Those who know me and my craniosacral work understand that I place a great amount of emphasis on the critical impact early relationships have on the developing brain. Of course I am thrilled to share with you this exciting research findings.
It is important for everyone, especially parents to know that when children are stressed in early childhood they become stressful adults. Therefore please keep your children safe and resilient to trauma and stress.
Mom's love is good for the brain
School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus, a key structure important to learning, memory and response to stress.
The new research, by child psychiatrists and neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is the first to show that changes in this critical region of children’s brain anatomy are linked to a mother’s nurturing.
Their research is published online in theProceedings of the National Academy of SciencesEarly Edition.
“This study validates something that seems to be intuitive, which is just how important nurturing parents are to creating adaptive human beings,” says lead author Joan L. Luby, MD, professor of child psychiatry. “I think the public health implications suggest that we should pay more attention to parents’ nurturing, and we should do what we can as a society to foster these skills because clearly nurturing has a very, very big impact on later development.”
