IntroductionAdmission of an infant to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is a stressful event for parents. The physical separation and inability to hold their child due to minimal handling protocols or infection control such as in the recent COVID-19 pandemic is a major contributor to parental stress. Knowledge on a contact-free parent administered intervention to reduce the stress of parents whose infant necessitates neonatal intensive care is lacking.ObjectiveTo assess the effect of a contact-free, Story-Telling Attention-Refocusing (STAR) intervention on the acute stress of parents whose infant is in the NICU.MethodsA block-randomized controlled single-blind trial was conducted in a level II-III NICU. Parents in the experimental group provided the STAR intervention which consisted of designated prompts to share stories with their infants over a ten-minute period, three times per week, for 1 week. Parent acute stress was measured using the PSS:NICU questionnaire before and after the STAR intervention period, and differences in acute stress between mothers and fathers were assessed as well as parent satisfaction.ResultsTwenty-one parents completed the study. Results revealed that overall PSS:NICU stress scores lowered significantly within the intervention group (p = 0.04), and the intervention mediated acute stress of mothers and fathers differently (p = 0.01). Parents reported feeling overall satisfied with the STAR program and they felt less stressed in the hospital and more connected to their infants.ConclusionThe STAR program provides parents a unique opportunity to interact with their infant in a positive meaningful manner and may reduce acute stress in parents during their infants NICU stay.

Parental empathy and sensitivity play a crucial role in the development of child attachment and socioemotional growth, influencing emotional regulation, social skills, and psychological well-being. However, no comprehensive systematic review integrates emotional, genetic, and neurobiological perspectives.

this systematic review aims to synthesize existing evidence on the relationship between parental empathy and sensitivity with child attachment and socioemotional development, integrating classical theories with contemporary findings and considering contextual factors such as adversity and intergenerational dynamics.

searches were conducted for studies published between 1993 and 2024. Empirical studies examining empathy (affective, cognitive, and multidimensional), parental sensitivity, child attachment (secure, avoidant, ambivalent, disorganized, or DMM), and socioemotional development were included. A total of 16 studies met the inclusion criteria, encompassing longitudinal, cross-sectional, genetic, neurobiological, and experimental designs.

key findings include the following: positive socialization predicted greater empathy, and self-regulation maternal anxiety reduced sensitivity and indirectly affected attachment; emotional empathy positively influenced sensitivity; genetic predispositions affected sensitivity through crying; neurobiological studies revealed altered PCC-amygdala connectivity in postpartum depression.

the findings demonstrate that parental empathy and sensitivity significantly influence child attachment security and socioemotional development through emotional regulation, genetic predispositions, and neurobiological mechanisms. This review provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the parent-child bond and highlights implications for evidence-based parenting interventions.

Parents and children often engage in joint play-a domain where mothers and fathers are thought to exhibit disparate behaviors and impact child development via distinct mechanisms. However, little is known about the neural substrates of mother-child and father-child play. In this fMRI study, we sampled the brain activation of parents of preschoolers (N = 88) during a novel event-related adaptation of the virtual ball-tossing game "Cyberball." Mothers (N = 40) and fathers (N = 48) played "Cyberball" ostensibly with their own and an unrelated child, who consecutively included, excluded, and reincluded parents. We found that overall, exclusion yielded comparable neural activations in mothers and fathers associated with mentalizing, saliency, and emotion processing. We also observed a parent gender effect in several brain areas. While mothers exhibited increased reward- and attention-related activity during inclusion, fathers displayed increased mentalizing-related activity during exclusion. Furthermore, we tested parents' response to reinclusion, which revealed a selective decrease in reward-related activity. Finally, exploratory analyses showed that parental involvement was positively correlated with parental brain activity within attention- and mentalizing-related areas during inclusion, as opposed to other game phases, and that an anxious parenting style was associated with increased neural sensitivity for game events involving their own child. Overall, our study elucidates the common and distinct neural networks that mothers and fathers engage during play interactions with their children, supporting theories that postulate only a partial differentiation of paternal and maternal parenting systems.

Studies of the parental brain have garnered significant attention, revealing neurobiological and psychological changes associated with caregiving. Here, we provide a comprehensive, data-driven overview of the scientific literature on the parental brain, analyzing a large dataset to map the field's knowledge structure. Our objectives include identifying influential authors, contributing countries, publication sources, and commonly used keywords as well as highlighting the most impactful documents and primary thematic areas of research. We analyzed 656 documents (and their 39,302 cited references) from Scopus using CiteSpace software for document co-citation analysis. Our analysis identified 17 key documents, of which the most influential focused on neural correlates of maternal and romantic love and maternal brain responses to infant cues in relation to attachment style. Our analysis additionally identified 10 major thematic domains in the parental brain literature. Qualitative analysis of research clusters revealed a trajectory in the study of the parental brain, progressing from foundational studies on dendritic spine density and maternal memory to the exploration of shared mammalian and human-specific brain networks underlying parental behaviors. Our study points to a growing interest in understanding neurobiological changes in fathers, with parental involvement and exposure to infant cues as moderating factors. The parental brain is a plastic, dynamic network, with bio-behavioral synchrony playing a central role as an interpersonal mechanism that enhances specificity of attachments.

