The human parental brain: In vivo neuroimaging

Abstract

Interacting parenting thoughts and behaviors, supported by key brain circuits, critically shape human infants’ current and future behavior. Indeed, the parent–infant relationship provides infants with their first social environment, forming templates for what they can expect from others, how to interact with them and ultimately how they go on to themselves to be parents. This review concentrates on magnetic resonance imaging experiments of the human parent brain, which link brain physiology with parental thoughts and behaviors. After reviewing brain imaging techniques, certain social cognitive and affective concepts are reviewed, including empathy and trust—likely critical to parenting. Following that is a thorough study-by-study review of the state-of-the-art with respect to human neuroimaging studies of the parental brain—from parent brain responses to salient infant stimuli, including emotionally charged baby cries and brief visual stimuli to the latest structural brain studies. Taken together, this research suggests that networks of highly conserved hypothalamic–midbrain–limbic–paralimbic–cortical circuits act in concert to support parental brain responses to infants, including circuits for limbic emotion response and regulation. Thus, a model is presented in which infant stimuli activate sensory analysis brain regions, affect corticolimbic limbic circuits that regulate emotional response, motivation and reward related to their infant, ultimately organizing parenting impulses, thoughts and emotions into coordinated behaviors as a map for future studies. Finally, future directions towards integrated understanding of the brain basis of human parenting are outlined with profound implications for understanding and contributing to long term parent and infant mental health.

As tears go by: Baby tears trigger more brain activity than adult tears in nulliparous women

“…Previous fMRI research on the perception of others' distress is divided into a subfield that covers neural responses to the acoustics of infant crying (e.g., Riem et al, 2011;Swain, 2011) and a subfield that concerns neural processing of visualized negative adult emotions such as sadness or pain (Fusar-Poli et al, 2009;Lamm, Decety, & Singer, 2011), with no particular attention to the role of tears in the communication of distress. Both subfields point to a role of the insula and anterior cingulate cortex in empathy for distress, but they are otherwise unconnected, and they have both neglected the processing of tears.…”

Whose Choice? Advocating Birthing Practices According to Baby’s Biological Needs

“…The resulting fetal distress can lead to cesarean or other interventions such as forceps or vacuum assistance. The epidural also blocks oxyto cin stimulation to the mother's brain, affecting the quality of her mothering experience (Swain, 2011) and later breastfeeding success (Torvaldsen, Roberts, Simpson, Thompson, & Ellwood, 2006). Again, the doula is more effective.…”

Postnatal Depression and Emotion: The Misfortune of Mother-Infant Interactions

“…Whatever the case may be, the specific characteristics exhibited by mothers with postpartum depression in response to the visual and auditory emotional signals given by their babies has led psychologists to consider that the quality of the mother-infant relationship is impaired (for a review, see Swain, 2011). Researchers even speak about a particular parental pattern that can be observed in depressed mothers, in the same way as for the insecure style of attachment.…”

“…Researchers even speak about a particular parental pattern that can be observed in depressed mothers, in the same way as for the insecure style of attachment. Within this framework, Swain (2011) has, on the basis of studies conducted in humans and animals, proposed an integrative model of "the parental brain" that identifies the information processing operations and associated brain structures thought to govern parenting behaviors (see Figure 7). In this model, (A) the first step involves the sensory signals emitted by babies that are essential for parenting and which are then (B) detected by sensory cortices of the parent's brain.…”