I don't know what mechanisms are activated in our mind, but the fact is that when the baby is born, when we first see his face, something tells us that we love him. There is a "flash", no matter how tired or stunned we are, there is a connection that will take more or less to enlarge, but that is there.
There are researchers who have wanted to delve into these brain mechanisms and seem to confirm that pregnant women 's brain prepares to give a more intense emotional response when they look at the newborn's face.
Pregnant women show more brain activity on the right side, the area of the brain related to emotional abilities (is that why we are more sensitive, what we usually blame on hormones?).
The study has been prepared by scientists from the Department of Psychology at the Royal Holloway University of London. It consisted of analyzing the brain responses of pregnant women (19) and mothers with babies of a few weeks (20) when observing facial images of adults and babies with positive or negative expressions.
According to the authors, the results suggest that during pregnancy there are changes in the way the brain processes facial emotions that ensure that mothers are neurologically prepared to bond with their babies at birth. The pregnant women "captured" the emotions of the faces better.
All changes are therefore aimed at that a mother does not reject her baby, that she wants to care for and protect her and that she understands it betterAlthough we know that it is difficult to "communicate" with the newborn, especially wanting to decipher why he cries.
However, it seems that with the passing of the weeks the mothers no longer have that brain part activated, because differences were observed between them and the pregnant women. Nature is wise and probably after the first contacts the road is already done ...
What would happen to moms who don't feel that instinct at the birth of their baby? In my view, it is a possible situation in many cases, if there has been a traumatic birth, if the mother has depression ...
Nor do I believe that "love at first sight" arrives unfailingly. I have commented on some occasion that it is more than likely that both the mother and, more frequently, the father, need a little more time.
Will this case be more common in the father because he has not gone through pregnancy and the hormonal and brain changes of those who speak in the study? Probably.
Definitely, the pregnant woman's brain prepares to bond emotionally with the baby. We already imagined it (and when this does not happen, there may be something inside that "fails"), although not in what way, so it is good to investigate these processes often unknown to science ...
