ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Neurobiology of culturally common maternal responses to infant cry.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 60 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
60 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 165 citations in OpenAlex.
- The neuroscience of social feelings: mechanisms of adaptive social functioning.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Pooled it
- A corticohypothalamic circuit that mediates maternal awakening to pup cries.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Parents' neural dynamics in response to their children's speech.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Variation in Everyday Maternal Sensitivity Predicts Infants' Real-Time Physiological Regulation.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- The impact of labor induction in vaginal delivery on the development of mother-to-infant bonding and the mediating role of breastfeeding practices: the Japan Environment and Children's Study.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2026Article
- Parental experience and professional training shape the perception of comfort and discomfort in preterm and term newborns.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Infant caregiving, relational factors, mood, and pain in perinatal opioid use disorder: A prospective cohort with ecological momentary assessment.Addictive behaviors · 2026Article
- Altered functional connectivity of emotional circuits and default mode network in postpartum women: a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Everyday maternal sensitivity to distress is dynamic and systematically varies across contexts.Child development · 2026Article
- Investigating the role of executive function in brain responses to infant crying among new parents.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Exploring the Contribution of Gender Roles on Adults' EEG Responses to Infant Faces.Archives of sexual behavior · 2025Article
- Specific Neural Mechanisms Underlying Humans' Processing of Information Related to Companion Animals: A Comparison with Domestic Animals and Objects.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 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
- Stress and parental behaviors.Neuroscience research · 2025Review
- Neural circuit plasticity transforms infant neglect into maternal care.Research square · 2025Article
- Birthing parents' neural response to infant cry: moderating effects of oxytocin and perceived childhood care.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Maternal cortisol concentration is associated with reduced brain activation to infant cry and more intrusive parenting behavior.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- The neurobiology of parenting and infant-evoked aggression.Physiological reviews · 2025Review
- Humans need auditory experience to produce typical volitional nonverbal vocalizations.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Maternal contingent responses to distress facilitate infant soothing but not in mothers with depression or infants high in negative affect.Developmental psychology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
This report coordinates assessments of five types of behavioral responses in new mothers to their own infants' cries with neurobiological responses in new mothers to their own infants' cries and in experienced mothers and inexperienced nonmothers to infant cries and other emotional and control sounds. We found that 684 new primipara mothers in 11 countries (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, France, Kenya, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United States) preferentially responded to their infants' vocalizing distress by picking up and holding and by talking to their infants, as opposed to displaying affection, distracting, or nurturing. Complementary functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analyses of brain responses to their own infants' cries in 43 new primipara US mothers revealed enhanced activity in concordant brain territories linked to the intention to move and to speak, to process auditory stimulation, and to caregive [supplementary motor area (SMA), inferior frontal regions, superior temporal regions, midbrain, and striatum]. Further, fMRI brain responses to infant cries in 50 Chinese and Italian mothers replicated, extended, and, through parcellation, refined the results. Brains of inexperienced nonmothers activated differently. Culturally common responses to own infant cry coupled with corresponding fMRI findings to own infant and to generic infant cries identified specific, common, and automatic caregiving reactions in mothers to infant vocal expressions of distress and point to their putative neurobiological bases. Candidate behaviors embedded in the nervous systems of human caregivers lie at the intersection of evolutionary biology and developmental cultural psychology.
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