Published online July 1, 2008
PEDIATRICS Vol. 122 No. 1 July 2008, pp. 40-51 (doi:10.1542/peds.2007-1566)
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ARTICLE

What's in a Smile? Maternal Brain Responses to Infant Facial Cues

Lane Strathearn, MBBS, FRACPa,b, Jian Li, PhDb, Peter Fonagy, PhDc,d and P. Read Montague, PhDb,d

a Meyer Center for Developmental Pediatrics
b Human Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience
d Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas
c Sub-department of Clinical Health Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom

OBJECTIVES. Our goal was to determine how a mother's brain responds to her own infant's facial expressions, comparing happy, neutral, and sad face affect.

METHODS. In an event-related functional MRI study, 28 first-time mothers were shown novel face images of their own 5- to 10-month-old infant and a matched unknown infant. Sixty unique stimuli from 6 categories (own-happy, own-neutral, own-sad, unknown-happy, unknown-neutral, and unknown-sad) were presented randomly for 2 seconds each, with a variable 2- to 6-second interstimulus interval.

RESULTS. Key dopamine-associated reward-processing regions of the brain were activated when mothers viewed their own infant's face compared with an unknown infant's face. These included the ventral tegmental area/substantia nigra regions, the striatum, and frontal lobe regions involved in (1) emotion processing (medial prefrontal, anterior cingulate, and insula cortex), (2) cognition (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), and (3) motor/behavioral outputs (primary motor area). Happy, but not neutral or sad own-infant faces, activated nigrostriatal brain regions interconnected by dopaminergic neurons, including the substantia nigra and dorsal putamen. A region-of-interest analysis revealed that activation in these regions was related to positive infant affect (happy > neutral > sad) for each own–unknown infant-face contrast.

CONCLUSIONS. When first-time mothers see their own infant's face, an extensive brain network seems to be activated, wherein affective and cognitive information may be integrated and directed toward motor/behavioral outputs. Dopaminergic reward-related brain regions are activated specifically in response to happy, but not sad, infant faces. Understanding how a mother responds uniquely to her own infant, when smiling or crying, may be the first step in understanding the neural basis of mother–infant attachment.

Key Words: attachment • dopamine • maternal responsiveness • mother-child relations • neuroimaging

Abbreviations: fMRI—functional MRI • BDI—Beck Depression Inventory • OH—own happy • ON—own neutral • OS—own sad • UH—unknown happy • UN—unknown neutral • US—unknown sad • BOLD—blood-oxygen-level–dependent • ACPC—anterior commissure/posterior commissure • FDR—false discovery rate • BA—Brodmann area • VTA—ventral tegmental area

Accepted Nov 5, 2007.


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