ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Father's brain is sensitive to childcare experiences.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 107 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Arousal Pathways and Emergence From Sedation
The Effects of Acupressure and Paternal Holding on Pain and Physiological Parameters in Infants During Heel Lancing: a Randomized Controlled Trial
Who cites it
107 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 335 citations in OpenAlex.
- The perceived influence of fathers' and non-gestational parents' experiences of postnatal depression on their relationship with their child and partner: a systematic review of qualitative studies and meta-synthesis.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- The Role of Paternal Involvement on Behavioral Sensitive Responses and Neurobiological Activations in Fathers: A Systematic Review.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- Interpersonal Synchrony in the Context of Caregiver-Child Interactions: A Document Co-citation Analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Endogenous oxytocin and human social interactions: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychological bulletinPooled it
- Story-Telling Attention-Refocusing (STAR) intervention to alleviate acute stress in parents of infants in the NICU.Journal of neonatal-perinatal medicine · 2025Trial
- Parental brain responses to own and unknown children's emotional facial expressions: An fMRI study.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Scent of a father: Paternal body odors boost interbrain synchrony.Science advances · 2026Article
- The Impact of Childhood Trauma on Neuropsychological Disorders and Its Intergenerational Transmission Mechanisms.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Navigating Stress: Exploring the Role of Empathy in Caregiving.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- The paternal brain: longitudinal insights into structural and functional plasticity and attachment over 24 weeks postpartum.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- All you need is love: preliminary validation of a new test of 10 parenting competencies that predict good outcomes with young children.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- A holistic review of fatherhood in humans and non-human animals: mechanisms of fatherhood, effects on fathers themselves, and interactions of fathers with others.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Mother-child dyadic interactions shape the developing social brain and Theory of Mind in young children.eLife · 2025Article
- Exploring the Contribution of Gender Roles on Adults' EEG Responses to Infant Faces.Archives of sexual behavior · 2025Article
- An exploratory fMRI study on the association of parental involvement in childcare with brain responses to infant vocalisations and dyadic interaction quality in same-sex mother families.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Risky family environment, white matter organization, and effective parenting in expectant fathers.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- My Baby Versus the World: Fathers' Neural Processing of Own-Infant, Unfamiliar-Infant, and Romantic Partner Stimuli.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Empathy and Parental Sensitivity in Child Attachment and Socioemotional Development: A Systematic Review from Emotional, Genetic, and Neurobiological Perspectives.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Caregiver or Playmate? Fathers' and mothers' brain responses to ball-play with children.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
47 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although contemporary socio-cultural changes dramatically increased fathers' involvement in childrearing, little is known about the brain basis of human fatherhood, its comparability with the maternal brain, and its sensitivity to caregiving experiences. We measured parental brain response to infant stimuli using functional MRI, oxytocin, and parenting behavior in three groups of parents (n = 89) raising their firstborn infant: heterosexual primary-caregiving mothers (PC-Mothers), heterosexual secondary-caregiving fathers (SC-Fathers), and primary-caregiving homosexual fathers (PC-Fathers) rearing infants without maternal involvement. Results revealed that parenting implemented a global "parental caregiving" neural network, mainly consistent across parents, which integrated functioning of two systems: the emotional processing network including subcortical and paralimbic structures associated with vigilance, salience, reward, and motivation, and mentalizing network involving frontopolar-medial-prefrontal and temporo-parietal circuits implicated in social understanding and cognitive empathy. These networks work in concert to imbue infant care with emotional salience, attune with the infant state, and plan adequate parenting. PC-Mothers showed greater activation in emotion processing structures, correlated with oxytocin and parent-infant synchrony, whereas SC-Fathers displayed greater activation in cortical circuits, associated with oxytocin and parenting. PC-Fathers exhibited high amygdala activation similar to PC-Mothers, alongside high activation of superior temporal sulcus (STS) comparable to SC-Fathers, and functional connectivity between amygdala and STS. Among all fathers, time spent in direct childcare was linked with the degree of amygdala-STS connectivity. Findings underscore the common neural basis of maternal and paternal care, chart brain-hormone-behavior pathways that support parenthood, and specify mechanisms of brain malleability with caregiving experiences in human fathers.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.