Why Love Matters: How affection shapes a baby's brain

by Sue Gerhardt

If someone is a great human being, it can only mean one thing. They were loved.

That stress on a pregnant mother can already begin to shape her baby’s brain – affecting the volume of its hippocampus (a brain structure involved in memory) or amygdala (another brain structure central to emotional reactions).

That money worries, or long working hours during pregnancy, can affect an enzyme in the placenta, which normally blocks cortisol from the mum going to the baby, allowing stress hormones to flood into the baby.

The result is a baby who is born already stressed out, who may be much harder to care for.

if the will and resources were available, the harm done to one generation need not be transmitted to the next: a damaged child need not inevitably become a damaged and damaging parent.

These foundations are laid during pregnancy and in the first two years of life. This is when the ‘social brain’ is shaped and when an individual’s emotional style and emotional resources are established.

to understand people you had to understand their environment, just as the plant nurseryman had to make a scientific study of soil and atmosphere.

The period from conception through the first two years – roughly speaking, the first 1000 days – is uniquely significant, because this is when the nervous system itself is being established and shaped by experience.

During this period, how parents behave has as much influence on their child’s emotional make-up as his or her genetic inheritance. Their responses to their baby teach him what his own emotions are and how to manage them.

In these first weeks, physical structures are forming such as the shape of the face.

What his mother eats has the biggest impact on the foetus in the first three months of pregnancy

The foetus is also building up assumptions about the life ahead – as in ‘weather forecasting’, he needs to prepare

be a life with plentiful nutrition or one where you have to store as many calories as possible in order to survive?

The critical window for programming this tendency to store belly fat is during mid-pregnancy, between 14 and 23 weeks

can over time lead to a decreased activity of the special enzyme in the placenta which normally is able to block the stress hormone cortisol from reaching the foetus

When this enzyme is disabled, cortisol can cross the placenta and reach the foetus, potentially affecting its developing stress response

In fact, it is such a core element of human life that all major amygdala structure is formed by 15 weeks of pregnancy

When the developing amygdala is exposed to high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, particularly in early pregnancy,it can respond by becoming more active and growing extra connections. In fact, in some babies exposed to prenatal stress, it can increase by as much as 6 per cent in volume

(Strangely, this only seems to affect...

Prenatal stress can also affect the brain in other ways. It can reduce the vo...

and alter the size of the corpus callosum, an area in the centre of the brain connecting the right and...

it also reduces connections in the pre...

The mother’s intake of omega-3 fatty acids – found in oily fish – has an important protective effect. It seems to reduce the impact of stress and anxiety on the foetus

The amount of omega-3 fatty acids in the mother’s blood at the time of delivery also predicts the baby’s attention span well into his or her second year

Recent research suggests that choline (found in egg yolks, cauliflower and nuts, including peanut butter) may also be essential for optimum brain development at this time, particularly for the development of the hippocampus, which is also involved in ma...

women who have suffered from an early separation from their own parents or other negative early experiences tend to have lower levels of oxytocin, the bonding biochemical, and this can affect their own mothering

prenatal depression affected the way the newborn baby’s right amygdala was wired up:

it was less well connected (Rifkin-Graboi

Another route is through the effects of the mother’s stress on the foetal serotonin system. Serotonin is an important biochemical which circulates in the brain and ...

When the mother is stressed, it can affect not only her serotonin system but also her ability to make serotonin available to the foetus via the placenta. This has an impact on connections in the areas of the brain which rely on serotonin, such as the cortex and hippocampus.

In fact, a whole cluster of important emotional regulators are beginning to be established before the baby is even born.

Neurotransmitter systems such as serotonin and dopamine systems have already started to be programmed, in a way that may or may not be reversible.

they influence other systems such as the development of the amygdala and the stress response, which, as we have already seen, are also devel...

However, if things have not gone well during pregnancy, all is not lost by any means.

Because human babies are born with a brain that is only a quarter of its final adult size – a much more incomplete brain even than other mammals – human care in early childhood (and beyond) plays a much bigger role in shaping the brain.

For example, positive bonding and secure attachment during the first year can enable a small hippocampus affected by stress to be restored to normal volume (Buss et al. 2012).

New growth also takes place in the pre-frontal cortex in response to positive social experiences.

the poorly handled baby develops a more reactive stress response and different biochemical patterns from a well-handled baby.

‘external foetus’ and there is a sense in which the human baby is incomplete, needing to be programmed by adult humans.

Even the growth of the brain itself, which is growing at its most rapid rate in the first year and a half, may not progress adequately if the baby doesn’t have the right conditions to develop.

Each baby has a unique personal store of genes which can be activated by experience.

Orchid children are more susceptible to harsh parenting or neglectful nurseries; in difficult circumstances, they may end up prone to depression or antisocial behaviour.

The point is, however, that the outcome depends far more on the mother and father than on the baby. Researchers have found that even the most difficult and irritable babies do fine with responsive parents who adapt to their needs.

Difficult babies may be difficult in response to their parents’ emotional unavailability to them

Babies need a caregiver who identifies with them so strongly that the baby’s needs feel like hers;

he is still physiologically and psychologically an extension of her.

She soothes her baby’s loud crying and over-arousal by entering the baby’s state with him, engaging him with a loud mirroring voice, gradually leading the way towards calm by toning her voice down and taking him with her to a calmer state.

Parents are really needed to be a sort of emotion coach.

It is a kind of ‘psychofeedback’ which provides the introduction to a human culture in which we can interpret both our own and others’ feelings and thoughts

Their children will be learning to hold back their feelings – either to deny they exist, or to avoid expressing them as they are going to upset or anger mother. She certainly won’t be able to help regulate them or think about them with the child. In effect, the child has to regulate the parent by protecting her from his feelings.