title: Maternal prefrontal cortex activation by newborn infant odors.
abstract: Mothers are attracted by infant cues of a variety of different modalities. To clarify the possible neural mechanisms underlying maternal attraction to infant odor cues, we used near-infrared spectroscopy to examine prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity during odor detection tasks in which 19 mothers and 19 nulliparous females (nonmothers) were presented with infant or adult male odors. They were instructed to make a judgment about whether they smelled an odor during each task. We estimated the PFC activity by measuring the relative oxyhemoglobin (oxyHb) concentrations. The results showed that while detecting the infant odors, bilateral PFC activities were increased in mothers but not in nonmothers. In contrast, adult male odors activated the PFC similarly in mothers and nonmothers. These findings suggest that maternal activation of the PFC in response to infant odors explains a part of the neural mechanisms for maternal attraction to infant odors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Unit of Basic Medical Sciences, Course of Medical and Dental Sciences, Nagasaki University, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, 1-12-4 Sakamoto, Nagasaki, Japan. kazuyuki@nagasaki-u.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Shota
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nishitani
authors.forename: Saori
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuwamoto
authors.forename: Asuka
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Takahira
authors.forename: Tsunetake
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Miyamura
authors.forename: Kazuyuki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Shinohara
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009812:Odorants; D010108:Oxyhemoglobins / Q000032:analysis; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D019265:Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared
chemical_list: D010108:Oxyhemoglobins
keywords: imaging; infant odor; maternal behavior; near-infrared spectroscopy; prefrontal cortex; reproduction