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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on May 30, 2008
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn081
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Prefrontal Activation Associated with Social Attachment: Facial-Emotion Recognition in Mothers and Infants

Yasuyo Minagawa-Kawai1,2,3, Sunao Matsuoka1, Ippeita Dan4, Nozomi Naoi1,2, Katsuki Nakamura2,5 and Shozo Kojima1,2

1 Department of Psychology, Keio University, 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8345, Japan, 2 Japan Agency of Science and Technology, Saitama 332-0012, Japan, 3 Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, ENS-DEC-EHESS-CNRS, 29 rue d'Ulm, Paris 75005, France, 4 National Food Research Institute, Tsukuba 305-8642, Japan, 5 National Institute of Neuroscience, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, 4-1-1Ogawa-Higashi, Kodaira, Tokyo 187-8502, Japan

Address correspondence to Yasuyo Minagawa-Kawai, PhD, Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, ENS-DEC-EHESS-CNRS, 29 rue d'Ulm, Paris 75005, France. Email: myasuyo{at}bea.hi-ho.ne.jp.

Attachment between mothers and infants is the most primitive and primary form of human social relationship. Many reports have suggested that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) plays a significant role in this attachment; however, only a select few provide experimental neurophysiological evidence. In the present study, to determine the neural substrates underlying the social and emotional attachment between mothers and infants, we measured their prefrontal activation by using near-infrared spectroscopy. We used movie stimuli that could robustly induce a positive affect, and the results for viewing own versus unfamiliar infants showed that own-infant viewing elicited increased activations around the anterior part of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in the mothers. Their response magnitude in that area was also correlated with the behavioral rating of the pleasant mood of infants. Furthermore, our study revealed that the infants' prefrontal activation around the anterior OFC is specific to viewing their mothers' smile. These results suggest the OFC's role in regulating and encoding the affect in attachment system and also show that infants share similar neuronal functions with mothers, associated with their bonds at 1 year of age. We further discussed infants' prefrontal activations and their implications for the development of the social brain network.

Key Words: attachment • emotion • infant • near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) • orbitofrontal cortex • social cognition


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