The experience of human parenthood is near ubiquitous and can profoundly alter one's body, mind, and environment. However, we know very little about the long-term neural effects of parenthood for parents themselves, or the implications of pregnancy and caregiving experience on the aging adult brain. Here, we investigate the link between the number of children parented and age on brain function in 19,964 females and 17,607 males from the UK Biobank. In both females and males, parenthood was positively correlated with functional connectivity, such that higher number of children parented was associated with higher connectivity, particularly within the somato/motor network. Critically, the spatial topography of parenthood-linked effects was inversely correlated with the impact of age on functional connectivity across the brain for both females and males, such that the connections that were positively correlated with number of children were negatively correlated with age. This result suggests that a higher number of children is associated with patterns of brain function in the opposite direction to age-related alterations. Overall, these results indicate that the changes accompanying parenthood may confer benefits to brain health across the lifespan, altering aging trajectories, consistent with animal models of parenthood and preliminary findings of "younger-looking" brain structure in human parents. Observing this effect in both females and males implicates the caregiving environment, rather than pregnancy alone, and highlights the importance of future work to disentangle the underlying mechanisms related to the direct impact of caregiving, the indirect impact of the environment, and the result of covarying sociodemographic factors.

Short video addiction (SVA) has emerged as a growing behavioral and social issue, driven by the widespread use of digital platforms that provide highly engaging, personalized, and brief video content. We investigated the neuroanatomical and functional substrates of SVA symptoms, alongside brain transcriptomic and cellular characteristics, using Inter-Subject Representational Similarity Analysis (IS-RSA) and transcriptomic approaches. Behaviorally, we found that dispositional envy was associated with SVA. Structurally, SVA was positively correlated with increased morphological volumes in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and bilateral cerebellum. Functionally, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), cerebellum, and temporal pole (TP) exhibited heightened spontaneous activity, which was positively correlated with SVA severity. Transcriptomic and cellular analyses also showed specific genes linked to gray matter volume (GMV) associated with SVA, with predominant expression in excitatory and inhibitory neurons. These genes showed distinct spatiotemporal expression patterns in the cerebellum during adolescence. This study offers a comprehensive framework integrating structural, functional, and neurochemical evidence to highlight the neural-transcriptomic underpinnings of SVA symptoms in a non-clinical population.

Complex behavior is supported by the coordination of multiple brain regions. How do brain regions coordinate absent a homunculus? We propose coordination is achieved by a controller-peripheral architecture in which peripherals (e.g., the ventral visual stream) aim to supply needed inputs to their controllers (e.g., the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex) while expending minimal resources. We developed a formal model within this framework to address how multiple brain regions coordinate to support rapid learning from a few example images. The model captured how higher-level activity in the controller shaped lower-level visual representations, affecting their precision and sparsity in a manner that paralleled brain measures. In particular, the peripheral encoded visual information to the extent needed to support the smooth operation of the controller. Alternative models optimized by gradient descent irrespective of architectural constraints could not account for human behavior or brain responses, and, typical of standard deep learning approaches, were unstable trial-by-trial learners. While previous work offered accounts of specific faculties, such as perception, attention, and learning, the controller-peripheral approach is a step toward addressing next generation questions concerning how multiple faculties coordinate.

Interest in kawaii-ness is growing day by day around the world. However, the relationship between the brain and kawaii-ness remains unclear. Previous studies have revealed how adults' brains respond to infants, but there is little research into the relationship between non-infant objects that have kawaii-ness and the brain, particularly its structure. Therefore, in this study, using data from 182 healthy men and women, including 90 participants from a toy manufacturer's fan community (TMFC), we analyzed the relationship between the adoption of kawaii-ness and the gray matter volume (GMV) of region of interest (ROI). The results showed that the adoption of kawaii-ness was significantly and positively related to the GMV of the putamen, insula, frontal gyrus (FG), and rectus in the TMFC sample in an analysis that controlled for demographic data. Of these, the significant relationships between putamen and FG and adoption survived multiple comparisons. This is the first study to clarify the relationship between adoption of kawaii-ness and brain structure.

Pregnancy is a period of profound biological transformation. However, we know remarkably little about pregnancy-related brain changes. To address this gap, we chart longitudinal changes in brain structure during pregnancy and explore potential mechanisms driving these changes. Ten participants (Mean age = 28.97 years) are assessed 1-6 times (median = 3) during their pregnancy. Each visit includes anatomical and diffusion-weighted MRI, and assessments of waking salivary hormones, hair hormones, and inflammatory cytokines. Here we observe a reduction in gray matter volume and an increase in neurite density index (NDI), a proxy of axon density, in white matter tracts across pregnancy. Progesterone levels are associated with reductions in brain volumetric measurements, and both progesterone and estradiol levels are linked to increases in NDI in white matter tracts. This study highlights the profound neurobiological changes experienced by pregnant individuals and provides insights into neuroplasticity in adulthood.

Pregnancy is a period of profound biological transformation. However, we know remarkably little about pregnancy-related brain changes. To address this gap, we chart longitudinal changes in brain structure during pregnancy and explore potential mechanisms driving these changes. Ten participants (Mean age = 28.97 years) are assessed 1-6 times (median = 3) during their pregnancy. Each visit includes anatomical and diffusion-weighted MRI, and assessments of waking salivary hormones, hair hormones, and inflammatory cytokines. Here we observe a reduction in gray matter volume gestational week, while neurite density index (NDI), a proxy of axon density, in white matter tracts increase across pregnancy. Progesterone levels are associated with reductions in brain volumetric measurements, and both progesterone and estradiol levels are linked to increases in NDI in white matter tracts. This study highlights the profound neurobiological changes experienced by pregnant individuals and provides insights into neuroplasticity in adulthood.

