Motherhood brings the most dramatic brain changes of a woman’s life
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Highlights
- A surge of oxytocin at childbirth triggers changes that allow a woman quite literally to sync to her baby through a coordination of biology (synchronized brain responses and heart rates) and behavior (matching responses in gaze, touch, and vocalizations). That intense connection teaches a baby from the very first day how to relate to another person, says Ruth Feldman, Simms-Mann Professor of Developmental Neuroscience at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. When we connect with friends, romantic partners, and colleagues and even as we view ourselves as a member of a sports team or as part of a nation, we “repurpose the basic machinery” established in the connection between mother and baby, she explained in a 2017 paper on the neurobiology of human attachment.