The parental brain: Anatomization of 75 years of neuroscience 1951–2024

Studies of the parental brain have garnered significant attention, revealing neurobiological and psychological changes associated with caregiving. Here, we provide a comprehensive, data-driven overview of the scientific literature on the parental brain, analyzing a large dataset to map the field's knowledge structure. Our objectives include identifying influential authors, contributing countries, publication sources, and commonly used keywords as well as highlighting the most impactful documents and primary thematic areas of research. We analyzed 656 documents (and their 39,302 cited references) from Scopus using CiteSpace software for document co-citation analysis. Our analysis identified 17 key documents, of which the most influential focused on neural correlates of maternal and romantic love and maternal brain responses to infant cues in relation to attachment style. Our analysis additionally identified 10 major thematic domains in the parental brain literature. Qualitative analysis of research clusters revealed a trajectory in the study of the parental brain, progressing from foundational studies on dendritic spine density and maternal memory to the exploration of shared mammalian and human-specific brain networks underlying parental behaviors. Our study points to a growing interest in understanding neurobiological changes in fathers, with parental involvement and exposure to infant cues as moderating factors. The parental brain is a plastic, dynamic network, with bio-behavioral synchrony playing a central role as an interpersonal mechanism that enhances specificity of attachments.