The Brain and Why We Love Babies
"Why do we love babies? Parental Instinct Region Found in the Brain" was the intriguing name of an article In Science Daily.
Now there is some basis from brain research explaining why adults have a parental instinct.
Researchers Morten Kringelbach and Alan Stein from the University of Oxford showed:
"A region of the human brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex is highly specifically active within a seventh of a second in response to (unfamiliar) infant faces but not to adult faces.
This wave of activity starts around a seventh of a second after presentation of an infant face. These responses are almost certainly too fast to be consciously controlled and are therefore perhaps instinctive.
The medial orbitofrontal cortex is located in the front of the brain, just over the eyeballs. It is a key region of the emotional brain and appears to be related to the ongoing monitoring of salient reward-related stimuli in the environment.
In the context of the experiment, the medial orbitofrontal cortex may provide the necessary emotional tagging of infant faces that predisposes us to treat infant faces as special and plays a key role in establishing a parental bond.
Also, there is now evidence from deep brain stimulation linking depression to the nearby subgenual cingulate cortex which is strongly connected with the medial orbitofrontal cortex. This lends support to the possibility that changes to activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex secondary to depression may adversely affect parental responsivity."
For further information about this research, I refer you to read February 27, 2008 article in Science Daily.
I thought you would like to read about this exciting research about parental attraction and caring for infants. This research confirms what we know about adult’s instinctual, loving reactions to babies.
Also, this research offers hope for depressed mothers who have difficulty recognizing and responding to their children’s facial expressions.
Remember, We Live within Environment Created by Our Choices!
Dr. Hal
Life and Mental Fitness Coach
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It’s amazing how people can find the Science in just about everything. Even something as fleeting and as seemingly emotional as a response to a baby is calculated. But I wonder what does this say of the people who do not exactly coo over babies? Are their brains wired differently or are they just covering up for the fact that they cannot help but respond positively to babies?