Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 9, 2026
07:12
Profiling Maternal Behavior Responses During Whole-Brain Imaging
Published on: January 24, 2025
Associations Between New Mothers' Neural Reward Response and Perceptions of Their Own Infant
Kaylin E Hill1, Julia Garon-Bissonnette2, McKenzie N Greene1
1Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA.
Developmental Psychobiology
|May 8, 2026
Summary
Mothers' neural reward responsiveness, measured by the reward positivity (RewP) brain signal, is linked to their positive perceptions of their infant. This finding highlights the connection between maternal motivation and infant perception.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Social Neuroscience
Background:
- Reward responsiveness is crucial for social motivation and caregiver-infant interactions.
- The reward positivity (RewP) is a neural marker of reward responsiveness, measurable via electroencephalogram (EEG).
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between mothers' neural reward responsiveness and their perceptions of their infant in the early postpartum period.
- To examine RewP in response to both social and monetary rewards.
Main Methods:
- Ninety-one mothers underwent continuous EEG recording during monetary and social incentive delay tasks.
- Mothers provided personality descriptors for their infants.
- The RewP was analyzed in response to winning a social reward (viewing infant photo) and monetary reward.
Main Results:
- Both social and monetary RewP showed significant positive associations with mothers' positive infant perceptions.
- Mothers' neural motivational systems correlate with how they view their child.
Conclusions:
- Maternal neural reward processing is associated with infant perception, impacting caregiver functioning.
- Understanding this link is vital for the caregiver-child relationship and child development.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
01:28Relationship with Parents: Attachment
Parent-child interactions lay the foundation for how we understand relationships throughout life. These interactions are not uniform across families; instead, they are shaped by a range of environmental, emotional, and behavioral factors unique to each caregiver-child dynamic. Social psychologists study these early relationships to understand how patterns formed in infancy influence social functioning and interpersonal behavior in adulthood.Attachment Theory and Early Relational ModelsJohn...
01:20Attachment
Attachment is vital for infant development, as warm social interactions support growth and well-being. In a classic 1958 study by Harry Harlow, the significance of warmth and comfort in forming attachments was examined. Harlow separated newborn monkeys from their mothers and provided two artificial "mothers": one made of cold wire and the other covered in soft cloth. Despite the wire mother offering food, the infant monkeys preferred the comfort of the cloth mother, demonstrating that physical...
00:55Parental Care
Many animals exhibit parental care behavior, including feeding, grooming, and protecting young offspring. Parental care is universal in mammals and birds, which often have young that are born relatively helpless. Several species of insects and fish, as well as some amphibians, also care for their young.
01:22Imprinting
Behavioral imprinting is observed in some newborn animals and occurs when they develop strong and specific attachments to another animal (usually a parent) following brief, early-life exposures. Offspring imprint onto parents within a brief period after birth or hatching; this time window is called the critical period. Once imprinting occurs, the bond established between the parents and their offspring is usually long-lasting.