Babies, Parenting, Child Health, Infant Nutrition

Child Development – University of Oxford Discovers Possible Brain Basis for Parental Instinct

02.28.2008 | 10:02:29 pm | Posted by mummums

By Colleen Hurley, RD, Certified Kid’s Nutrition Specialist

All this recent discussion about parenting skills and bonding with your newborn may have left you wondering: where do we get parental instincts? Why is it that from the first moment we see our newborn we have the urge to nurture and protect them? It was Darwin who first suggested that adults possess some undiscovered wiring that compels us to respond with care when an infant is present. This, Darwin proposed, is how our species survived.

Konrad Lorenz, a Nobel Prize winning zoologist, suggested it is the structure of an infant’s face that brings about a parental response. A bulging cheek region, low eyes, and large head and forehead, as seen in infants, is what Lorenz believed triggered the caring response. An actual biological explanation for this phenomenon was yet to be discovered, until now.

A new study from the University of Oxford and funded by the Wellcome trust and TrygFonden Charitable Foundation may have found the biological basis for both Darwin’s and Lorenz’s theories. The authors of the study reveal that a region of the human brain, the medial orbitofrontal cortex, is highly active within a seventh of a second in response to an unknown infant’s face- but to not adults.

Researchers employed a neuro-imaging method called magnetoencephalography (MEG). This advanced tool is used to measure whole brain activity in both milliseconds and millimeters. The authors discovered a distinct difference in the early brain activity of adults in the study when they viewed an infant’s face compared with the face of an adult. Early brain activity was found in the medial orbitofrontal cortex only when the study participants viewed and infant’s face. The responses were too fast to be conscience, therefore may be instinctual.

This particular region of the brain where the responses were noted is located in the emotional region of the brain and is responsible for monitoring and responding to environmental stimuli. Researchers propose this may provide an emotional tagging of infants’ faces that when an infant is in view, to treat them with care. Very near and connected to this region of the brain is where we process depression. This supports the idea that depression can adversely affect the medial orbitofrontal cortex, thus affecting parental response. The findings of this study may provide insight postpartum depression, but much more research is needed.

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