According to the researchers of the U.S. and U.K., the reward centers in the mother’s brain get light up while seeing her baby smile; similarly, as it has been observed in experiments on drug addicts. The researchers are expectant that the findings will give more insight to understand the mom-baby bond.

The study has been published online in the journal Pediatrics‘s Ist July issue and it is the work of the researchers at University college London and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), Houston.

Dr Lane Starthearn who is a research associate at BCM College’s Human Neuroimaging laboratory stated:

“For child development, there is a critical relationship between mothers and infants.”

The brains of 28 first-time moms of 5 to 10 month aged babies were examined with a scanner known as functional magnetic resonance imaging or FMRI. Stathearn and co researchers looked at images of facial expressions of moms while watching their and other babies’ photos. In some photos the babies were shown happy and smiling while in others they had a sad or neutral facial expressions.

The researchers, specifically, noted the FMRI reaction at all observing events of these 6 photos: 1 Happy face of own baby 2 sad face of own baby 3 neutral face of own baby 4 happy face of unknown baby 5 sad face of neutral baby and 6 sad face of unknown baby. The moms randomly looked at every image for 2 seconds with a variant 2 to 6 second gape between every photo.

The blood flow in the brain was measured through fMRi scanner and they were also given increase to the appearance that the brain “lights up” in regions of climbing blood flow that indicates more active brain at that time.

The researchers explained that an extensive network of brain connections got active when the mother saw their own baby’s facial expression first time and it integrated sentimental and cognitive indications and led them to motor and responding outputs.

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