THURSDAY,
April 18 (HealthDay News) -- The best place for a crying baby is in its
mother‘s arms, researchers suggest.
When fretful babies are picked up
and carried by their mothers they experience an automatic calming reaction,
they said.
This evolutionary effect, seen in
both mice and people, reflects a coordinated set of central, motor and cardiac
regulations, according to the study,
which was published April 18 in the journal Current Biology.
It also could help explain why calm
babies start crying as soon as they are put down. This insight could help ease
parents‘ frustration and help prevent child abuse,
the researchers said.
"From humans to mice, mammalian
infants become calm and relaxed when they are carried by their mother,"
Kumi Kuroda of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Saitama, Japan, said in a
journal news release.
"This infant response reduces the maternal burden of carrying and is
beneficial for both the mother and the infant."
When babies are in their mother‘s
arms, they have a greater chance for survival, the researchers said.
Meanwhile,
mothers prefer to have calm and relaxed babies. It‘s a win-win for moms and
their babies, the researchers said.
Kuroda noticed the same calming response
among mice in her laboratory. "When I picked the pups up at the back skin
very softly and swiftly as mouse mothers did, they immediately stopped moving
and became compact. They appeared relaxed, but not totally floppy, and kept the
limbs flexed," she said. "This calming response in mice appeared
similar to soothing by maternal carrying in human babies."
In studying the response of human
babies when carried by their mothers, the researchers found that their heart
rates slowed immediately when they were picked up. They also stopped moving.
Using tiny heart monitor electrodes, the same response was found among mice.
The ultrasonic cries of baby mice stopped as well.
The study authors said certain areas
of the brain and nervous system are essential to coordinating this response to
being carried.
The findings are very relevant to
parenting and may play a role in the development of strategies to prevent child
abuse, the researchers said. Understanding crying from a baby‘s perspective
might ease their frustration, they said. When parents are less frustrated,
child abuse may be less likely to occur.
"A scientific understanding of
this infant response will save parents from misreading the restart
of crying as the intention of the infant to control the parents, as some
parenting theories -- such as the ‘cry it out‘ type of strategy --
suggest," Kuroda said. "Rather, this phenomenon should be interpreted
as a natural consequence of the infant sensorimotor systems."
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