Department of Psychology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Faculty of Philosophy, Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2022 Jun 15;43(9):2911-2922. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25825. Epub 2022 Mar 12.
Successful parenting requires constant inferring of affective states. Especially vital is the correct identification of facial affect. Previous studies have shown that infant faces are processed preferentially compared to adult faces both on the behavioural and the neural level. This study specifically investigates the child-evoked neural responses to affective faces and their modulation by motherhood and attention to affect. To do so, we used a paradigm to measure neural responses during both explicit and implicit facial affect recognition (FAR) in mothers and non-mothers using child and adult faces. Increased activation to child compared to adult faces was found for mothers and non-mothers in face processing areas (bilateral fusiform gyri) and areas associated with social understanding (bilateral insulae and medial superior frontal gyrus) when pooling implicit and explicit affect recognition. Furthermore, this child-evoked activation was modulated by motherhood with an increase in mothers compared to non-mothers in the left precuneus. Additionally, explicitly recognising the affect increased child-evoked activation in the medial superior frontal gyrus in both mothers and non-mothers. These results suggest preferential treatment of affective child over adult faces, modulated by motherhood and attention to affect.
成功的育儿需要不断推断情感状态。正确识别面部表情尤为重要。之前的研究表明，在行为和神经水平上，婴儿的面孔比成人的面孔更受关注。本研究专门研究了儿童诱发的情感面孔的神经反应及其受母性和对情感关注的调节。为此，我们使用一种范式，在母亲和非母亲中测量了在明确和隐含的面部情感识别（FAR）期间的神经反应，使用儿童和成人的面孔。与非母亲相比，母亲在面孔处理区域（双侧梭状回）和与社会理解相关的区域（双侧岛叶和内侧额上回）中，对儿童面孔的激活增加，当隐含和明确的情感识别结合时。此外，这种儿童诱发的激活受到母性的调节，与非母亲相比，母亲的左楔前叶增加。此外，母亲和非母亲在中额上回中明确识别情感会增加儿童诱发的激活。这些结果表明，对情感儿童的优先处理，受母性和对情感的关注调节。
