Expectant parents’ responses to infant cry may indicate future risk and resiliency in the parent-child relationship. Most studies of parental reactivity to infant cry have focused on mothers, and few studies have focused on expectant fathers, although fathers make important contributions to parenting. Additionally, although different responses to infant cry (behavioral, psychological and neural) are hypothesized to track together, few studies have analyzed them concurrently. The current investigation aimed to address these gaps by characterizing multimodal responses to infant cry within expectant fathers and testing whether prenatal testosterone moderates these responses. Expectant fathers responded to infant cry vs frequency-matched white noise with increased activation in bilateral areas of the temporal lobe involved in processing speech sounds and social and emotional stimuli. Handgrip force, which has been used to measure parents’ reactivity to cry sounds in previous studies, did not differentiate cry from white noise within this sample. Expectant fathers with higher prenatal testosterone showed greater activation in the supramarginal gyrus, left occipital lobe and precuneus cortex to cry sounds. Expectant fathers appear to interpret and process infant cry as a meaningful speech sound and social cue, and testosterone may play a role in expectant fathers’ response to infant cry.

中文翻译：

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准父亲如何应对婴儿哭泣？检查大脑和行为反应以及睾丸激素的调节作用。

准父母对婴儿哭泣的反应可能表明将来亲子关系的风险和适应力。父母对婴儿啼哭的反应性的大多数研究都集中在母亲身上，很少有研究集中在准父亲身上，尽管父亲对育儿做出了重要贡献。另外，尽管假设对婴儿哭声的不同反应（行为，心理和神经反应）可以一起追踪，但很少有研究同时分析它们。当前的调查旨在通过表征准父亲对婴儿啼哭的多模式反应并测试产前睾丸激素是否缓解这些反应来解决这些差距。准爸爸回应婴儿哭声的VS频率匹配的白噪声，在处理语音和社交及情感刺激中涉及的颞叶双侧区域激活增加。在以前的研究中，握力已被用来测量父母对哭声的反应能力，但该样本中没有将哭声与白噪声区分开。产前睾丸激素水平较高的准父亲在上颌上回，左枕叶和前皮层皮层中激活程度更高，以发出声音。准父亲似乎将婴儿哭声解释和处理为有意义的语音和社交提示，而睾丸激素可能在准父亲对婴儿哭声的反应中起作用。