Fig. 6.

The neurobiology of response to infant stimuli. Most of the literature investigating the neurobiology of mother-child attachment involves mothers watching scenes or videos of themselves with their children, or videos of their own babies or strange babies in various emotional states (e.g., happy, distressed, neutral). A) When mothers watched videos of themselves interacting with their own children, fMRI research shows increased activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, fusiform gyrus, cuneus, inferior parietal lobule, supplementary motor area, and nucleus accumbens. B) When mothers watched videos of their children, they generated greater activation in the amygdala and hypothalamus when their child was distressed as opposed to happy. C) Some research has investigated “high sensitivity” and” low sensitivity” mothers based on plasma oxytocin levels immediately following mother-child play. When shown their own child and a stranger’s child in neutral, happy or sad states, high sensitivity mothers displayed increased activation of the right superior temporal gyrus when their own child was happy compared to neutral. This was not seen in low-response mothers.