Parity and neural responses to social and non-social stimuli in pregnancy

ABSTRACT

Prior reproductive experience, or parity, may contribute to differential neural responses to infant stimuli during pregnancy. We examined the P300 elicited by viewing infant and adult faces, as well as houses, in women pregnant with their first child and compared their neural responses to women who had at least one child prior to their current pregnancy. We found the P300 amplitude was larger in women pregnant with their first child as compared to pregnant women who had previously had children. This larger P300 was observed in response to all visual stimuli and was not specific to infant faces. Taken together, these findings indicate increased sensitivity toward social and non-social stimuli in pregnancy and indicate the importance of measuring parity in social neuroscience studies of pregnancy and motherhood.

KEYWORDS:

• Parity
• infant faces
• social stimuli
• EEG/ERP

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the women who participated during their pregnancy, and Kelsey Graber, Jonathan Bornstein, Grace Austin, and Brianna Francis for their help with data collection, and Marion Mayes for data entry of the self-report measures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação Bial and the John Leopold Weil and Geraldine Rickard Weil Memorial Charitable Foundation.