Gender and parental status affect the visual cortical response to infant facial expression.
paper
Cited
Public
Unavailable
- Authors
- Proverbio, Alice Mado; Brignone, Valentina; Matarazzo, Silvia; Del Zotto, Marzia; Zani, Alberto
- Year
- 2006
- Journal
- Neuropsychologia
- PMID
- 16879841
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.06.015
This study sought to determine the influence of gender and parental status on the brain potentials elicited by viewing infant facial expressions. We used ERP recording during a judgement task of infant happy/distressed expression to investigate if viewer gender or parental status affects the visual cortical response at various stages of perceptual processing. ERPs were recorded in 38 adults (male/female, parents/non-parents) during processing of infant facial expressions that varied in valence and intensity. All infants were unfamiliar to viewers. The lateral occipital P110 response was much larger in women than in men, regardless of facial expression, thus indicating a gender difference in early visual processing. The occipitotemporal N160 response provided the first evidence of discrimination of expressions of discomfort and distress and demonstrated a significant gender difference within the parent group, thus suggesting a strong interactive influence of genetic predisposition and parental status on the responsivity of visual brain areas. The N245 component exhibited complete coding of the intensity of facial expression, including positive expressions. At this processing stage the cerebral responses of female and male non-parents were significantly smaller than those of parents and insensitive to differences in the intensity of infant suffering. Smaller P300 amplitudes were elicited in mothers versus fathers, especially with infant expressions of suffering. No major group differences were observed in cerebral responses to happy or comfortable expressions. These findings suggest that mere familiarity with infant faces does not explain group differences.
No figures extracted from this document.
No chunks — full text not yet ingested.
No entities extracted from this document yet.
No uploaded files.
Not in any collection.
No citations found.
In this knowledge base
External
| Title | Authors | Journal | Year | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| State and trait late positive potential predict maternal mental health. | Choi J et al. | — | 2026 | → |
| A Role for Fetal Movement in Shaping Maternal Neurodevelopment. | Rutherford HJV et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| Baby don't cry: Unconscious sensitivity to sad baby faces. | Guida E et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| Exploring the Contribution of Gender Roles on Adults' EEG Responses to Infant Faces. | Gemignani M et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| Motion-based baby schema in infant gait: inversion effect and the influence of maternal experience. | Shimizu Y et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| Selective attraction to shorter muzzles in dogs is a hidden driver of the brachycephalic welfare crisis. | Bognár Z et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| The influence of infantile cues on motivated perception of threats among caregivers. | Murrugarra E et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| The neurostructural bases of empathy: morphometric evidence for a multicomponential approach. | Arioli M et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| EEG responses to infant faces in young adults can be influenced by the quality of early care experiences with caregivers. | Gemignani M et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Effects of cleft lip on visual scanning and neural processing of infant faces. | Hahn AC et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| In the eye and mind of the beholder: The effects of familiarisation on the perception of atypical infant facial configurations. | Hunt BW et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Lorenz's classic 'baby schema': a useful biological concept? | Kawaguchi Y et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Modulation of the attentional response to baby schema by testosterone in pedohebephilic men and its relation to the nurturing system. | Zannoni R et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Moral approval of xenotransplantation in Egypt: associations with religion, attitudes towards animals and demographic factors. | Andrade G et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Neither Parents' Sex Nor the Type of Family Modulates Attentional Bias Toward Infant Faces: A Preliminary Study in Different-Sex and Same-Sex Parents. | Gemignani M et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Reduced spatial frequency differentiation and sex-related specificities in fearful face detection in autism: Insights from EEG and the predictive brain model. | Lacroix A et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Sex modulation of faces prediction error in the autistic brain. | Lacroix A et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| You're Beautiful When You Smile: Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP) Evidence of Early Opposite-Gender Bias in Happy Faces. | Schmuck J et al. | — | 2024 | → |
