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.”

“depression is common, occurring in approximately 13% of mothers after birth [29] and often within six weeks [30].”

“). We were particularly interested in the role of the orbitofrontal cortex, which has previously been implicated in reward and hedonic processing”

“The evidence from human neuroimaging and neuropsychology studies suggests that there are medial-lateral and posterior-anterior distinctions within the human orbitofrontal cortex [26].”

“[46].”

“There is increasing evidence that certain features of the behaviour of depressed mothers are associated with adverse outcome, in particular their lack of responsiveness to the infant, the reduced ability to perceive their infant’s signals and less mimetic behavior [31,32] with a resultant lack of contingency between t…”

“Also, human fMRI experiments have found activity specific to faces in an area of right posterior fusiform cortex corresponding to the fusiform face area (FFA) [8,9].”

“A number of functional MRI studies have found a correlation between facial attractiveness and changes in the BOLD signal in the medial orbitofrontal cortex [19,20].”

“However, there are also several fMRI studies, which have found that the BOLD signal in the medial orbitofrontal cortex is correlated with the subjective ratings of many different stimuli in different modalities such as olfaction [21], gustation [22], somatosensory [23] and multimodal [24].”

“In addition, given the evidence from various behavioral studies showing that many cute infantile things appear to invoke Lorenz’s ‘‘innate releasing mechanisms’’ [27,28].”

“Face processing in general has been studied extensively in macaques, with single neuron recordings and neuroimaging using fMRI [6,7].”

“However, there are also several fMRI studies, which have found that the BOLD signal in the medial orbitofrontal cortex is correlated with the subjective ratings of many different stimuli in different modalities such as olfaction [21], gustation [22], somatosensory [23] and multimodal [24].”

“However, there are also several fMRI studies, which have found that the BOLD signal in the medial orbitofrontal cortex is correlated with the subjective ratings of many different stimuli in different modalities such as olfaction [21], gustation [22], somatosensory [23] and multimodal [24].”

“Consistent with previous findings [17], we found that face processing of both adult and infant faces elicits similar waves of activity starting in the striate cortices and spreading along ventral and dorsal pathways (see Figure 1 and Table 1).”

“There is increasing evidence that certain features of the behaviour of depressed mothers are associated with adverse outcome, in particular their lack of responsiveness to the infant, the reduced ability to perceive their infant’s signals and less mimetic behavior [31,32] with a resultant lack of contingency between t…”

“However, there are also several fMRI studies, which have found that the BOLD signal in the medial orbitofrontal cortex is correlated with the subjective ratings of many different stimuli in different modalities such as olfaction [21], gustation [22], somatosensory [23] and multimodal [24].”

“The present paradigm could eventually provide opportunities for early identification of families at risk [13].”

“In addition, given the evidence from various behavioral studies showing that many cute infantile things appear to invoke Lorenz’s ‘‘innate releasing mechanisms’’ [27,28].”

“In the context of the present experiment, where we have demonstrated that early activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex is linked to the presentation of salient non-masked infant faces but not to adult faces, these findings would suggest that the structural configuration of infant faces might act as a heightened a…”

“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. This transformation matrix was then applied to each of the functional SAM volumes, in each time window and frequenc…”

“The suggested monitoring process of the medial orbitofrontal cortex is consistent with intriguing findings in spontaneously confabulating patients with lesions to the medial orbitofrontal cortex [25].”

“. MEG studies using dipole modelling found early focal occipotemporal activity to faces relative to words”

“There is increasing evidence that certain features of the behaviour of depressed mothers are associated with adverse outcome, in particular their lack of responsiveness to the infant, the reduced ability to perceive their infant’s signals and less mimetic behavior [31,32] with a resultant lack of contingency between t…”

“This output is also called a ‘virtual electrode’ which has the same millisecond temporal resolution as the initial MEG recordings [42].”

“Most compare parental responses to their own infants and other infants, and show stronger activity to own infants in striate and extrastriate visual areas and in reward-related areas such as the nucleus accumbens, anterior cingulate and amygdala [13,14].”

“Furthermore, it has been shown experimentally that infants respond adversely with distress, crying, increased arousal and then avoidance to an unresponsive maternal face (the still face paradigm) [31,34].”

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

“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”