Home »  News »  Baby's smile makes moms happy

Baby's smile makes moms happy

When a woman sees her baby smile, certain areas of her brain are activated, stimulating happy feelings.

Babys smile makes moms happy

When a woman sees her baby smile, certain areas of her brain are activated, stimulating happy feelings. To determine how a mother's brain responds to her own infant's facial expressions, comparing happy, neutral, and sad face affect, British researchers recruited 28 first-time mothers, aged around 29 years, during their last trimester of pregnancy. The researchers completed attachment interviews with the participants to assess the types of experiences they had when being raised and what type of relationship these mothers had with their own parents. The mothers were shown videotaped face images of their own 5- to 10-month-old infant and a matched unknown infant. Sixty unique stimuli from 6 categories (own-happy, own-neutral, own-sad, unknown-happy, unknown-neutral, and unknown-sad) were presented randomly for 2 seconds each, with an interval of 2- to 6-seconds. A functional MRI was done during this process to assess which areas of the brain were activated. It was found that when the mother's saw photos of their own baby's face, an extensive brain network known as dopaminergic reward system was activated. This system was not activated when mothers saw their own children looking either sad or neutral. Also, the mothers' dopaminergic system did not respond when they saw an unknown baby's face. The findings are a step towards unraveling the chemistry of emotion, and the complex chemistry of the mother-child relationship. Understanding how a mother responds uniquely to her own infant, when smiling or crying, may be the first step in understanding the neural basis of mother-infant attachment, the researchers noted. Further studies are expected to reveal how father's brain responds to baby's smile and other facial expressions.
Pediatrics
July 2008
COMMENT

DoctorNDTV is the one stop site for all your health needs providing the most credible health information, health news and tips with expert advice on healthy living, diet plans, informative videos etc. You can get the most relevant and accurate info you need about health problems like diabetes, cancer, pregnancy, HIV and AIDS, weight loss and many other lifestyle diseases. We have a panel of over 350 experts who help us develop content by giving their valuable inputs and bringing to us the latest in the world of healthcare.

Was this Article Helpful Yes or No

................... Advertisement ...................

 

................... Advertisement ...................

................... Advertisement ...................

................... Advertisement ...................

--------------------------------Advertisement---------------------------------- -