The neuroscience of maternal love

Maternal love, which is at the core of maternal behavior, is essential for the mother–infant attachment relationship and is important for an infant’s development and mental health. In addition, maternal love plays important roles in promoting not only the infant’s resilience, but also the mother’s. Therefore, it is crucial to clarify the neural basis of maternal love and related behaviors to understand both normal mothering and abusive and neglectful mothering. Here, we have reviewed our recent neuroimaging studies on the neural basis of maternal love and behavior. Based on the assumption that a mother’s love for her infant is invariant in any situation, we found that a limited number of the mother’s brain areas were specifically involved in maternal love, namely, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), striatum, anterior insula, and periaqueductal gray, suggesting that maternal love is mediated via integration of the two major neural systems in the OFC: the dopamine reward system (the OFC and striatum) and the interoceptive information processing system (the OFC, insula, and periaqueductal gray). Additionally, when the mother viewed her own infant in distress, there was significant activation in the dorsal OFC, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, caudate nucleus, supplementary motor area, and posterior superior temporal sulcus/temporoparietal junction. These results suggest that a highly elaborate neural mechanism, based on the neural basis of maternal love, mediates the diverse and complex maternal behaviors that mothers engage in when raising and protecting their own infants.