(Press-News.org) VIDEO:
This video shows a behavioral task in a human mother-infant dyad.
Click here for more information.
There is a very good reason mothers often carry their crying babies, pacing the floor, to help them calm down. New research published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 18 shows that infants experience an automatic calming reaction upon being carried, whether they are mouse or human babies.
The study is the first to show that the infant calming response to carrying is a coordinated set of central, motor, and cardiac regulations and an evolutionarily conserved component of mother-infant interactions, the researchers say. It might also explain a frustrating reality for new parents: that calm and relaxed very young children will so often start crying again just as soon as they are put back down.
"From humans to mice, mammalian infants become calm and relaxed when they are carried by their mother," says Kumi Kuroda of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Saitama, Japan. "This infant response reduces the maternal burden of carrying and is beneficial for both the mother and the infant."
VIDEO:
This video shows a behavioral task in a mouse mother-pup dyad.
Click here for more information.
In other words, a mother's arms really are the best place for a young baby to be in terms of his or her chances of survival. And mothers certainly appreciate a calm and relaxed baby. That babies naturally stop crying when they are carried is an evolutionary win-win.
The idea that this very familiar scenario also plays out in mice occurred to Kuroda while cleaning the cages of her lab's mouse colony. "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. This calming response in mice appeared similar to me to soothing by maternal carrying in human babies."
Kuroda and her colleagues found in careful tests that the heart rates of human babies slow immediately upon carrying. After they managed to find ECG monitor electrodes small enough to use on conscious mouse pups, the researchers found that the same goes for mice.
Both mouse and human babies also stop moving when they are carried. And when baby mice are carried, their ultrasonic cries stop, too.
VIDEO:
This video shows the immobility response induced by manual carrying in mouse pups.
Click here for more information.
The researchers traced that response in the mice to a sense known as proprioception, the way that information about body movements is perceived. They also found that particular parts of the brain and parasympathetic nervous system are key in mediating the coordinated response to carrying.
The findings have important implications for parenting and may even play a role in preventing child abuse, the researchers say, by helping grownups see things from an infant's point of view.
"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 says. "Rather, this phenomenon should be interpreted as a natural consequence of the infant sensorimotor systems."
If parents understand that properly, perhaps they will be less frustrated by the crying, Kuroda says. And that puts those children at lower risk of abuse.
###
Current Biology, Esposito et al.: "Infant Calming Responses during Maternal Carrying in Humans and Mice."
END
PASADENA, Calif., April 18, 2013 — Nearly 30 percent of women failed to pick up their bisphosphonate prescriptions, a medication that is most commonly used to treat osteoporosis and similar bone diseases, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published this week in the journal Osteoporosis International. The failure to pick up these newly prescribed medications, called primary nonadherence, can lead to an increased risk of fractures for these patients.
The study examined the electronic health records of 8,454 women, ages 55 years or older, who were Kaiser Permanente ...
A small, bird-like North American dinosaur incubated its eggs in a similar way to brooding birds – bolstering the evolutionary link between birds and dinosaurs, researchers at the University of Calgary and Montana State University study have found.
Among the many mysteries paleontologists have tried to uncover is how dinosaurs hatched their young. Was it in eggs completely buried in nest materials, like crocodiles? Or was it in eggs in open or non-covered nests, like brooding birds?
Using egg clutches found in Alberta and Montana, researchers Darla Zelenitsky at the ...
A new study of Antarctic clams reveals that age matters when it comes to adapting to the effects of climate change. The research provides new insight and understanding of the likely impact of predicted environmental change on future ocean biodiversity.
Reporting this week in the journal Global Change Biology scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and from Germany's University of Kiel and the Alfred Wegener Institute reveal that when it comes to environmental change the reaction of Antarctic clams (laternula elliptica) – a long-lived and abundant species that ...
VIDEO:
Children love fatty and sugary foods. Or do they? New research contradicts the idea that all children under the age of ten have the same taste in food and highlights...
Click here for more information.
Children love fatty and sugary foods. Or do they? New research contradicts the idea that all children under the age of ten have the same taste in food and highlights the importance of the country of residence, culture and age in these preferences.
SINC
Until now the scientific ...
In this prospective study, led by Dr Richard Moreau, INSERM Research Director (Mixed Research Unit 773 "Centre de Recherche biomédicale Bichat-Beaujon"; INSERM/Université Paris Diderot) who is also a practitioner attached to the Hepatology Department of the Beaujon Hospital (AP-HP), researchers studied a cohort of 1343 patients from 12 European countries.
The results, published in the learned journal Gastroenterology, describe, for the first time, the specific profile of sufferers from this syndrome that is associated with cirrhosis. This also makes it possible to more ...
The European Commission needs to make some key innovations in its science funding programme if Europe is to enjoy the full benefits of the €70 billion to be spent on science research as part of the Horizon 2020 programme kicking off in 2014, according to an academic paper published by SAGE in the Journal of Health Services Research & Policy today.
The Commission has already taken important steps to reduce administration costs and stimulate the participation of small business in research, but there are still significant gaps, say the authors of Europe's 'Horizon 2020' ...
Keeping up with current scientific literature is a daunting task, considering that hundreds to thousands of papers are published each day. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a computer program to help them evaluate and rank scientific articles in their field.
The researchers use a text-mining algorithm to prioritize research papers to read and include in their Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD), a public database that manually curates and codes data from the scientific literature describing how environmental chemicals interact with ...
Research led by a scientist at the University of York has thrown new light on the way breakdowns in the DNA copying process inside cells can contribute to cancer and other diseases.
Peter McGlynn, an Anniversary Professor in the University's Department of Biology, led a team of researchers who have discovered that the protein machines that copy DNA in a model organism pause frequently during this copying process, creating the potential for dangerous mutations to develop.
The research, which is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), ...
Ultrafast high-resolution imaging in real time could be a reality with a new research discovery led by the University of Melbourne.
In work published in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre for Excellence in Coherent Xray Science have demonstrated that ultra short durations of electron bunches generated from laser-cooled atoms can be both very cold and ultra-fast.
Lead researcher Associate Professor Robert Scholten said the surprising finding was an important step towards making ultrafast high-resolution electron imaging ...
Cambridge, MA, April 18, 2013 - It is rare that an unpublished piece of research or theory remains significant after half a century. It is also a wonderful example of the boundless curiosity of the late Francis Crick. A previously unpublished work by Francis Crick and Jeffries Wyman from 1965 is now available, together with Jean-Pierre Changeux's recollections on the origins of the theory of Allostery and several important texts by various authors on the subject. These are part of a special issue of the Journal of Molecular Biology (JMB) published at the occasion of a Pasteur/EMBO ...