02/14/2022
LOVE... Did you know that the love of a caregiver can actually have an incredible positive influence on a child's brain? š§
The Source, from Washington University, shared this about their findings:
"School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus, a key structure important to learning, memory and response to stress.
The new research, by child psychiatrists and neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is the first to show that changes in this critical region of childrenās brain anatomy are linked to a motherās nurturing.
Their research is published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.
'This study validates something that seems to be intuitive, which is just how important nurturing parents are to creating adaptive human beings,' says lead author Joan L. Luby, MD, professor of child psychiatry. 'I think the public health implications suggest that we should pay more attention to parentsā nurturing, and we should do what we can as a society to foster these skills because clearly nurturing has a very, very big impact on later development.'
The fact that the researchers found a larger hippocampus in the healthy children who were nurtured is striking, Luby says, because the hippocampus is such an important brain structure.
When the body faces stresses, the brain activates the autonomic nervous system, an involuntary system of nerves that controls the release of stress hormones. Those hormones help us cope with stress by increasing the heart rate and helping the body adapt. The hippocampus is the main brain structure involved in that response. Itās also key in learning and memory, and larger volumes would suggest a link to improved performance in school, among other things."
So while today is a day dedicated to love, it would seem that if each and every day is filled with love, that our most treasured people in the world will benefit. ā¤ļø