This methodological paper examines the assessment of interpersonal synchrony during a joint dancing task between mothers and their children (aged 4 to 5 years) using OpenPose. This pose estimation tool captures movement in naturalistic settings. The study analyzes 45 mother-child dyads, comparing two analytical methods for assessing synchrony, and examines their correlation with the Coding Interactive Behavior (CIB) measure of interaction quality. The first method employs cross-wavelet transform (CWT) coherence to assess synchrony based on vertical head movement. This straightforward and computationally efficient approach reveals a significant correlation between interpersonal synchrony and CIB scores, thus implying its potential as a reliable indicator of interaction quality and suggesting its potential as a measure of interaction quality. The second method, the generalized cross-wavelet transform (GCWT), analyzes synchrony across multiple body parts, offering a more complex and detailed analysis of interpersonal dynamics. However, it did not significantly correlate with the CIB scores. Our findings suggest that focusing on head movement using CWT can effectively capture critical elements of interpersonal synchrony linked to interaction quality. In contrast, despite its richness, the more complex GCWT approach may not align as closely with observed interactive behaviors as the CIB scores indicate. This study underscores the need to balance methodological complexity and ecological validity in research, offering insights into selecting analytical techniques based on research objectives and the nuances of interpersonal dynamics. Our results contribute to the field of interpersonal synchrony research, emphasizing the benefits of efficient methods in understanding mother-child interactions and interaction relationships in general.

Genetic variations in single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within oxytocin pathway genes have been linked to social behavior and neurodevelopmental conditions. However, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these associations remain elusive. In this study, we investigated the relationship between variations of 10 SNPs in oxytocin pathway genes and resting-state functional connectivity among 55 independent components using a large sample from the UK Biobank (N ≈ 30,000). Our findings revealed that individuals with the GG genotype at rs4813627 within the oxytocin structural gene (OXT) exhibited weaker resting-state functional connectivity in the corticostriatal circuit compared to those with the GA/AA genotypes. Empirical evidence has linked the GG genotype at OXT rs4813627 with a behavioral tendency of insensitivity to others. These results inform the neural mechanisms by which oxytocin-related genetic factors can influence social behavior.

An increasing body of evidence indicates that owning a pet dog is associated with improvements in child health and well-being. Importantly, the degree of the social bond between child and dog may mediate the beneficial outcomes of dog ownership. The formation of social bonds is an intrinsically dyadic, interactive process where each interactor's behavior influences the other's behavior. For this reason, it is critical to evaluate the biological mechanisms of attachment in both children and their pet dogs as a socially bonded pair. Here, we review the physical, mental, and emotional outcomes that are associated with pet dog ownership or interaction in children. We then discuss the evidence that suggests that the strength of a social bond between a child and their pet dog matters for maximizing the beneficial outcomes associated with pet dog ownership, such as possible stress-buffering effects. We review the existing literature on the neural and endocrinological mechanisms of social attachment for inter-species social bonds that form between human children and dogs, situating this emerging knowledge within the context of the mechanisms of intra-species bonds in mammals. Finally, we highlight the remaining open questions and point toward directions for future research.

The interplay between personality traits and impulsivity has long been a central theme in psychology and psychiatry. However, the potential association between Greed Personality Traits (GPT) and impulsivity, encompassing both trait and state impulsivity and future time perspective, remains largely unexplored. To address these issues, we employed questionnaires and an inter-temporal choice task to estimate corresponding trait/state impulsivity and collected multi-modal neuroimaging data (resting-state functional imaging: n = 430; diffusion-weighted imaging: n = 426; task-related functional imaging: n = 53) to investigate the underlying microstructural and functional substrates. Behavioral analyses revealed that GPT mediated the association between time perspective (e.g., present fatalism) and trait impulsivity (e.g., motor impulsivity). Functional imaging analyses further identified that brain activation strengths and patterns related to delay length, particularly in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, superior parietal lobule, and cerebellum, were associated with GPT. Moreover, individuals with similar levels of greed exhibited analogous spontaneous brain activity patterns, predominantly in the Default Mode Network (DMN), Fronto-Parietal Network (FPN), and Visual Network (VIS). Diffusion imaging analysis observed specific microstructural characteristics in the spinocerebellar/pontocerebellar fasciculus, internal/external capsule, and corona radiata that support the formation of GPT. Furthermore, the corresponding neural activation pattern, spontaneous neural activity pattern, and analogous functional couplings among the aforementioned brain regions mediated the relationships between time perspective and GPT and between GPT and motor impulsivity. These findings provide novel insights into the possible pathway such as time perspective → dispositional greed → impulsivity and uncover their underlying microstructural and functional substrates.

The transition to parenthood is perhaps the only time in adult life when the brain changes to such a significant degree in such a short period, particularly in birthing parents. It is also a time when there is an increased risk of developing a mental illness, which may be due, in part, to the increased neuroplasticity. Thus, we must develop interventions and treatments that support parents and promote parental brain health. This review will highlight key findings from current research on how human brain structure and function are modified with 1) the transition to parenthood, 2) parenting stress and perinatal mental illness, and 3) treatments aimed at promoting perinatal mental health. The focus will be on birthing parents and mothers, but brain changes in non-birthing parents will also be discussed. Improvements in our understanding of the parental brain, in health and with illness, will promote the well-being of generations to come.

