A study on the brain function of grandmothers found that there is greater activation of areas related to empathy when looking at images of grandchildren.
The bond between a grandmother and her grandchildren can be very important, but what happens in your brain when you look at them?
A team of scientists from Emory University in the United States has scanned the brains of grandmothers as they looked at images of their young grandchildren to establish a neural snapshot of that intergenerational bond.
“What really stands out from the data is activation in areas of the brain associated with emotional empathy,” said James Rilling, Emory professor of anthropology and lead author of the study.
The activity of these brain areas “Suggests that grandmothers are oriented to feel what their grandchildren feel when they interact with them”. If the child smiles she feels his joy and if he cries they feel his pain and anguish, Riling said.
The brain regions that are activated are not the same when the woman looks at the photo of her grandson or that of her adult son. On this last case there is greater activation in an area associated with cognitive empathy.
This indicates that they may be trying to understand cognitively what their adult child is thinking or feeling and why, but not so much from an emotional point of view, indicates the research it publishes Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“In neuroscience they are appearing evidence for the existence of a global parental care system in the brain”Rilling said, and the group wanted to study how grandmothers might fit into that pattern.
Humans are cooperative breeders and, although we often assume that fathers are the most important caregivers alongside mothers, in some cases grandmothers are the main helpadded.
In fact, the “grandmother hypothesis” posits that the reason women tend to live well beyond their reproductive age is because they provide evolutionary benefits to their offspring and grandchildren.
How the study was carried out
The team recruited 50 healthy women who completed a questionnaire with details about the time they spend with their grandchildren, the activities they do together, and their affection for them.
They also underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain function while viewing images of their grandson, an unfamiliar child, the grandson’s father of the same sex, and an unfamiliar adult.
The results showed that, while viewing images of their grandchildren, most of the participants showed more activity in the brain areas related to emotional empathy and movement.
The grandmothers who most strongly activated the areas involved with cognitive empathy when viewing images of their grandson had indicated in the questionnaire that they wanted a greater participation in the care of the little one.
Comparing the data with an earlier study of parents looking at pictures of their children, the grandmothers, on average, activated with more force the regions related to emotional empathy and motivated itn.
Riling considered that these results “add to the evidence that there appears to be a global system of parental care in the brain, and that the responses of grandmothers to their grandchildren are mapped to it.”
The study opens the door to other questions and it would be interesting to also study the neuroscience of grandparents and how their brain functions can differ between cultures, according to the authors. (I)
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
