Journal
CEREBRAL CORTEX
Volume 19, Issue 5, Pages 1124-1133Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhn153
Keywords
attachment; emotional expressions; empathy; mirror system; mother-child
Categories
Funding
- Italian Ministry of University and Research
- International Psychoanalytic Association
- Research Advisory Board
- Italian Ministry of Health
- Santa Lucia Neuroimaging Laboratory
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During the first year of life, exchanges and communication between a mother and her infant are exclusively preverbal and are based on the mother's ability to understand her infant's needs and feelings (i.e., empathy) and on imitation of the infant's facial expressions; this promotes a social dialog that influences the development of the infant self. Sixteen mothers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while observing and imitating faces of their own child and those of someone else's child. We found that the mirror neuron system, the insula and amygdala were more active during emotional expressions, that this circuit is engaged to a greater extent when interacting with one's own child, and that it is correlated with maternal reflective function (a measure of empathy). We also found, by comparing single emotions with each other, that joy expressions evoked a response mainly in right limbic and paralimbic areas; by contrast, ambiguous expressions elicited a response in left high order cognitive and motor areas, which might reflect cognitive effort.
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