Publication year
2010Source
Psychoneuroendocrinology, 35, 1, (2010), pp. 114-21ISSN
Annotation
01 januari 2010
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor
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Organization
Neurology
PI Group Memory & Emotion
Former Organization
F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging
Journal title
Psychoneuroendocrinology
Volume
vol. 35
Issue
iss. 1
Page start
p. 114
Page end
p. 21
Subject
130 000 Cognitive Neurology & Memory; 130 026 VENI Hermans, ‘In a fit of fear’; DCN 2: Functional Neurogenomics; DCN 3: NeuroinformaticsAbstract
Parental responsiveness to infant vocalizations is an essential mechanism to ensure parental care, and its importance is reflected in a specific neural substrate, the thalamocingulate circuit, which evolved through mammalian evolution subserving this responsiveness. Recent studies using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) provide compelling evidence for a comparable mechanism in humans by showing thalamocingulate responses to infant crying. Furthermore, possibly acting on this common neural substrate, steroid hormones such as estradiol and testosterone, seem to mediate parental behavior both in humans and other animals. Estradiol unmistakably increases parental care, while data for testosterone are less unequivocal. In humans and several other animals, testosterone levels decrease both in mothers and fathers during parenthood. However, exogenous testosterone in mice seems to increase parenting, and infant crying leads to heightened testosterone levels in human males. Not only is the way in which testosterone is implicated in parental responsiveness unresolved, but the underlying mechanisms are fully unknown. Accordingly, using fMRI, we measured neural responses of 16 young women who were listening to crying infants in a double blind, placebo-controlled, counterbalanced, testosterone administration experiment. Crucially, heightened activation in the testosterone condition compared to placebo was shown in the thalamocingulate region, insula, and the cerebellum in response to crying. Our results by controlled hormonal manipulation confirm a role of the thalamocingulate circuit in infant cry perception. Furthermore, the data also suggest that exogenous testosterone, by itself or by way of its metabolite estradiol, in our group of young women acted on this thalamocinculate circuit to, provisionally, upregulate parental care.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [238430]
- Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging [3824]
- Faculty of Medical Sciences [90359]
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