Neurobiological Bases of Paternal Nurturance

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2016-02-01
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: All

Summary

The overall goal of this project is to identify the genetic, hormonal, and neurobiological influences on paternal nurturing behavior and to determine if fathers' neural responses to infants can be modulated by neuropeptides known to play a role in parenting in experimental animal models.

The aim is to determine if pharmacological manipulation of central oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (AVP) levels influences the neural response to viewing pictures of one's own infant or to hearing cry stimuli. In a double-blind procedure, fathers with 1-3 year old children will be scanned on two separate occasions; once under the influence of OT/AVP and once under the influence of placebo. Fathers will be randomized to either OT or AVP, and order of administration of drug and placebo will counterbalanced across subjects. Fathers will be scanned while viewing pictures of their own and an unknown child and while listening to unknown infant cry stimuli.

The investigators hypothesize:

• OT will augment the ventral tegmental area (VTA), ventral striatum and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) response to viewing pictures of one's own child, and will augment the primary auditory cortex (AI) response of fathers to infant cries.

• AVP will augment the lateral septum response to viewing own child pictures.

• Phase: N/A
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Details

• Lead Sponsor: James K. Rilling, PhD
• Collaborator: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
• Treatments: Arginine Vasopressin; Oxytocin; Pharmaceutical Solutions; Vasopressins

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• above 18

• biological fathers of 1-3 year old infants who are currently cohabitating with the child's mother

• normal or corrected-to-normal vision of 20/40

Exclusion Criteria:

• current or past history of mental illness

• active medical or neurological disorder

• current or past history of alcohol or drug dependence

• claustrophobic (at the discretion of the PI with subject consultation)

• history of seizures or other neurological disorder

• history of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, nephritis, diabetes or other endocrine diseases or malignancy

• ferrous metal in any part of the body

• history of asthma or migraine headaches (can be included at the discretion of the study physician or nurse practitioner if episodes are infrequent and no active problems at time of study, not medicated)

• history of head trauma or psychiatric illness, as well as those who are receiving or have received over the past year, medication with known psychoactive effects (included at the discretion of the PI as these are exclusion criteria due to data quality concerns and not safety concerns; head trauma should be minimal enough deemed by the PI)