ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2020
How do expectant fathers respond to infant cry? Examining brain and behavioral responses and the moderating role of testosterone.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Father Trait Anger and Exposure to Infant Cry: Effects on Emotion, Appraisals of Infants, and Cognitive Performance.Journal of personality · 2026Article
- Intrinsic resting-state connectivity and personal meaning across the transition to fatherhood.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 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
- Motivational increase of androgens and behavior by infant distress calls in highly responsive common marmoset fathers, Callithrix jacchus.Hormones and behavior · 2022Article
- The Neural Basis of Human Fatherhood: A Unique Biocultural Perspective on Plasticity of Brain and Behavior.Clinical child and family psychology review · 2022Review
- Recent Neuroscience Advances in Human Parenting.Advances in neurobiology · 2022Article
- Child maltreatment affects fathers' response to infant crying, not mediated by cortisol or testosterone.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Article
- Exploring the hormonal and neural correlates of paternal protective behavior to their infants.Developmental psychobiology · 2021Article
- The Paternal Transition Entails Neuroanatomic Adaptations that are Associated with the Father's Brain Response to his Infant Cues.Cerebral cortex communications · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Expectant parents' responses to infant cry may indicate future risk and resiliency in the parent-child relationship. Most studies of parental reactivity to infant cry have focused on mothers, and few studies have focused on expectant fathers, although fathers make important contributions to parenting. Additionally, although different responses to infant cry (behavioral, psychological and neural) are hypothesized to track together, few studies have analyzed them concurrently. The current investigation aimed to address these gaps by characterizing multimodal responses to infant cry within expectant fathers and testing whether prenatal testosterone moderates these responses. Expectant fathers responded to infant cry vs frequency-matched white noise with increased activation in bilateral areas of the temporal lobe involved in processing speech sounds and social and emotional stimuli. Handgrip force, which has been used to measure parents' reactivity to cry sounds in previous studies, did not differentiate cry from white noise within this sample. Expectant fathers with higher prenatal testosterone showed greater activation in the supramarginal gyrus, left occipital lobe and precuneus cortex to cry sounds. Expectant fathers appear to interpret and process infant cry as a meaningful speech sound and social cue, and testosterone may play a role in expectant fathers' response to infant cry.
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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.