Baby's Smile A Natural High For Mom

(WebMD)  Seeing her baby smile may provide a natural high for mom.

A new study shows seeing her baby's smile lights up the reward center in a mother's brain. Researchers say understanding that reaction may help explain that special mother-child bond and determine why it sometimes goes wrong.

"The relationship between mothers and infants is critical for child development," says researcher Lane Strathearn, MBBS, FRACP, assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, in a news release. "For whatever reason, in some cases, that relationship doesn't develop normally. Neglect and abuse can result, with devastating effects on a child's development."

Baby's Smile a Natural High

In the study, published in Pediatrics, researchers had 28 first-time mothers view images of their own child and other infants while hooked up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) scanner.

The functional MRI provided information on activation of different regions of the brains as the women viewed the images of the babies smiling or portraying neutral or sad emotions.

Researchers found that when the mothers saw happy images of their own baby, activation increased in areas of the brain associated with reward and the neurotransmitter dopamine compared with seeing images of other babies.

"These are areas that have been activated in other experiments associated with drug addiction," says Strathearn. "It may be that seeing your own baby's smiling face is like a 'natural high.'"

Overall, the mothers' brains responded much more strongly to their own infants than to others, but researchers found the strength of that natural-high reaction depended on the baby's facial expression.

"The strongest activation was with smiling faces," says Strathearn. "We were expecting a different reaction with sad faces."

Instead, they found little difference in the reaction of the mothers' brains to their own baby's crying face compared to that of an unknown child.

"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," says Strathearn.


By Jennifer Warner
Reviewed by Louise Chang
©2005-2008 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved

[lloydbest1]

It''s not just moms. Or even young dads. It''s also old timers like yers truly. Even now, long past the time when I could make or raise a baby, let alone want to, I still get a rush out of seeing an infant smile.

[rational_1]

Do other animal brains work the same way that the human animal brain works? I wonder, if this study were done on let''''s say monkeys if they would get the same results.
Posted by pollroller1 at 06:27 AM : Jul 08, 2008

Interesting question and the answer is probably yes, although smell may play a bigger role in recognition in animals. The reward system mentioned in the article is evolutionarily fairly old (found in rats for example) and has been previously implicated in addiction to drugs, gambling, etc.

[rational_1]

No but maybe I should,cause I''''m sick to my stomach.
Check out henry morgentaler''''s order of Canada for more info
Posted by jankebenz at 12:46 AM : Jul 08, 2008

I heard about that (ex-Canadian so I know who Morgentaler is). The good news is he''s 85, looks to be in poor health, and may drop dead before getting the Order of Canada.

[sassalin]

Did we need a study for this? When my 18 month old smiles it makes my day!!!!

[cfin5]

Don''t forget us Dads. The more little smiling stinkerbutts running around getting in trouble the better. Lying about the cleanliness of their diapers, climbing trees, love-choking the cats, bringing Mom "her" flowers, running to fast down the hill, chasing snake feeders, sailing things that float in the mud puddles while helping to stir the same, mocking the rooster, questioning you with borderline interrogation persistence,......maybe drop the "borderline" part........These are little "BIG" things my heart needs to go and work and worry like hell, stand up for my rights to protect theirs so they might protect mine when my wife and I are old, to lean on an American good man and wife that we helped to fashion,.......our children :)

[pollroller1]

Do other animal brains work the same way that the human animal brain works? I wonder, if this study were done on let''s say monkeys if they would get the same results.

[oneworldusa]

Uh....yeah!!! No greater joy to a mom than her baby''s big smile. I know, I have a 7-month old. He smiles so much, his nickname is ''Smiley.''

[rwsmith29456]

What makes it research is that nobody has documented this from experimentation before, especially actually seeing the brain in action. It''s always been an assumption and nobody has bothered to check it out. I''ve seen much more inane research projects, like the guy that wanted to prove that the blocks Egyption pyramids are made of were poured in place like cement.

[jankebenz]

jankebenz, are you on drugs?

Posted by smurfcrusher at 11:12 PM : Jul 07, 2008
No but maybe I should,cause I''m sick to my stomach.
Check out henry morgentaler''s order of Canada for more info

[smurfcrusher]

jankebenz, are you on drugs?