title: Regional Brain Responses Are Biased Toward Infant Facial Expressions Compared to Adult Facial Expressions in Nulliparous Women.
abstract: Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that neutral infant faces compared to neutral adult faces elicit greater activity in brain areas associated with face processing, attention, empathic response, reward, and movement. However, whether infant facial expressions evoke larger brain responses than adult facial expressions remains unclear. Here, we performed event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging in nulliparous women while they were presented with images of matched unfamiliar infant and adult facial expressions (happy, neutral, and uncomfortable/sad) in a pseudo-randomized order. We found that the bilateral fusiform and right lingual gyrus were overall more activated during the presentation of infant facial expressions compared to adult facial expressions. Uncomfortable infant faces compared to sad adult faces evoked greater activation in the bilateral fusiform gyrus, precentral gyrus, postcentral gyrus, posterior cingulate cortex-thalamus, and precuneus. Neutral infant faces activated larger brain responses in the left fusiform gyrus compared to neutral adult faces. Happy infant faces compared to happy adult faces elicited larger responses in areas of the brain associated with emotion and reward processing using a more liberal threshold of p < 0.005 uncorrected. Furthermore, the level of the test subjects' Interest-In-Infants was positively associated with the intensity of right fusiform gyrus response to infant faces and uncomfortable infant faces compared to sad adult faces. In addition, the Perspective Taking subscale score on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index-Chinese was significantly correlated with precuneus activity during uncomfortable infant faces compared to sad adult faces. Our findings suggest that regional brain areas may bias cognitive and emotional responses to infant facial expressions compared to adult facial expressions among nulliparous women, and this bias may be modulated by individual differences in Interest-In-Infants and perspective taking ability.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.|Center for Mental Health Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Bingbing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Educational Science, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang, China.
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.|Center for Mental Health Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Dajun
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.|Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Dongtao
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.|Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Qiao
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.|Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Xiangpeng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre, The Alfred and Central Clinical School, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: Xianwei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Che
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D055815:Young Adult