The current study is the first to document the real-time association between phone use and speech to infants in extended real-world interactions. N= 16 predominantly White (75%) mother-infant dyads (infants aged M = 4.1 months, SD = 2.3; 63% female) shared 16,673 min of synchronized real-world phone use and Language Environment Analysis audio data over the course of 1 week (collected 2017-2020) for our analyses. Maternal phone use was associated with a 16% decrease in infants' speech input, with shorter intervals of phone use (1-2 min) associated with a greater 26% decrease in speech input relative to longer periods. This work highlights the value of multimodal sensing to access dynamic, within-person, and context-specific predictors of speech to infants in real-world settings.

Baby schema features are a specific set of physical features-including chubby cheeks, large, low-set eyes, and a large, round head-that have evolutionary adaptive value in their ability to trigger nurturant care. In this study among nulliparous women (N = 81; M age = 23.60, SD = 0.44), we examined how sensitivity to these baby schema features differs based on individual variations in nurturant care motivation and oxytocin system gene methylation. We integrated subjective ratings with measures of facial expressions and electroencephalography (EEG) in response to infant faces that were manipulated to contain more or less pronounced baby schema features. Linear mixed effects analyses demonstrated that infants with more pronounced baby schema features were rated as cuter and participants indicated greater motivation to take care of them. Furthermore, infants with more pronounced baby schema features elicited stronger smiling responses and enhanced P2 and LPP amplitudes compared to infants with less pronounced baby schema features. Importantly, individual differences significantly predicted baby schema effects. Specifically, women with low OXTR methylation and high nurturance motivation showed enhanced differentiation in automatic neurophysiological responses to infants with high and low levels of baby schema features. These findings highlight the importance of considering individual differences in continued research to further understand the complexities of sensitivity to child cues, including facial features, which will improve our understanding of the intricate neurobiological system that forms the basis of caregiving behavior.

Parenthood, particularly motherhood, is known to impact the structure and function of the brain in the short term, but the long-term effects of parenthood and their impacts on well-being are still poorly understood. This study explores the potential longer-term associations between parenthood and the brain, parenthood and well-being, and the potential role of brain modifications in influencing mothers' well-being. Using data from the UK Biobank, which includes brain imaging information from individuals aged 45-82 at the MRI scanning, we discovered differences in brain structure between mothers and non-mothers, with mothers exhibiting widely distributed higher gray matter density, particularly strong in frontal and occipital regions. No brain changes were observed in fathers. Parents reported a higher sense of life's meaning compared to their childless counterparts. Gray matter changes did not mediate the relationship between motherhood and well-being. This suggests that the alterations in gray matter associated with motherhood do not play a deterministic role in shaping long-term changes in well-being.

Recent research shows prominent effects of pregnancy and the parenthood transition on structural brain characteristics in humans. Here, we present a comprehensive study of how parental status and number of children born/fathered links to markers of brain and cellular ageing in 36,323 UK Biobank participants (age range 44.57-82.06 years; 52% female). To assess global effects of parenting on the brain, we trained a 3D convolutional neural network on T1-weighted magnetic resonance images, and estimated brain age in a held-out test set. To investigate regional specificity, we extracted cortical and subcortical volumes using FreeSurfer, and ran hierarchical clustering to group regional volumes based on covariance. Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) derived from DNA was used as a marker of cellular ageing. We employed linear regression models to assess relationships between number of children, brain age, regional brain volumes, and LTL, and included interaction terms to probe sex differences in associations. Lastly, we used the brain measures and LTL as features in binary classification models, to determine if markers of brain and cellular ageing could predict parental status. The results showed associations between a greater number of children born/fathered and younger brain age in both females and males, with stronger effects observed in females. Volume-based analyses showed maternal effects in striatal and limbic regions, which were not evident in fathers. We found no evidence for associations between number of children and LTL. Classification of parental status showed an Area under the ROC Curve (AUC) of 0.57 for the brain age model, while the models using regional brain volumes and LTL as predictors showed AUCs of 0.52. Our findings align with previous population-based studies of middle- and older-aged parents, revealing subtle but significant associations between parental experience and neuroimaging-based surrogate markers of brain health. The findings further corroborate results from longitudinal cohort studies following parents across pregnancy and postpartum, potentially indicating that the parenthood transition is associated with long-term influences on brain health.

The experience of parenthood can profoundly alter one's body, mind, and environment, yet we know little about the long-term associations between parenthood and brain function and aging in adulthood. Here, we investigate the link between number of children parented (parity) and age on brain function in 19,964 females and 17,607 males from the UK Biobank. In both females and males, increased parity was positively associated with functional connectivity, particularly within the somato/motor network. Critically, the spatial topography of parity-linked effects was inversely correlated with the impact of age on functional connectivity across the brain for both females and males, suggesting that a higher number of children is associated with patterns of brain function in the opposite direction to age-related alterations. These results indicate that the changes accompanying parenthood may confer benefits to brain health across the lifespan, highlighting the importance of future work to understand the associated mechanisms.

Functional imaging studies and clinical evidence indicate that cortical areas relevant to social cognition are closely integrated with evolutionarily conserved basal forebrain structures and neighboring regions, enabling human attachment and affiliative emotions. The neural circuitry of human affiliation is continually being unraveled as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) becomes increasingly prevalent, with studies examining human brain responses to various attachment figures. However, previous fMRI meta-analyses on affiliative stimuli have encountered challenges, such as low statistical power and the absence of robustness measures. To address these issues, we conducted an exhaustive coordinate-based meta-analysis of 79 fMRI studies, focusing on personalized affiliative stimuli, including one's infants, family, romantic partners, and friends. We employed complementary coordinate-based analyses (Activation Likelihood Estimation and Signed Differential Mapping) and conducted a robustness analysis of the results. Findings revealed cluster convergence in cortical and subcortical structures related to reward and motivation, salience detection, social bonding, and cognition. Our study thoroughly explores the neural correlates underpinning affiliative responses, effectively overcoming the limitations noted in previous meta-analyses. It provides an extensive view of the neural substrates associated with affiliative stimuli, illuminating the intricate interaction between cortical and subcortical regions. Our findings significantly contribute to understanding the neurobiology of human affiliation, expanding the known human attachment circuitry beyond the traditional basal forebrain regions observed in other mammals to include uniquely human isocortical structures.