| Adult attachment is related to maternal neural response to infant cues: an ERP study. | Lowell AF et al. | — | 2023 | → |
| Comparative survey of multigraph integration methods for holistic brain connectivity mapping. | Chaari N et al. | — | 2023 | → |
| Emojis Are Comprehended Better than Facial Expressions, by Male Participants. | Dalle Nogare L et al. | — | 2023 | → |
| Functional near-infrared spectroscopy is a useful tool for multi-perspective psychobiological study of neurophysiological correlates of parenting behaviour. | Russo C et al. | — | 2023 | → |
| Identifying the cortical face network with dynamic face stimuli: A large group fMRI study | Pitcher D et al. | — | 2023 | — |
| In the mind of the beholder: The effects of familiarisation on the perception of atypical infant facial configurations. | Hunt BW et al. | — | 2023 | → |
| Racial disparities in EEG research and their implications for our understanding of the maternal brain. | Penner F et al. | — | 2023 | → |
| Sex differences in the social brain and in social cognition. | Proverbio AM | — | 2023 | → |
| Attentional Prioritization of Infant Faces in Parents: The Influence of Parents' Experiences of Care. | Gemignani M et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| Deliberate control over facial expressions in motherhood. Evidence from a Stroop-like task. | Recio G et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| Does neural face processing explain effects of an attachment-based intervention on maternal sensitivity? A randomized controlled study including pre- and postintervention measures. | Kolijn L et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| Hormonal and behavioral responses to an infant simulator in women with and without children. | Sinisalo H et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| Increased child-evoked activation in the precuneus during facial affect recognition in mothers. | Plank IS et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| Motherhood and theory of mind: increased activation in the posterior cingulate cortex and insulae. | Plank IS et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| The effects of prenatal stress on neural responses to infant cries in expectant mothers and fathers. | Peoples SG et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| The multiple indicator multiple cause model for cognitive neuroscience: An analytic tool which emphasizes the behavior in brain-behavior relationships. | Rosen AFG et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| The physiology of maternal sensitivity to distress: An exploratory study of mothers' electrocortical and sympathetic nervous system reactivity. | Frost A et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| The Recognition of Facial Expressions Under Surgical Masks: The Primacy of Anger. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2022 | → |
| Estimation of gender-specific connectional brain templates using joint multi-view cortical morphological network integration. | Chaari N et al. | — | 2021 | → |
| Imagining the baby: Neural reactivity to infant distress and mind-mindedness in expectant parents. | Rutherford HJV et al. | — | 2021 | → |
| Increased activation in the bilateral anterior insulae in response to others in pain in mothers compared to non-mothers. | Plank IS et al. | — | 2021 | → |
| Maternal perinatal anxiety and neural responding to infant affective signals: Insights, challenges, and a road map for neuroimaging research. | Yatziv T et al. | — | 2021 | → |
| Neurocognitive processing of infant stimuli in mothers and non-mothers: psychophysiological, cognitive and neuroimaging evidence. | Bjertrup A et al. | — | 2021 | → |
| Pupillary and Attentional Responses to Infant Facial Expressions in Mothers Across Socioeconomic Variations. | Yrttiaho S et al. | — | 2021 | → |
| Sexual dimorphism in hemispheric processing of faces in humans: A meta-analysis of 817 cases. | Proverbio AM | — | 2021 | → |
| Brain Responses to Emotional Infant Faces in New Mothers and Nulliparous Women. | Zhang K et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| Changes in Cortical Sensitivity to Infant Facial Cues From Pregnancy to Motherhood Predict Mother-Infant Bonding. | Dudek J et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| Facial recognition during early motherhood: Investigating the persistence of age and affect biases. | Bunderson M et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| Multimodal Recognition of Emotions in Music and Facial Expressions. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| Neural Responses to Infant Emotions and Emotional Self-Awareness in Mothers and Fathers during Pregnancy. | Trentini C et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| Shared neural mechanisms for processing emotions in music and vocalizations. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| Substance use and mothers' neural responses to infant cues. | Lowell AF et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| What a cute baby! Preliminary evidence from a fMRI study for the association between mothers' neural responses to infant faces and activation of the parental care system. | Endendijk JJ et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| Early processing (N170) of infant faces in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder and its association with maternal sensitivity. | Márquez C et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Investigating the association between parity and the maternal neural response to infant cues. | Maupin AN et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Latent profiles of maternal neural response to infant emotional stimuli: Associations with maternal sensitivity. | Kuzava S et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Parenting stress: A novel mechanism of addiction vulnerability. | Rutherford HJ et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Postnatal mental health and mothers' processing of infant emotion: an eye-tracking study. | Webb R et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| The maternal brain: Neural responses to infants in mothers with and without mood disorder. | Bjertrup AJ et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Towards a neural model of infant cry perception. | Witteman J et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Differential Effects of Intranasal Vasopressin on the Processing of Adult and Infant Cues: An ERP Study. | Wu X et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| Enhanced Nogo-P3 amplitudes of mothers compared with non-mother women during an emotional Go/Nogo task. | Hayashi S et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| Gender Differences in Processing Fearful and Angry Body Expressions. | He Z et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| How face blurring affects body language processing of static gestures in women and men. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| Mothers' neural responses to infant faces are associated with activation of the maternal care system and observed intrusiveness with their own child. | Endendijk JJ et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| Oxytocin promotes face-sensitive neural responses to infant and adult faces in mothers. | Peltola MJ et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| Anxiety and neural responses to infant and adult faces during pregnancy. | Rutherford HJV et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Attentional bias toward infant faces - Review of the adaptive and clinical relevance. | Lucion MK et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Attractiveness Modulates Neural Processing of Infant Faces Differently in Males and Females. | Yin L et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Duration of motherhood has incremental effects on mothers' neural processing of infant vocal cues: a neuroimaging study of women. | Parsons CE et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Electrophysiological evidence for women superiority on unfamiliar face processing. | Sun T et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Interpreting infant emotional expressions: Parenthood has differential effects on men and women. | Parsons CE et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Intranasal oxytocin and the neural correlates of infant face processing in non-parent women. | Rutherford HJV et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Intuitive parenting: understanding the neural mechanisms of parents' adaptive responses to infants. | Parsons CE et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Mothers' pupillary responses to infant facial expressions. | Yrttiaho S et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Parental reflective functioning and the neural correlates of processing infant affective cues. | Rutherford HJV et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Sex differences in social cognition: The case of face processing. | Proverbio AM | — | 2017 | → |
| The neural basis of responsive caregiving behaviour: Investigating temporal dynamics within the parental brain. | Young KS et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| The special status of sad infant faces: age and valence differences in adults' cortical face processing. | Colasante T et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| The Tromso Infant Faces Database (TIF): Development, Validation and Application to Assess Parenting Experience on Clarity and Intensity Ratings. | Maack JK et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Changes in empathy-related cry responding as a function of time: A time course study of adult's responses to infant crying. | Lin HC et al. | — | 2016 | → |
| Depression symptomatology and the neural correlates of infant face and cry perception during pregnancy. | Rutherford HJ et al. | — | 2016 | → |
| Early and late event-related potentials are modulated by infant and adult faces of high and low attractiveness. | Hahn AC et al. | — | 2016 | → |
| Oestrogens are Not Related to Emotional Processing: a Study of Regional Brain Activity in Female-to-Male Transsexuals Under Gonadal Suppression. | Soleman RS et al. | — | 2016 | → |
| Regional Brain Responses Are Biased Toward Infant Facial Expressions Compared to Adult Facial Expressions in Nulliparous Women. | Li B et al. | — | 2016 | → |
| Women are better at seeing faces where there are none: an ERP study of face pareidolia. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2016 | → |
