Neural Responses to Infant Emotions and Emotional Self-Awareness in Mothers and Fathers during Pregnancy. 2020

Cristina Trentini, and Marco Pagani, and Marco Lauriola, and Renata Tambelli
Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy.

Neuroscientific research has largely investigated the neurobiological correlates of maternal and (to a much lesser extent) paternal responsiveness in the post-partum period. In contrast, much less is known about the neural processing of infant emotions during pregnancy. Twenty mothers and 19 fathers were recruited independently during the third trimester of pregnancy. High-density electroencephalography (hdEEG) was recorded while expectant parents passively viewed images representing distressed, ambiguous, happy, and neutral faces of unknown infants. Correlational analyses were performed to detect a link between neural responses to infant facial expressions and emotional self-awareness. In response to infant emotions, mothers and fathers showed similar cerebral activity in regions involved in high-order socio-affective processes. Mothers and fathers also showed different brain activity in premotor regions implicated in high-order motor control, in occipital regions involved in visuo-spatial information processing and visual mental imagery, as well as in inferior parietal regions involved in attention allocation. Low emotional self-awareness negatively correlated with activity in parietal regions subserving empathy in mothers, while it positively correlated with activity in temporal and occipital areas implicated in mentalizing and visual mental imagery in fathers. This study may enlarge knowledge on the neural response to infant emotions during pregnancy.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D007223 Infant A child between 1 and 23 months of age. Infants
D008297 Male Males
D009035 Mothers Female parents, human or animal. Mothers' Clubs,Club, Mothers',Clubs, Mothers',Mother,Mother Clubs,Mother's Clubs,Mothers Clubs,Mothers' Club
D011247 Pregnancy The status during which female mammals carry their developing young (EMBRYOS or FETUSES) in utero before birth, beginning from FERTILIZATION to BIRTH. Gestation,Pregnancies
D002666 Psychology, Child Branch of psychology involving the study of normal and abnormal behavior of children. Child Psychology,Infant Psychology,Pediatric Psychology,Psychology, Infant,Psychology, Pediatric
D004644 Emotions Those affective states which can be experienced and have arousing and motivational properties. Feelings,Regret,Emotion,Feeling,Regrets
D005149 Facial Expression Observable changes of expression in the face in response to emotional stimuli. Face Expression,Expression, Face,Expression, Facial,Face Expressions,Facial Expressions
D005220 Fathers Male parents, human or animal. Father
D005260 Female Females
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man

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