Newborns and infants need extra amounts of care which requires a parent to have superhuman abilities of high alertness and intuition. Being the first line of care for any child is a major responsibility with no days off with sick pay.
In order for infants to get their needs met they need a caregiver who is attentive to all of their changing facial expressions and noises. Babies’ survival demands a person who understands their clues of these facial expressions and non-verbal sounds of pleasure, pain and sadness.
Throughout history, women of all cultures have taken more responsibility for the care of their young ones.
Although there is no real empirical evidence to conclude there is a gender difference in how or why we respond to infant facial expressions. Yet, much of the volume of past data we have makes this assumption.
Could there be innate biological differences in how women care for infants when compared to men? Have you ever noticed any differences in how a new mother or father will hold a newborn? How would any of these differences relate to how we respond to infant facial images?
Now there is a study, led by Kaihua Zhang, published in BMC Neuroscience that shows female brains do respond differently on average than male brains, when shown pictures of newborn infants.
The research team used fMRI imaging to view any brain gender differences that could bring about a better understanding of parenting styles of males and females. Findings could also contribute to help males to become more attentive and responsive to the care of infants.
According to fMRI scans, female brains displayed a different set of neural patterns when they responded to an infants cues, when compared to men. The brain of a female would get activated in more areas than a male brain.
It was found that the scans showed that women would be able to stop a wandering thought and pay attention to a sound of an infant crying. The male brain area for responding to distress wasn’t activated when hearing a baby cry and they were more likely to continue on daydreaming or remaining absorbed into their thinking.
In the study, the team of researchers included 51 men and women (childless and 26 women) and scanned them before (resting) and while they looked at pictures of infants faces with different expressions of sadness, happiness and neutral. The idea was to see what areas of brain activation were triggered during observation within each group.
The findings concluded that there was a difference in facial processing, attention and empathetic networks between the men and women.
As it turns out, the limbic areas, temporal areas, visual regions, temporoparietal regions and cerebellum of the women brains were all activated when processing the facial expressions of the infants. The findings surprised the team and confirmed a higher degree of complexity of the neural pathways required in experiencing infants’ emotions.
The fact that all the participants were childless could demonstrate how the female brain develops differently than the males. Which would explain a better natural capacity of a female to attend and render needs to infants.
It was also interesting to note that the greater amount of functional connectivity (activated regions) found in a women’s brain, included the default-mode network, (the area that is more activated while at rest), than men. This could answer why women were more capable of shifting their attention from daydreaming to being attentive to the infant.
This study points to two distinctions in male-female parenting styles. One, involving the biological mechanisms when comparing female to male brains, through the use of brain imagery. Two, how these findings impact the effects of parent-infant interaction.
I found this study supplied me with better information as to how we are designed and why we may respond in our own way. May it shed more insight and serve to help us to improve our parent-infant care.
-A Balanced Brain is a Better Brain for a Happier Life-