Baby's smile: drug-like high for mothers (kassidy photo video_0001.wmv)

uploaded by butterfly724 July 23, 2008 at 08:08 am
25 views | 0 comments | 1 recommendation

Seeing her own baby smile can give a mother a natural, drug-like high, according to new research.

Scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, U.S., have found that key reward areas of mothers' brains were activated by the sight of their own babies smiling. The regions affected include areas involved in emotion processing, cognition and behavioural outputs – areas that have also been associated with drug addiction.

"The relationship between mothers and infants is critical for child development," said lead author and paediatrician, Lane Strathearn. He said the findings, reported in the journal Pediatrics, help to explain the neural basis of how mother-child bonding works.

The response that babies get when they smile or cry has an important impact on their development. Strathearn said that while experts already knew that the reward system of a baby's caregiver could be activated by these cues, but they didn't know if seeing someone else's baby would cause a different response.