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Background: Oxytocin facilitates parental caregiving and mother-infant bonding and might be involved in responses to infant crying. Infant crying provides information about the physical status and mood of the infant and elicits parental proximity and caregiving. Oxytocin might modulate the activation of brain structures involved in the perception of cry sounds-specifically the insula, the amygdala, and the thalamocingulate circuit-and thereby affect responsiveness to infant crying., Method: In a randomized controlled trial we investigated the influence of intranasally administered oxytocin on neural responses to infant crying with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Blood oxygenation level-dependent responses to infant crying were measured in 21 women who were administered oxytocin and 21 women who were administered a placebo., Results: Induced oxytocin levels reduced, experimentally, activation in the amygdala and increased activation in the insula and inferior frontal gyrus pars triangularis., Conclusions: Our findings suggest that oxytocin promotes responsiveness to infant crying by reducing activation in the neural circuitry for anxiety and aversion and increasing activation in regions involved in empathy., (Copyright © 2011 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Both the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene and depressive symptoms have been associated with parenting behaviour. The OXTR GG genotype has been suggested to be related to more sensitive parenting, whereas depressive symptoms may affect sensitivity negatively. We examined the role of OXTR and the influence of depressive symptoms in explaining differences in physiological reactivity to infant crying. Heart rate responses of 40 healthy females without children (age 19–47 years, randomly selected half of twin pairs) were measured during the presentation of three episodes of infant cry sounds. Participants with the presumably more efficient variant of the oxytonergic system gene (OXTR GG) had more pronounced physiological reactivity to repeated cry sounds, except when they showed more symptoms of depression. Results were replicated in the second half of the twin sample. This is the first study to suggest effects of OXTR genotype on physiological reactivity to infant crying. Depressive symptoms may however suppress the effect of the OXTR GG genotype. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]