The Power of Smiling: The Adult Brain Networks Underlying Learned Infant Emotionality.

The perception of infant emotionality, one aspect of temperament, starts to form in infancy, yet the underlying mechanisms of how infant emotionality affects adult neural dynamics remain unclear. We used a social reward task with probabilistic visual and auditory feedback (infant laughter or crying) to train 47 nulliparous women to perceive the emotional style of six different infants. Using functional neuroimaging, we subsequently measured brain activity while participants were tested on the learned emotionality of the six infants.

Music, dance, and other art forms: New insights into the links between hedonia (pleasure) and eudaimonia (well-being).

For Aristotle, the goal of human life was to live well, to flourish, and to ultimately have a good life. These goals can be conceptualized as "eudaimonia," a concept distinct from "hedonia" (pleasure). Many people would argue that the arts play a large role in their well-being and eudaimonia.

On Cuteness: Unlocking the Parental Brain and Beyond.

Cuteness in offspring is a potent protective mechanism that ensures survival for otherwise completely dependent infants. Previous research has linked cuteness to early ethological ideas of a 'Kindchenschema' (infant schema) where infant facial features serve as 'innate releasing mechanisms' for instinctual caregiving behaviours. We propose extending the concept of cuteness beyond visual features to include positive infant sounds and smells.

Understanding the human parental brain: a critical role of the orbitofrontal cortex.

The bond between a parent and an infant often appears to form effortlessly and intuitively, and this relationship is fundamental to infant survival and development. Parenting is considered to depend on specific brain networks that are largely conserved across species and in place even before parenthood. Efforts to understand the neural basis of parenting in humans have focused on the overlapping networks implicated in reward and social cognition, within which the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is considered to be a crucial hub.