| Adults with siblings like children's faces more than those without. | Luo L et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Common and divergent psychobiological mechanisms underlying maternal behaviors in non-human and human mammals. | Lonstein JS et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Effects of an Attachment-Based Intervention on Child Protective Services--Referred Mothers' Event-Related Potentials to Children's Emotions. | Bernard K et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Emotion Regulation in Parenthood. | Rutherford HJ et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| ERP signs of categorical and supra-categorical processing of visual information. | Zani A et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Gender difference in N170 elicited under oddball task. | Choi D et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Maternal anxiety and neural responses to infant faces. | Malak SM et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Parental brain: cerebral areas activated by infant cries and faces. A comparison between different populations of parents and not. | Piallini G et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Reward processing deficits and impulsivity in high-risk offspring of alcoholics: A study of event-related potentials during a monetary gambling task. | Kamarajan C et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| The Application of Electroencephalography to Investigate the Neural Bases of Parenting: A Review. | Maupin AN et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Here's looking at you, kid: attention to infant emotional faces in mothers and non-mothers. | Thompson-Booth C et al. | — | 2014 | → |
| I can't take my eyes off of you: attentional allocation to infant, child, adolescent and adult faces in mothers and non-mothers. | Thompson-Booth C et al. | — | 2014 | → |
| Maternal prefrontal cortex activation by newborn infant odors. | Nishitani S et al. | — | 2014 | → |
| Neural and behavioral responses to attractiveness in adult and infant faces. | Hahn AC et al. | — | 2014 | → |
| Why do we laugh at misfortunes? An electrophysiological exploration of comic situation processing. | Manfredi M et al. | — | 2014 | → |
| Differentiated brain activity in response to faces of "own" versus "unfamiliar" babies in primipara mothers: an electrophysiological study. | Bornstein MH et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| Gender differences in the incentive salience of adult and infant faces. | Hahn AC et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| Minor structural abnormalities in the infant face disrupt neural processing: a unique window into early caregiving responses. | Parsons CE et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| Understanding the human parental brain: a critical role of the orbitofrontal cortex. | Parsons CE et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| Event-related potentials elicited in mothers by their own and unfamiliar infants' faces with crying and smiling expression. | Doi H et al. | — | 2012 | → |
| Identification and classification of facial familiarity in directed lying: an ERP study. | Sun D et al. | — | 2012 | → |
| Increasing parity is associated with cumulative effects on memory. | Glynn LM | — | 2012 | → |
| Investigating the impact of parental status and depression symptoms on the early perceptual coding of infant faces: an event-related potential study. | Noll LK et al. | — | 2012 | → |
| Parental and romantic attachment shape brain processing of infant cues. | Weisman O et al. | — | 2012 | → |
| Sex differences in callosal transfer and hemispheric specialization for face coding. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2012 | → |
| Is it a baby? Perceived age affects brain processing of faces differently in women and men. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2011 | → |
| Neural coding of cooperative vs. affective human interactions: 150 ms to code the action's purpose. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2011 | → |
| Depressive symptoms in early pregnancy disrupt attentional processing of infant emotion. | Pearson RM et al. | — | 2010 | → |
| Face coding is bilateral in the female brain. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2010 | → |
| Brain signatures of monetary loss and gain: outcome-related potentials in a single outcome gambling task. | Kamarajan C et al. | — | 2009 | → |
| Sex differences in the brain response to affective scenes with or without humans. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2009 | → |
| Spatiotemporal mapping of sex differences during attentional processing. | Neuhaus AH et al. | — | 2009 | → |
| Neural markers of a greater female responsiveness to social stimuli. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2008 | → |
| Theta oscillations during the processing of monetary loss and gain: a perspective on gender and impulsivity. | Kamarajan C et al. | — | 2008 | → |
| Brain oscillations are highly influenced by gender differences. | Güntekin B et al. | — | 2007 | → |
| Gender differences influence brain's beta oscillatory responses in recognition of facial expressions. | Güntekin B et al. | — | 2007 | → |
| Processing valence and intensity of infant expressions: the roles of expertise and gender. | Proverbio AM et al. | — | 2007 | → |