Maternal love: How a mother's brain responds to her infant

The distinctive ability of mothers to identify the cries of their offspring is widely evident in nature, where it is critical to the survival of these offspring. In humans, we are aware that the distinctive ability of mothers to recognize and respond to the smiles and cries of their babies plays an important role in the psychological, cognitive, and social development of these babies.

We have had a very limited understanding of how the maternal brain accomplishes these amazing feats, but a new study published in the February 15th issue of Biological Psychiatry now provides some new insight.

Noriuchi, Kikuchi, et al. used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a tool that enables scientists to study the function of brain circuits in people, to examine patterns of maternal brain activation. The authors asked healthy mothers to view video clips, which showed either their own infant (approximate age of 16 months) or an unknown infant in two emotional conditions – either happy or upset/crying.

Dr. Madoka Noriuchi, senior author on the paper explains their findings: “We found that a limited number of mother’s brain areas were specifically related to maternal love, and the specific pattern of mother’s response was observed for her infant’s attachment behaviors evoking mother’s care-taking behaviors for vigilant protectiveness.”

In other words, they discovered that particular circuits in the brain, involving several regions in the cerebral cortex and limbic system, are distinctively activated when mothers distinguish the smiles and cries of their own infants from those of other infants. The authors also found that a mother responds more strongly to the crying than the smiling of her own infant, which, according to the authors, seems “to be biologically meaningful in terms of adaptation to specific demands associated with successful infant care.”

John H. Krystal, M.D., Editor of Biological Psychiatry and affiliated with both Yale University School of Medicine and the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, discusses the importance of this study: “This type of knowledge provides the beginnings of a scientific understanding of human maternal behavior. This knowledge could be helpful some day in developing treatments for the many problems and diseases that may adversely affect the mother-infant relationship.”

The article is “The Functional Neuroanatomy of Maternal Love: Mother's Response to Infant's Attachment Behaviors” by Madoka Noriuchi, Yoshiaki Kikuchi and Atsushi Senoo. The authors are from the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Frontier Health Science, Division of Human Health Science, Graduate School of Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan. The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 63, Issue 4 (February 15, 2008), published by Elsevier.

Source: Elsevier

Related stories:

Study shows that chronic grief activates pleasure areas of the brain
Findings could change how health professionals treat the disorder
Grief is universal, and most of us will probably experience the pain grief brings at some point in our lives, usually with the death of a loved one. In time, we move on, accepting the loss.
C-sections a critical factor in preterm birth increase
Cesarean sections account for nearly all of the increase in U.S. singleton preterm births, according to an analysis of nine years of national birth data.
New gene discovered for new form of intellectual disability
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has discovered a new form of intellectual disability involving mental retardation (MR) along with the eye defect retinitis pigmentosa (RP). CAMH also discovered the previously unidentified gene that causes this disorder, CC2D2A.
Clues to ancestral origin of placenta emerge in Stanford study
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have uncovered the first clues about the ancient origins of a mother's intricate lifeline to her unborn baby, the placenta, which delivers oxygen and nutrients critical to the baby's health.
Negligent, attentive mouse mothers show biological differences
In mice, child neglect is a product of both nature and nurture, according to a new study. Writing in the journal PLoS ONE on April 9, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison describe a strain of mice that exhibit unusually high rates of maternal neglect, with approximately one out of every five females failing to care for her offspring.
Your baby's brain on drugs (and alcohol and tobacco)
Although behavioral studies clearly indicate that exposure to drugs, alcohol and tobacco in utero is bad for a baby’s developing brain, specific anatomic brain effects have been hard to tease out in humans. Often users don’t limit themselves to one substance, and demographic factors like poverty can also influence brain development.
Chikungunya virus and maternal infection
Chikungunya virus, an infectious agent transmitted by mosquitoes, appears seldom to harm infants of mothers infected early in pregnancy, but can frequently cause serious problems, including lasting brain injury, in babies born to mothers who acquire the virus near the time of delivery, according to a study in PLoS Medicine.
Mother-daughter conflict, low serotonin level may be deadly combination
A combination of negative mother-daughter relationships and low blood levels of serotonin, an important brain chemical for mood stability, may be lethal for adolescent girls, leaving them vulnerable to engage in self-harming behaviors such as cutting themselves.

News discussion:

Medicine & Health news