Positive and negative parental affect influence developing parent-child attachment relationships, especially during infancy as well as children's social-emotional, academic, and behavioral functioning later in life. Increasingly, because both mothers and fathers can play central caregiving roles, the parenting qualities of both parents demand consideration. Therefore, this study investigated whether parental gender and caregiving role were associated with mothers' and fathers' positive affect and negative affect during interactions with their 4-month-old firstborn infant, while determining whether parenting stress, infant temperament, having a singleton/twin, and living in the Netherlands, France, or the United Kingdom were related to parental positive affect and negative affect. In all, 135 different-sex, same-sex male, and same-sex female couples (113 fathers and 157 mothers, comprising 147 primary, and 123 secondary caregivers) who conceived through artificial reproductive techniques were studied. The couples were videorecorded at home while in feeding, cleaning, and playing contexts to assess the levels of positive and negative parental affect. In addition, the couples completed questionnaires about their caregiving role, parenting stress, and the infants' temperament. Mixed linear models indicated that the levels of positive and negative parental affect toward the infant in all contexts were not related to parental gender, caregiving role, the interaction between parental gender and caregiving role, parenting stress, infant temperament, or singleton/twin status. However, the target parental behaviors were related to the country of origin, suggesting differences among Dutch, French, and British parents. Overall, we found no evidence that gender or caregiving roles were associated with the levels of positive and negative affect shown by the parents.

Parent-child shared experiences has an important influence on social development in children although contributions of mothers and fathers may differ. Neural synchronicity occurs between mothers and fathers and their children during social interactions but it is unclear whether they differ in this respect. We used data from simultaneous fNIRS hyperscanning in mothers (n = 33) and fathers (n = 29) and their children (3-4 years) to determine different patterns and strengths of neural synchronization in the frontal cortex during co-viewing of videos or free-play. Mothers showed greater synchrony with child than fathers during passive viewing of videos and the synchronization was positively associated with video complexity and negatively associated with parental stress. During play interactions, mothers showed more controlling behaviors over their child and greater evidence for joint gaze and joint imitation play with child whereas fathers spent more time gazing at other things. In addition, different aspects of child communication promoted neural synchrony between mothers and fathers and child during active play interactions. Overall, our findings indicate greater neural and behavioral synchrony between mothers than fathers and young children during passive or active shared experiences, although for both it was weakened by parental distress and child difficulty.

Attentional bias toward infant faces is associated with parental sensitivity and supports the infant-caregiver attachment relationship, ultimately fostering child health outcomes. However, experience-related determinants of parents' attentional bias to infant faces have been poorly investigated. We examined attentional bias to infant versus adult faces in a sample of same-sex mothers (N = 76), and whether it varied depending on maternal involvement in childcare and the perceived quality of past experiences of care.

A Go/no-Go attentional task was used to compare the effects of infant and adult faces in retaining attention. Maternal involvement in childcare was measured using items addressing nurturing behaviors. Memories of past experiences of care were collected using the short-form version of the Parental Acceptance-Rejection scale.

Results confirmed that infant faces induced greater attentional bias compared to adult faces. More involved mothers were more biased, in terms of attention, to infant versus adult faces. Attentional bias to infant versus adult faces increased as mothers felt more rejected by their own fathers during childhood.

Our findings suggested that attentional bias to infant faces might be associated with past experiences of care and direct commitment in childcare in same-sex mothers. Robust and accurate empirical findings on same-sex parent families are essential to inform social policies supporting these families' well being.

Sleep is critical to a variety of cognitive functions and insufficient sleep can have negative consequences for mood and behavior across the lifespan. An important open question is how sleep duration is related to functional brain organization which may in turn impact cognition. To characterize the functional brain networks related to sleep across youth and young adulthood, we analyzed data from the publicly available Human Connectome Project (HCP) dataset, which includes n-back task-based and resting-state fMRI data from adults aged 22-35 years (task n = 896; rest n = 898). We applied connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) to predict participants' mean sleep duration from their functional connectivity patterns. Models trained and tested using 10-fold cross-validation predicted self-reported average sleep duration for the past month from n-back task and resting-state connectivity patterns. We replicated this finding in data from the 2-year follow-up study session of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which also includes n-back task and resting-state fMRI for adolescents aged 11-12 years (task n = 786; rest n = 1274) as well as Fitbit data reflecting average sleep duration per night over an average duration of 23.97 days. CPMs trained and tested with 10-fold cross-validation again predicted sleep duration from n-back task and resting-state functional connectivity patterns. Furthermore, demonstrating that predictive models are robust across independent datasets, CPMs trained on rest data from the HCP sample successfully generalized to predict sleep duration in the ABCD Study sample and vice versa. Thus, common resting-state functional brain connectivity patterns reflect sleep duration in youth and young adults.

