Dissociating maternal responses to sad and happy facial expressions of their own child: An fMRI study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Maternal sensitive behavior depends on recognizing one's own child's affective states. The present study investigated distinct and overlapping neural responses of mothers to sad and happy facial expressions of their own child (in comparison to facial expressions of an unfamiliar child).

Methods

We used functional MRI to measure dissociable and overlapping activation patterns in 27 healthy mothers in response to happy, neutral and sad facial expressions of their own school-aged child and a gender- and age-matched unfamiliar child. To investigate differential activation to sad compared to happy faces of one's own child, we used interaction contrasts. During the scan, mothers had to indicate the affect of the presented face. After scanning, they were asked to rate th

SUBMITTER: Kluczniok D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5555664 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature