A Specific and Rapid Neural Signature for Parental Instinct

“It is still, however, controversial whether the activity in FFA represents a localized or distributed coding of faces [8,11,12].”

“The normalisation parameters were obtained using FLIRT (FMRIB’s Linear Image Registration Tool) [44] to reslice each individual’s anatomical MRI to the same orientation and position as the SAM functional volume and finding the transformation matrix from this functional space into the standard MNI space.”

“It is argued that these ‘‘babyish’’ features increase the infant’s chance of survival by evoking parental responses [4,5].”

“Also, there is now evidence from deep brain stimulation linking depression to the nearby subgenual cingulate cortex which is strongly connected with the medial orbitofrontal cortex [35].”

“It is still, however, controversial whether the activity in FFA represents a localized or distributed coding of faces [8,11,12].”

“Group statistical maps for each frequency band were generated by first normalising the SAM functional volumes to MNI standard space [43] and then combining these volumes across participants for each time window and frequency band.”

“likely to be extremely important for the survival of the species [ 98 ].”

“Consistent with such a neuromodulatory role, recent studies have provided evidence for an early response in the orbitofrontal cortex (130 ms after stimulus onset) that precedes activity in occipitotemporal perceptual-representation areas (165 ms post-stimulus”

“Baby schema modulates perception and attention at early stages of visual processing [14] and activates the reward system of the brain [15].”

“Magnetoencephalography (MEG) has shown that men and women, parents and nonparents all have rapid (within 140 ms) selective neural responses to infant faces [15] (Figure 2A).”

“, 2009) and medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) response to infant faces relative to adults (Kringelbach et al., 2008), higher levels of infantile features are preferred (Parsons et al.”

“Related work has used baby face stimuli to underline the role of limbic systems in humans that may be critical for care giving thoughts and behaviors even in non-parents (Glocker et al., 2009; Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“…with e.g., conditioned place preferences (Mayo et al., 2013; Mayo and De Wit, 2015) as well as more direct brain manipulations such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, transcranial direct current stimulation and deep brain stimulation (Kringelbach et al., 2007, 2011; Lozano and Lipsman, 2013).”

“Similarly, using magnetoencephalography Kringlebach et al. (2008) showed that the orbitofrontal cortex and right fusiform gyrus act as “a specific neural signature for parental instinct,” responding to the face of an infant in 130 milliseconds.”

“…examined oxytocin effects on the ventral striatum, the ACC, and the OFC because of the suggested significance of these regions in mother–infant bonding and reward processing (Berridge and Kringelbach, 2008; Kringelbach, 2005; Kringelbach et al, 2008; Seifritz et al, 2003; Strathearn et al, 2009).”

“…of infants has been shown to elicit significant activity already after only 50 ms in the brainstem (Parsons et al., 2014) while infant facial and auditory features elicit activity in the orbitofrontal cortex within around 130 ms (Kringelbach et al., 2008; Young, Parsons, Stevner, et al., 2016).”

“Indeed, mothers react neurobiologically (32-39), autonomically (28, 39, 40), and hormonally (41-44) as well as behaviorally (45-48) to their babies’ cries.”

“Caregiving behavior depends partly on very fast processing of infant cues, exemplified by the fact that infant sounds elicit significant activity already after only 50 ms in the brainstem [69], and that infant facial features elicit activity in the orbitofrontal cortex within around 130 ms [70].”

“…studies support the idea of infantile faces as highly biologically relevant stimuli rapidly and unconsciously capturing attention and eliciting positive emotions (Brosch et al., 2007; Kringelbach et al., 2008; Caria et al., 2012; Senese et al., 2013; Borgi et al., 2014; Esposito et al., 2014).”

“We have recently identified a putative neural signature of this ‘parental instinct’ [6].”

“There is a fundamental motivation 131 on the part of both the parents and newborns to be in social engagement with each other, 132 reflected in their preferential responses to faces and eye contact [67-73].”

“Infants and their sensory cues are rewarding Human infants can be rewarding and activate regions of the adult brain that are associated with reward and pleasure (e.g., Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“…when ked average group responses to baby and adult faces from the virtual electrodes show z band from around 130 ms, and not present to adult faces (Kringelbach et al., 2008). formal comparisons, this effect was evident in both adult males and females, and both parents and non-parents, possibly…”

“Brain imaging studies further suggest that this type of response may be hard-wired in the sense that it can be localized to a specific region of the brain—the medial orbitofrontal cortex (Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“This region may be integral for coding the hedonic pleasure associated with a stimulus (Kringelbach & Berridge, 2009), and intriguingly, it is this region that appears to respond early and selectively in response to infant faces (Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“Therefore we turn our attention to the neural circuitry of the stress system, its involvement in MB, and modulation by cocaine.”

“These regions have previously been associated with parental attachment (Glocker et al., 2009; Kringelbach et al., 2008; Ranote et al., 2004; Swain et al., 2007) and linked to “baby schema” features in artificially manipulated infant faces (Glocker et al., 2009).”

“Kringelbach et al. (2008) did not find any evidence of a babyspecific response in the neural regions of the core system, however other studies have indicated that viewing infant faces correlates with increased activation in the FG and IFG (Bartels & Zeki, 2004; Caria et al., 2012; Glocker et al.,…”

“For example, it exhibits a very rapid and specific response to an infant face and it has been suggested that this might be the brain basis for the ‘‘innate releasing mechanism’’ described by Lorenz (Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“For example, adults are quicker to detect a cue that follows a neutral infant versus a neutral adult face on a dot probe task (Brosch et al. 2007) and brain activity in reward centres is seen within 150 ms of presentation of infant but not adult faces (Kringelbach et al. 2008).”

“Likewise, infants’ faces more quickly induced strong activity in reward-related regions in the brain than did adults’ faces (Kringelbach et al., 2008; Nitschke et al., 2004).”

“…stimuli inducing a greater arousal in the percipient would be subjected to a prioritized processing (Harmon-Jones et al., 2011) because of their biological relevance; for example, infant faces would trigger an instinctive parental response (Kringelbach et al., 2008; Parson et al., 2013).”

“Vol. 66, No. 1, 200–208, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2012.705860 200 # 2013 The Experimental Psychology Society unfamiliar infants are also capable of eliciting neural responses in equivalent brain regions, regardless of participant gender or parental status (Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“[11] found that observing unfamiliar infant faces is associated with activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and enhanced responsiveness in the fusiform face area that is not present when observing adult faces.”

“However, in accord with other studies, no gender or parental status differences were expected in adults’ implicit reactions to infant faces [48],[50].”

“As an example, MEG studies of infant and adult faces have shown activity in the FFA for both stimuli but with simultaneous activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) at around 130 ms only for the infant faces.(52) Interestingly, even small deviations from the infant face template, such as cleft lip, lead to much dimin…”

“On a related note, adults display preferential rew^ard-associated medial orbitofrontal cortex activation to images of unfamiliar infant faces over unfamiliar adult faces, suggesting an evolutionarily rooted positive response to infants (Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“Images were drawn from a database of digital photographs of 27 infants who were filmed at home (see Kringelbach et al., 2008 for details).”

“Unlike the MEG study by Kringelbach et al. (2008), which found an medial orbito-frontal (mOBF; 130 msec) and then an FFA (165 msec) increase in response to infant faces, we are unable to establish whether the neural circuit implies an mOBF modulation of FFA cortex.”

“Fathers also activate the vmPFC/OFC to a greater extent than non-fathers, a finding consistent with many recent studies highlighting the importance of the OFC within the ‘‘parental brain’’ (Kringelbach et al., 2008; Parsons et al., 2013).”

“Infant faces are a special class of salient social stimuli and elicit feelings of care and empathic approach in adults (Bowlby, 1969; Brosch et al., 2007; Caria et al., 2012; Glocker et al. 2009; Kringelbach et al., 2008; Lorenz, 1971; Leibenluft et al., 2004; Kringelbach et al., 2016; Senese et al., 2013, 2016).”

“, regardless of the gender and/or of parental status of the participants, as parents and non-parents of both genders activated brain motivational regions when exposed to such stimuli [9].”

“…brain regions are recruited during processing of infant stimuli may be better served by techniques with either higher spatial resolution (e.g., fMRI) or with strengths in spatial as well as temporal resolution (e.g., magnetoencephalography or MEG; Kringelbach et al., 2008; Parsons et al., 2013).”

“id differentiation of infant and adult facial stimuli [93].”

“At the neurological level, adults displayed stronger activation in brain regions related to facial processing (e.g., fusiform gyrus and middle occipital gyrus; Kringelbach et al., 2008), attention processing (e.”

“…over the right hemisphere. at U IC L ibrary, C ollections D evelopm ent on June 6, 2016 http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from response to the faces of infants, or ‘baby schema’ response (Kringelbach et al., 2008; Glocker et al., 2009; Proverbio et al., 2011b; Luo et al., 2015).”

“In the brain, infant faces are rapidly differentiated from adult faces, and the processing of these infant faces may have a modulating effect across neural circuits recruited in face perception (Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“Even studies on the much shorter timescales of milliseconds have found activity in the medial OFC related to the reward of images of cute babies [71] (Figure 5D).”

“For example, fMRI studies in healthy adults observe activity in OFC for viewing infants (50, 51) and attractive female faces (52– 54).”

“Compared to adult faces, infant faces elicit enhanced activation in a distributed network implicated in face perception, reward processing and attentional processing [34,35].”

“In support, there is mounting evidence that swift propagation of sensory information to the OFC (140 ms) from primary sensory regions may aid preattentive recognition (Bar et al. 2006; Kringelbach et al. 2008; D’Hondt et al. 2013; Parsons, Young, et al. 2013).”

“This, however, is not completely at odds with the literature: while some studies found that trauma and stress did impact child prosociality (Bergmann et al., 2016; Daud et al., 2008), others showed no differences (Flouri et al., 2010; Küenzlen et al., 2016).”

“Differential activity apparent in the right OFC in response to infant faces confirms our previous finding (Kringelbach et al., 2008) and is likely to reflect early, positive affective processing of “infant schema.”

“In order to reduce any confounding effects of stimulus gender, we had an independent sample of adult females (n = 40) rate faces from a larger set of 13 (Kringelbach et al., 2008) as ‘male’, ‘female’, or ‘cannot tell’.”

“A recent neuroimaging study supports this possibility, showing that the perception of infant faces, but not adult faces, activates the medial orbitofrontal cortex (Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“Recent neuroimaging studies have suggested that salient visual cues from the infant may be subject to specialized processing, compared with the same cues from adults (Kringelbach et al., 2008; Parsons et al., 2013).”

“, 2007) and imaging studies showing that infant faces are potent stimuli for activating the brain’s dopaminergic circuits (Glocker et al., 2009; Kringelbach et al., 2008) through which OT may exert its effects (Shamay-Tsoory and Abu-Akel, 2016; Strathearn, 2011).”

“…suggested that structures such as the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex are important in rapid assignment of affective value to external stimuli (Kringelbach et al., 2008; Rothstein et al., 2010; Tsuchiya, Moradi, Felsen, Yamazaki, & Adolphs, 2009), in modulation and enhancement of activity in…”

“The response to infant faces seems independent of attention and is thought to be at the basis of parental instinct in humans (Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“Indeed, stimuli that conform to this baby schema are likely to elicit a positive behavioral response [3], [4], and the perception of infant features activates brain structures associated with the reward system [5], [6].”

“Using MEG, Kringelbach et al. (2008) found that activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, an area implicated in reward, occurred within a seventh of a second in response to generic unfamiliar infant faces.”

“plays a significant role on many timescales within the pleasure cycle (Kringelbach et al. 2008; Parsons et al. 2013; Young et al. 2016), this region has been proposed to be part of the top-down neural route to conscious liking of music, providing a modulation of the sensory musical pleasure by means of reward value at…”

“Infant faces elicited higher beta oscillations as compared to adult faces in the medial orbitofrontal cortex of non-parents (Kringelbach et al., 2008), and the authors interpreted the findings as pointing to the existence of an intrinsic neural system for attachment in humans.”

“I., Sirota, L., and Weller, A. (2002). Comparison of skinto-skin (kangaroo) and traditional care: parenting outcomes and preterm infant”

“…neuroimaging studies have provided evidence of a “baby-specific” neural response to infant stimuli (e.g., Caria et al., 2012; Grasso, Moser, Dozier, & Simons, 2009; Kringelbach et al., 2008; Parsons et al., 2014; Proverbio, Riva, Martin, & Zani, 2010a; Proverbio, Riva, Zani, & Martin, 2011b).”

“Adults have been shown to be remarkably attuned to infant facial configuration, and emerging evidence suggests that the specialized processing of infant faces may be supported by affective neural circuits (Kringelbach et al., 2008; Parsons, Young, Murray, Stein, & Kringelbach, 2010).”

“p E D P R O O F images were obtained from a standardized database (for detailed description of the stimuli see [30]).”

“, 2010), with specific patterns of brain activity occurring in response to unfamiliar infant, but not adult, faces, implying a biological basis for this attunement (Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“…found that females are more responsive than males when viewing unfamiliar infant faces (e.g., Proverbio, Zani, & Adorni, 2008), other work has found effects in the opposite direction (e.g., Weisman, Feldman, & Goldstein, 2012), and some has reported no difference (e.g., Kringelbach et al., 2008).”

“…supported Lorenz’s hypothesis that infant schema tend to release a set of care behaviours in conspecifics that are immediate, automatic, unconscious (Kringelbach et al., 2008; Senese et al., 2013), and evolutionarily vital for survival (Caria et al., 2012; Glocker et al., 2009a, 2009b; Parsons et…”