators or conspecifics (Blumstein and Daniel, 2004). Based on the evidence that common neural structures and neurochemical systems in different mammals underlie the production and perception of these vocalisations, Newman (2007) proposes their inclusion in a functional category called 'crying', common to all mammalian infants and the adults of some species. The proposed function of these calls is the re-establishment of contact between mother/caretaker and infant.…”

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: Cry characteristics

“…131 First, the collection of pain cries allowed for a standard procedure 132 that could be implemented across all data collection sites (see 133 below). Secondly, there is research to indicate that the neural 134 circuitry differs between pain cries and spontaneous cries [15,16]. 135 An infant's response to pain is one of extreme stress-arousal and is 136 a form of involuntary expression; whereas spontaneous cries 137 spontaneous cries reflect a form of voluntary expression [17].…”