During early life-sensitive periods (i.e., fetal, infancy), the developing stress response system adaptively calibrates to match environmental conditions, whether harsh or supportive. Recent evidence suggests that puberty is another window when the stress system is open to recalibration if environmental conditions have shifted significantly. Whether additional periods of recalibration exist in adulthood remains to be established. The present paper draws parallels between childhood (re)calibration periods and the perinatal period to hypothesize that this phase may be an additional window of stress recalibration in adult life. Specifically, the perinatal period (defined here to include pregnancy, lactation, and early parenthood) is also a developmental switch point characterized by heightened neural plasticity and marked changes in stress system function. After discussing these similarities, lines of empirical evidence needed to substantiate the perinatal stress recalibration hypothesis are proposed, and existing research support is reviewed. Complexities and challenges related to delineating the boundaries of perinatal stress recalibration and empirically testing this hypothesis are discussed, as well as possibilities for future multidisciplinary research. In the theme of this special issue, perinatal stress recalibration may be a mechanism of multilevel, multisystem risk, and resilience, both intra-individually and intergenerationally, with implications for optimizing interventions.

Fathers have been an important source of child endurance and prosperity since the dawn of civilization, promoting adaptation to social rules, defining cultural meaning systems, teaching daily living skills, and providing the material background against which children developed; still, the recent reformulation in the role of the father requires theory-building. Paternal caregiving is rare in mammals, occurring in 3-5% of species, expresses in multiple formats, and involves flexible neurobiological accommodations to ecological conditions and active caregiving. Here, we discuss father contribution to resilience across development. Our model proposes three tenets of resilience - plasticity, sociality, and meaning - and discussion focuses on father-specific contributions to each tenet at different developmental stages; newborn, infant, preschooler, child, and adolescent. Father's style of high arousal, energetic physicality, guided participation in daily skills, joint adventure, and conflict resolution promotes children's flexible approach and social competence within intimate bonds and social groups. By expanding children's interests, sharpening cognitions, tuning affect regulation, encouraging exploration, and accompanying the search for identity, fathers support the sense of meaning, enhancing the human-specific dimension of resilience. We end by highlighting pitfalls to paternal contribution, including absence, abuse, rigidity, expectations, and gender typing, and the need to formulate novel theories to accommodate the "involved dad."

We aimed to evaluate (1) fathers' perceptions and care involvement for their very premature infants and their views of the hospitalization period based on parental reports and (2) their evolution over time.

We used an online parental survey to assess answers from parents of very preterm infants who were successfully discharged from French neonatal units. We analysed answers from February 2014 to January 2019 to an anonymous internet-based survey from the GREEN committee of the French Neonatal Society. Responses were compared for period 1 (P1, 1998 to 2013) and period 2 (P2, 2014 to 2019).

We analyzed 2,483 surveys, 124 (5%) from fathers and 2,359 (95%) from mothers. At birth, 1,845 (80%) fathers were present in the hospital, but only 879 (38%) were near the mother. The presence of fathers in the NICU increased from P1 to P2 (34.5% vs. 43.1%, p = 0.03). Nearly two thirds of fathers accompanied their infants during transfer to the NICU (1,204 fathers, 60.6%). Fathers and mothers had similar perceptions regarding relationships with caregivers and skin-to-skin contact with their infants. However, more fathers than mothers felt welcome in the NICU and in care involvement regarding requests for their wishes when they met their infant (79% vs. 60%, p = 0.02) and in the presentation of the NICU (91% vs. 76%; p = 0.03). Mothers and fathers significantly differed in the caring procedures they performed (p = 0.01), procedures they did not perform but wanted to perform (p < 0.001), and procedures they did not perform and did not want to perform (p < 0.01).

Most fathers were present at the births of their very preterm infants, but fewer fathers were near the mother at this time. Less than two thirds of fathers accompanied their infants to the NICU. There should be further changes to better meet the specific needs of the fathers of infants requiring care in the NICU. Continuing assessment with an online questionnaire may be useful to monitor changes over time in father's involvement in NICUs.

Infant stimuli elicit widespread neural and behavioral response in human adults, and such massive allocation of resources attests to the evolutionary significance of the primary attachment. Here, we examined whether attachment reminders also trigger cross-brain concordance and generate greater neural uniformity, as indicated by intersubject correlation. Human mothers were imaged twice in oxytocin/placebo administration design, and stimuli included four ecological videos of a standard unfamiliar mother and infant: two infant/mother alone (Alone) and two mother-infant dyadic contexts (Social). Theory-driven analysis measured cross-brain synchrony in preregistered nodes of the parental caregiving network (PCN), which integrates subcortical structures underpinning mammalian mothering with cortical areas implicated in simulation, mentalization, and emotion regulation, and data-driven analysis assessed brain-wide concordance using whole-brain parcellation. Results demonstrated widespread cross-brain synchrony in both the PCN and across the neuroaxis, from primary sensory/somatosensory areas, through insular-cingulate regions, to temporal and prefrontal cortices. The Social context yielded significantly more cross-brain concordance, with PCNs striatum, parahippocampal gyrus, superior temporal sulcus, ACC, and PFC displaying cross-brain synchrony only to mother-infant social cues. Moment-by-moment fluctuations in mother-infant social synchrony, ranging from episodes of low synchrony to tightly coordinated positive bouts, were tracked online by cross-brain concordance in the preregistered ACC. Findings indicate that social attachment stimuli, representing evolutionary-salient universal cues that require no verbal narrative, trigger substantial interbrain concordance and suggest that the mother-infant bond, an icon standing at the heart of human civilization, may function to glue brains into a unified experience and bind humans into social groups.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Infant stimuli elicit widespread neural response in human adults, attesting to their evolutionary significance, but do they also trigger cross-brain concordance and induce neural uniformity among perceivers? We measured cross-brain synchrony to ecological mother-infant videos. We used theory-driven analysis, measuring cross-brain concordance in the parenting network, and data-driven analysis, assessing brain-wide concordance using whole-brain parcellation. Attachment cues triggered widespread cross-brain concordance in both the parenting network and across the neuroaxis. Moment-by-moment fluctuations in behavioral synchrony were tracked online by cross-brain variability in ACC. Attachment reminders bind humans' brains into a unitary experience and stimuli characterized by social synchrony enhance neural similarity among participants, describing one mechanism by which attachment bonds provide the neural template for the consolidation of social groups.

