Caregiver or Playmate? Fathers' and mothers' brain responses to ball-play with children.

ABSTRACT: Parents and children often engage in joint play-a domain where mothers and fathers are thought to exhibit disparate behaviors and impact child development via distinct mechanisms. However, little is known about the neural substrates of mother-child and father-child play. In this fMRI study, we sampled the brain activation of parents of preschoolers (N = 88) during a novel event-related adaptation of the virtual ball-tossing game "Cyberball." Mothers (N = 40) and fathers (N = 48) played "Cyberball" ostensibly with their own and an unrelated child, who consecutively included, excluded, and reincluded parents. We found that overall, exclusion yielded comparable neural activations in mothers and fathers associated with mentalizing, saliency, and emotion processing. We also observed a parent ge

SUBMITTER: Acıl D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11906569 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature