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The Neurobiology of Adult Caregiving
Completed Project
First Undergraduate Speaker at 2022 Social and Affective Neuroscience Society
What neural network do adult caregivers recruit when providing care for their dementia patients? In this fMRI study, we found that adult caregivers recruit brain regions involved in emotional empathy (anterior insula, anterior cingulate) when viewing photos of their patients. The pattern of neural activation parallels with observations from parental and grandparental care, suggesting that there might be an universal caregiving neural network in humans that relies on neural network evolved for childcare.
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