Prefrontal activity in young women when interpreting infant emotions
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Caregiver- infant interaction, an important factor in the socio-emotional development of infants, is guided by caregivers' interpretations of the infant emotions. Little is known, however, about the neural basis of the interpretation process. This study measured neural activity in the prefrontal cortex of young women as they interpreted infant emotions. Healthy female participants (N=14), who had never been pregnant, performed an emotion interpretation task and a control task. In the emotion interpretation task, participants were shown a photograph of an infant's subtle facial expression and were requested to identify the emotion that the infant was expressing. . In the control task, they were asked to identify the number of dots presented on a computer screen. Oxygenated hemoglobin concentrations in the prefrontal cortex were monitored during these tasks using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Results indicated that during the emotion interpretation task, the oxygenated hemoglobin signal increased in a broad area of the prefrontal cortex and increased significantly more (p < .01) in the left orbital area compared to in the control task. These result suggest that the left orbitofrontal cortex is related to the process of interpreting infant emotions and that the functioning of this area affects the quality of caregiver-infant interactions.
Author: 松澤, 正子
Language: Japanese
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7208224721