MAYBE NOT THE TIME to talk about hugs. Or yes. Especially when scientists do it who, with twenty years of research, have shown how empathy is built also thanks to the hugs of the mother. The study from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel was published in the journal PNAS.
There is research that demonstrates the importance for small mammals of relying on the mother’s body for the maturation of the neurobiological systems that will support their sociality when they grow up. Animal model studies indicate the long-term effects of maternal contact on the adult brain, while little is known about the consequences of maternal-infant contact and parental behavior on social brain functioning in human adults.
Mom and baby, brain tune
FABIO DI TODARO
Around the 1990s, a group of Israeli scholars began to observe the impact of physical contact between infants and their mothers. They continued the research monitoring these children for two decades, eventually showing that, in about 100 young adults, time-honored maternal contact had a major impact on the brain and the ability to empathize and measure up to others.
The study included healthy full-term infants, but also premature babies who remained in the incubator for at least a couple of weeks and more stable premature babies that mothers kept in direct skin-to-skin contact for one hour a day for 14 consecutive days. . This practice, called ‘Kangaroo therapy’, contributes from the first hours of life to the adaptation of the newborn to extrauterine life and brings numerous benefits, both from a physical and emotional point of view.
Scientists followed infants into adulthood, tested the brain basis of affective empathy, and used different techniques to distinguish regions of the brain sensitive to other people’s emotions from those activated by empathy in general. The amygdala, the insula, the temporal pole (TP) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) showed a high sensitivity to the distinct emotions of others.
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The mother-newborn contact allowed a greater connection, harmony, between mother and child throughout the growth. The same synchrony has allowed a greater development of the sensitivity of the brain, especially for the part dedicated to empathy specific to emotions.
The results demonstrate the importance of hugs, caresses, physical contact through which children get used to sharing affective states and develop with equilibrium what is called the social brain, that is the ability that the human being has to relate to children. others. We hope to come back to hug each other soon. Even as adults.
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