Controllability is a measure of the brain's ability to orchestrate neural activity which can be quantified in terms of properties of the brain's network connectivity. Evidence from the literature suggests that aging can exert a general effect on whole-brain controllability. Mounting evidence, on the other hand, suggests that parenthood and motherhood in particular lead to long-lasting changes in brain architecture that effectively slow down brain aging. We hypothesize that parenthood might preserve brain controllability properties from aging.

In a sample of 814 healthy individuals (aged 33.9 ± 12.7 years, 522 females), we estimate whole-brain controllability and compare the aging effects in subjects with vs. those without children. We use diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to estimate the brain structural connectome. The level of brain control is then calculated from the connectomic properties of the brain structure. Specifically, we measure the network control over many low-energy state transitions (average controllability) and the network control over difficult-to-reach states (modal controllability).

In nulliparous females, whole-brain average controllability increases, and modal controllability decreases with age, a trend that we do not observe in parous females. Statistical comparison of the controllability metrics shows that modal controllability is higher and average controllability is lower in parous females compared to nulliparous females. In men, we observed the same trend, but the difference between nulliparous and parous males do not reach statistical significance. Our results provide strong evidence that parenthood contradicts aging effects on brain controllability and the effect is stronger in mothers.

Women's lifelong health and nutrition status is intricately related to their reproductive history, including the number and spacing of their pregnancies and births, and for how long and how intensively they breastfeed their children. In turn, women's reproductive biology is closely linked to their social roles and situation, including regarding economic disadvantage and disproportionate unpaid work. Recognizing, as well as reducing and redistributing women's care and domestic work (known as the 'Three Rs'), is an established framework for addressing women's inequitable unpaid care work. However, the care work of breastfeeding presents a dilemma, and is even a divisive issue, for advocates of women's empowerment, because reducing breastfeeding and replacing it with commercial milk formula risks harming women's and children's health. It is therefore necessary for the interaction between women's reproductive biology and infant care role to be recognized in order to support women's human rights and enable governments to implement economic, employment and other policies to empower women. In this paper, we argue that breastfeeding-like childbirth-is reproductive work that should not be reduced and cannot sensibly be directly redistributed to fathers or others. Rather, we contend that the Three Rs agenda should be reconceptualized to isolate breastfeeding as 'sexed' care work that should be supported rather than reduced with action taken to avoid undermining breastfeeding. This means that initiatives toward gender equality should be assessed against their impact on women's ability to breastfeed. With this reconceptualization, adjustments are also needed to key global economic institutions and national statistical systems to appropriately recognize the value of this work. Additional structural supports such as maternity protection and childcare are needed to ensure that childbearing and breastfeeding do not disadvantage women amidst efforts to reduce gender pay gaps and gender economic inequality. Distinct policy interventions are also required to facilitate fathers' engagement in enabling and supporting breastfeeding through sharing the other unpaid care work associated with parents' time-consuming care responsibilities, for both infants and young children and related household work.

Single parent adoption (SPA) is a relatively new construct worldwide and in India. The Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, has laid down criteria for adoption in general and SPA in particular, in conjunction with the Juvenile Justice Act (Care and Protection of Children), 2015. There is scant literature on this topic of SPA, more so in India, that looks into the various psychological nuances of SPA from a mental health professional's (MHP) perspective. This review paper aims to assess SPA from the perspective of a MHP that will focus on its various legal nuances as well as the psychological connotations attached to it. For this, a search strategy was employed that included a thorough literature search from two databases (PubMed and Google Scholar) with relevant keywords related to the topic. The various legal issues pertaining to SPA in the current scenario, the psychological issues and challenges faced by single parents, the behavioral outcomes of adoptees who are adopted by single parents, and ways to deal with the various obstacles of SPA are discussed.

Today, the distribution of parental roles is organised around an equity that is more than justified, but has the consequence of creating a territorial watershed where the negotiation of values, opinions, wishes and deep-seated needs is constantly activated. Where societal definitions used to provide a framework and contentment for transactions within the couple, the new generation finds itself obliged to cooperate and redefine the spaces and roles of each, with intergenerational issues multiplied tenfold and marital crisis often heightened.

