ReviewFrontiers in psychology2015
Neural systems and hormones mediating attraction to infant and child faces.
Review in Frontiers in psychology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
- Parental brain responses to own and unknown children's emotional facial expressions: An fMRI study.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Postpartum maternal bonding problems relate to aberrant neural processing of infant emotions: Results of an adapted fMRI emotional GoNoGo task.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Selective attenuation of neural responses to own infant's face in early motherhood: a longitudinal magnetoencephalography study.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Article
- Examining the Link Between Social Affect and Visual Exploration of Cute Stimuli in Autistic Children.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Exploring the Contribution of Gender Roles on Adults' EEG Responses to Infant Faces.Archives of sexual behavior · 2025Article
- Stress and reward in the maternal brain of mothers with borderline personality disorder: a script-based fMRI study.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2024Article
- Neural effects of viewing children's faces on mental fatigue: a magnetoencephalography study.Experimental brain research · 2022Article
- The interaction engine: cuteness selection and the evolution of the interactional base for language.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Stronger brain activation for own baby but similar activation toward babies of own and different ethnicities in parents living in a multicultural environment.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Motherhood and theory of mind: increased activation in the posterior cingulate cortex and insulae.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2022Article
- Voices as Cues to Children's Needs for Caregiving.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2022Article
- The regulatory roles of progesterone and estradiol on emotion processing in women.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2021Article
- Emotional Infant Face Processing in Women With Major Depression and Expecting Parents With Depressive Symptoms.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Secure Attachment Priming Amplifies Approach Motivation for Infant Faces Among Childless Adults.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Eye Size Affects Cuteness in Different Facial Expressions and Ages.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- It takes two! Exploring sex differences in parenting neurobiology and behaviour.Journal of neuroendocrinology · 2019Review
- Specific maternal brain responses to their own child's face: An fMRI meta-analysis.Developmental review : DR · 2019Article
- Neural processing of the own child's facial emotions in mothers with a history of early life maltreatment.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2019Article
- Oxytocin reduces neural activation in response to infant faces in nulliparous young women.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We find infant faces highly attractive as a result of specific features which Konrad Lorenz termed "Kindchenschema" or "baby schema," and this is considered to be an important adaptive trait for promoting protective and caregiving behaviors in adults, thereby increasing the chances of infant survival. This review first examines the behavioral support for this effect and physical and behavioral factors which can influence it. It then provides details of the increasing number of neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies investigating the neural circuitry underlying this baby schema effect in parents and non-parents of both sexes. Next it considers potential hormonal contributions to the baby schema effect in both sexes and the neural effects associated with reduced responses to infant cues in post-partum depression, anxiety and drug taking. Overall the findings reviewed reveal a very extensive neural circuitry involved in our perception of cuteness in infant faces, with enhanced activation compared to adult faces being found in brain regions involved in face perception, attention, emotion, empathy, memory, reward and attachment, theory of mind and also control of motor responses. Both mothers and fathers also show evidence for enhanced responses in these same neural systems when viewing their own as opposed to another child. Furthermore, responses to infant cues in many of these neural systems are reduced in mothers with post-partum depression or anxiety or have taken addictive drugs throughout pregnancy. In general reproductively active women tend to rate infant faces as cuter than men, which may reflect both heightened attention to relevant cues and a stronger activation in their brain reward circuitry. Perception of infant cuteness may also be influenced by reproductive hormones with the hypothalamic neuropeptide oxytocin being most strongly associated to date with increased attention and attraction to infant cues in both sexes.
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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.