The neural substrate of maternal love in shopping: Mothers' willingness to pay for her child vs. for herself: An fMRI study

Abstract

Mother love is essential for mother-child relationship, and is important for child's development. Despite of series of studies pertaining to the neural substrate of parental love, to date, however, no publication is found regarding the neural substrates of maternal love in shopping. In this study, we examined first-time mothers' brain activations in response to mother-related (purses, make-ups, and clothes) and children-related (toys, books, and clothes) items measured by fMRI. 22 (including 20 first-time) mothers were scanned with 3T MRI scanner. In children- vs. mother-related items, the expected mother-nature site, peri-aquductal grey (or PAG), was found to be more activated. In addition, “Buy vs. NotBuy”, as well as interaction of both factors, were both identified. In addition, voxelwise regressions yielded regions associated with mothers' buying characteristics. Lastly, we also implemented the multi-voxel pattern analysis and searchlight mapping to these data, with some preliminary results.