2023-04-22 10:00:00
Covid-related health restrictions have limited social interactions and prevented many grandparents from seeing their grandchildren. They were able, in compensation, to look at their photos. According to a 2021 study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B : Biological Sciences, viewing the photos significantly increased grandparents’ emotional empathy and suggests that there is a parental care system in the brain that underlines their interest in caring for their grandchildren.
The existence of a special intergenerational bond
This is the first study to examine the effects on the brains of grandparents of time spent looking through photos of their grandchildren. Researchers scanned the brains of grandmothers as they looked at photos of their young grandchildren, providing a neural snapshot of this particular intergenerational relationship. “Here we highlight the brain functions of grandmothers that can play an important role in our social life and development.explains Minwoo Lee, co-author of the study. It’s an important aspect of the human experience that has largely been left outside the realm of neuroscience.”.
Grandchildren who become adults do not arouse the same emotions
The results suggest that looking at photos can activate empathy in grandparents. “What really stands out in the data is activation in areas of the brain associated with emotional empathysays James Rilling, professor of anthropology at Emory University and lead author of the study. This suggests that grandmothers aim to feel what their grandchildren feel. If they smile, they will feel the child’s joy. And if he cries, they feel the child’s pain and distress.”
The study also found that when grandmothers looked at photos of their adult children, they showed greater activation in an area of the brain associated with cognitive empathy. This suggests that they may be trying to understand on a cognitive level what their adult children are thinking or feeling and why, but less on an emotional level. “Young children probably developed traits to be able to manipulate not only the maternal brain, but also the grandma’s brain.pense James Rilling. An adult child does not have the same cuteness factor, so it may not elicit the same emotional response.”
The grandmother represents an interest in her offspring
The authors of the study believe that these results provide a better understanding of why women live beyond their childbearing years. This can be explained by evolutionary advantages conferred on their offspring as well as their grandchildren. “We often assume that fathers are the most important caregivers next to mothers, but that’s not always true.says James Rilling. In some cases, grandmothers are the main help.”
A study of the traditional Hadza people of Tanzania, where foraging by grandmothers improved the nutritional status of grandchildren is evidence supporting this hypothesis. Another study of traditional communities showed that the presence of grandmothers shortened the time between pregnancies of their daughters and increased the number of grandchildren.
A global parental care system in the brain
In the current study, the researchers wanted to understand how healthy grandmothers’ brains work and how it relates to the benefits they provide to the family. They recruited 50 participants who completed questionnaires regarding their experiences as grandmothers, providing details regarding time spent with their grandchildren, activities they did together and feelings they had for them. . They also had functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure their brain function while viewing photos of their grandchild, an unknown child, the grandchild’s same-sex parent, and a unknown adult.
The results showed that most of the participants showed more activity in areas of the brain involved in emotional empathy and movement when looking at photos of their grandchildren compared to photos of other people. By looking at photos of their grandchildren, the grandmothers more strongly activated the regions involved in cognitive empathy and they indicated in parallel in the questionnaires that they wanted to be more involved in the care of the grandchildren. . “Our results add to the evidence that there appears to be an overall system of parental care in the brain, and that grandmothers’ responses to their grandchildren are reflected in it.”, expose James Rilling.
However, the researchers noted a limitation to their study, which only included physically and mentally healthy grandmothers.
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