While there has been an increase in studies investigating the relationship between endogenous oxytocin (OXT) concentrations and human social interactions over the past decades, these studies still seem far from converging, both in methodological terms and in terms of their results. This systematic review and meta-analysis were aimed at a comprehensive evaluation and synthesis of empirical evidence on the relationship between endogenous OXT concentrations and human social interactions by reviewing studies published between 1970 and July 2020 and addressing various related methodological and analytical limitations. Sixty-three studies were included in the qualitative synthesis, and results from 51 studies were pooled in a meta-analysis (n = 3,741 participants). The results indicated that social interaction did not lead to an expected hormonal response in causal designs, either in a pre-post design (g = 0.079) or when comparing experimental conditions with and without social interaction (g = 0.256). However, in correlational designs, the overall mean effect size (ES) of the correlations between indicators of social interaction and OXT concentrations was significantly different from zero (z = 0.137). In both designs, subgroup analyses revealed that studies involving either parent-child interactions, or the utilization of the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method for OXT analysis, or unrestricted eating, drinking, or exercise before biofluid collection showed significantly higher than zero mean ESs. This review exposes the observed inconsistencies and suggests that standardized, replicable, and reliable approaches to assessing social interaction and measuring OXT concentrations need to be developed to study neurochemical mechanisms of sociality in humans. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Pregnancy is associated with prominent structural changes in brain areas involved in Theory of Mind (ToM), pointing to the possibility of modifications in ToM-related behavior and brain responses in parents. We performed a systematic review screening for studies that examined ToM in pregnant and/or early postpartum parents. The evaluation of the included 12 studies allowed us to construct an overview of ToM changes during pregnancy and postpartum as well as other associated factors, such as oxytocin, mental health, and parental behavior. Four studies examined ToM changes by comparing pregnant/early postpartum parents with nulliparous parents or prepregnancy measures. They reported no differences between groups measured with a self-report questionnaire but found group differences using an experimental approach. The results from the summarized studies further suggest a mediatory role of oxytocin between ToM and certain parental behavior. In addition, while no link between postpartum depression and ToM was observed, findings do point to an association between depressive and remote maternal behavior and anxious attachment style and ToM abilities in pregnant participants. Research findings regarding the interaction of ToM with both parity and maternal attachment to the fetus are ambivalent. Overall, research on this topic is scarce, limiting our ability to draw firm conclusions and stressing the need for further research on this topic. This review presents an overview of research findings on ToM and associated factors in pregnancy and the postpartum period and discusses directions for future research.

This study aimed to explore the relationship between masculinity, perceived social support and depression symptomology in the postpartum period in new and experienced fathers.

Cross-sectional questionnaire study.

A total of 118 first- and second-time fathers (N = 48) of infants aged under 12-months, currently residing in the United Kingdom.

Questionnaires consisted of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory, and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Data were analysed through inferential statistics.

Masculine norms of self-reliance and primacy of work were positively related to depression symptomology in both father groups. Perceived social support was negatively related to depression symptomology. Further analyses revealed significant effects regarding partner health status and depression symptomology. No significant differences were found between presentation of first- and second-time fathers.

Main findings support partners as a part of the family unit. Findings have implications for midwives in that an increased understanding of these factors in early fatherhood could improve family outcomes.

Fathers contribute substantially to infant care, yet the mechanisms facilitating paternal bonding and interactions with infants are not as well understood as they are in mothers. Several hormonal changes occur as males transition into parenthood, first in response to a partner's pregnancy, and next in response to interacting with the newborn. These changes may prepare fathers for parenting and help facilitate and maintain paternal care. Experimental studies with monkeys and rodents suggest that paternal care requires elevated estradiol levels, which increase when a male's partner is pregnant and are higher in fathers than non-fathers, but its role in the expression of paternal behaviors throughout infant development is unknown. To assess estradiol's role in paternal care, we analyzed the relationship between paternal estradiol metabolites and 1) offspring age, and 2) paternal care behavior (holding, carrying, huddling, playing, grooming), in wild, red-bellied lemurs (Eulemur rubriventer). We collected 146 fecal samples and 1597 h of behavioral data on 10 adult males who had newborn infants during the study. Estradiol metabolites increased four-fold in expectant males, and in new fathers they fluctuated and gradually decreased with time. Infant age, not paternal behavior, best predicted hormone levels in new fathers. These results suggest that hormonal changes occur in expectant males with facultative paternal care, but they do not support the hypothesis that estradiol is directly associated with the day-to-day expression of paternal care. Future research should explore estradiol's role in facilitating behaviors, including infant-directed attention and responsiveness, or preparing fathers for infant care generally.

Previous studies have demonstrated that paternal caregiving behaviors are reliant on neural pathways similar to those supporting maternal care. Interestingly, a greater variability exists in parental phenotypes in men than in women among individuals and mammalian species. However, less is known about when or how such variability emerges in men. We investigated the longitudinal changes in the neural, hormonal, and psychological bases of expression of paternal caregiving in humans throughout pregnancy and the first 4 months of the postnatal period. We measured oxytocin and testosterone, paternity-related psychological traits, and neural response to infant-interaction videos using fMRI in first-time fathers and childless men at three time points (early to mid-pregnancy, late pregnancy, and postnatal). We found that paternal-specific brain activity in prefrontal areas distinctly develops during middle-to-late pregnancy and is enhanced in the postnatal period. In addition, among fathers, the timing of the development of prefrontal brain activity was associated with specific parenting phenotypes.

Profound environmental, hormonal, and neurobiological changes mark the transition to motherhood as a major biosocial life event. Despite the ubiquity of motherhood, the enduring impact of caregiving on cognition and the brain across the lifespan is not well characterized and represents a unique window of opportunity to investigate human neural and cognitive development. By integrating insights from the human and animal maternal brain literatures with theories of cognitive ageing, we outline a framework for understanding maternal neural and cognitive changes across the lifespan. We suggest that the increased cognitive load of motherhood provides an initial challenge during the peripartum period, requiring continuous adaptation; yet when these demands are sustained across the lifespan, they result in increased late-life cognitive reserve.