Facial expression of infants is an important cue to elicit nursing behavior from caregivers. Recent fMRI studies have demonstrated sex and parental status differences in the brain response to infant stimuli. In the present study we investigated the correlation between human brain response to infant emotional faces and the personality traits. We used event-related fMRI to scan 46 healthy nulliparous female volunteers (age M = 20.1, SD = 0.3). Emotional infant faces (happy, sad, and neutral) were presented to the participants in a randomized order during a run. During viewing of infant’s sad face and neutral face, a significant negative correlation was found between Conscientiousness, one of the Big Five personality traits, and the activation of each of the brain regions that are involved in reword system and empathic processing: right nucleus accumbens, bilateral orbitofrontal cortex, and bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
Katsuko Niwano, Ayahito Ito, Motoko Tanabe, Yosuke Sato, Toshikatsu Fujii
