Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 May 9;17(9):3314. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17093314.
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.
神经科学研究主要调查了产后母亲和（在较小程度上）父亲的反应的神经生物学相关性。相比之下，人们对怀孕期间婴儿情绪的神经处理知之甚少。在妊娠晚期，分别招募了 20 名母亲和 19 名父亲。当期待中的父母被动地观看代表陌生婴儿的痛苦、模糊、快乐和中性面孔的图像时，记录了高密度脑电图（hdEEG）。进行相关分析以检测婴儿面部表情的神经反应与情绪自我意识之间的联系。对于婴儿的情绪，母亲和父亲在涉及高级社会情感过程的区域中表现出相似的大脑活动。母亲和父亲在涉及高级运动控制的前运动区域、涉及视觉空间信息处理和视觉心理意象的枕叶区域以及涉及注意力分配的下顶叶区域也表现出不同的大脑活动。情绪自我意识低与母亲同理心的顶叶区域的活动呈负相关，而与父亲的心理化和视觉心理意象相关的颞叶和枕叶区域的活动呈正相关。这项研究可能会扩大对怀孕期间婴儿情绪的神经反应的认识。
