2. Babies : Love

 《《 1. Babies : Love (previous here)

[Anne] When we first started looking at this, to my knowledge, there wasn't much on just differences in parenting and the infant's brain. So we really needed scans of babies' brains right after they were born, before they'd experienced really any parenting styles. And then fortunately we had this great opportunity to take advantage of a much larger study ..the Growing Up In Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes study.

In this study, these babies had already been scanned within the first few weeks of life.

So we had a sort of baseline for brain development. We needed to follow those babies to six months... take another scan of their brain. and also observe differences in parenting style. 

-[Anne] Hello.

-Hi.

-I'm Anne, one of the GUSTO scientists.

-Hi, l'm Nina. -Hi, nice to meet you.

⁃Nice to meet you. -This is Nathaniel.

-Hi, Nathaniel.

So we brought in the moms and babies  when the babies were six months of age, and we observed the parenting behavior in the laboratory

You go down on the mat?

[Anne] What I'm really looking at is how attentive and responsive is a parent to the infant's signals? 

Hello. How are you? Great? Are you having fun? Stretch.

We had 20 babies... and we rated the mother's behavior using a system of descriptive cards. Do they respond to what the infant is doing?

-[woman] Oops!

-[baby crying] [woman] 0h, no, no, no. [Anne] So for example, we might see a baby cry. Does the mother quickly offer comfort? [baby crying]

[woman] Ooh! Oh, sorry. 

[Anne] lf the baby is reaching for something does she let the child choose, or does she choose? You like this?

These interactions are really small, and sometimes they're really quick.

But over time, they add together to complete a picture of what the relationship is like. [birds chirping]

(changed scene)

[breast pump whirring] [Destiny] I'm gonna stop at 55 ml. ( pump hooked up to her breast)

[cell phone ringing] This is him.

Hello? Good morning. So you're up.

No, you're gonna go straight to the property? i know, i'm gonna text you the address. Okay, perfect. -Okay, bye-bye.

-[Shawn speaks indistinctly] -[sneezes]

-[Destiny and Shawn] Bless you.[sneezes]

-[Destiny and Shawn] Bless you. Okay, yes.

[Shawn] Destiny is finding it really hard because she's really motivated to go back to work. But I feel like she doesn't want to be any minute away from Dakota. I guess it's the motherly instincts kicking in. 

[Shawn] Dakota, I'm going to need you to be a little bit more still. I feel I know what l'm doing, but I'm, like, real confident with doing this now,

Yeah, it's time for you to eat. [mewling softly] Come on [gurgling]

[Shawn to Dakota] But it's time for you to eat. 

[Shawn] Dakota definitely knows who I am. I feel like, you know, nothing could break our bond. There you go. It almost makes me feel real soft inside, like, real mushy and, I don't know, like, getting real deep into my emotions which I don't like doing, but she brings that out of me easily.

Can I get one burp? Hm? [mewling]

[car horns honking](hospital MRI room)

So l just need to ask you a few questions..

- Yep.

-...before we proceed with the MRI. There's no radiation involved, so that's why we can do it on children.

-Yep

-All right?-Ready?

-Ready. 

[Anne] We had looked to see differences in parenting style.

Now we needed to see how do these parenting styles affect areas of the infant's brain?

And to do that, we needed to take the babies back into the MRI for their six-month scan. [baby crying]

 🎵If you're happy and you know ...  🎵 

[Anne] It's really hard

to scan a baby. ...and you know it

 🎵Clap your hands 🎶 

[Anne] Because for a successful scan you need to stay still. 

[woman] Wow! And that's not  something that comes naturally to infants.

[Anne] So to make it easier, babies are fed before so they fall asleep.

[woman 1] Okay. Let's start the scan. Is the baby sleeping?

[woman 2] Yeah

[woman 1] Okay. -There it is

-Yes, coming up-- [woman 2] It's coming right up.

[Nurse] Are you okay with the image quality of this?

[ nurse] Yes. 

[ staff in charge,Angi Qiu]  Perfect.

[Anne] I went to my colleague Angi Qiu,   an expert in neural imaging, whose team processed the data. I was really excited to see what she had found

[Anqi] Here is actually the structural image. And now you can see red dots  showing up. That's where the hippocampus is. 

[Anne] So this is just one baby, though, right?

[Anqi] Yes, it is.

But if you look at all the scans we have, you look at individuals, and they have a very similar pattern. This was really quite incredible. 

[Anne] The hippocampus, this area towards the middle of the brain, that differed according to parenting styles. The infants who had received less responsive caregiving their hippocampi were a bit bigger.

[Anne] This was surprising, because the hippocampus is really important to learning and to managing distress. So what it suggests is that the babies were having to manage their own stress  because they're not getting quite as much support from their parents.

Even at six months, these everyday differences in parenting were actually   linked to observable differences in the structure of the infant's brain. 

[Anqi] Hey! Good job. To my knowledge, that was the first time a group had seen this.

[Anne] When a parent is attentive and responsive, the baby is learning that the world is a safe place, and that frees up time for them to explore their environment.

When a baby doesn't get those same signals from the parent...[laughter] the baby may need to prioritize thinking about safety and comfort rather than exploration. I'm the last person to say that parenting is easy.

None of us do this perfectly.

What is important is that the overall experience that the child is receiving is one of attentive and responsive care. And I think, for parents that's reassuring. 🎶 Itsy-bitsy spider

Climbed up the water spout

Down came the rain

And washed the spider out

Up came the sun

And dried up all the rain

 The itsy-bitsy spider Climbed up the spout again  🎶 [squeals] 

[Adam] Yay! [cooing] Mommy missed you, Dakota.

[Destiny] l'm comfortable leaving, and so, um, it just gives me a lotta hope. It gives me a lotta, lotta hope. 

[Destiny] Come on, Dakota. Come get Mommy.

[lsaac] I think we're gonna make good parents. But there's a lot of stuff that you learn on the way. [chuckles]

[Josh] Hi! [woman] Woo!

[Rachel] It's not just her being a baby now. She's a real part of our family, and she's growing into her own person.

[man] Babies are the ultimate mystery. They're much more complex than we ever thought.

 [man] Ba-ba!

[baby] Ba-tha. 

[woman] Good boy! How do they learn language? Why are they sleeping so much? How is it that babies learn to crawl, and what do they learn when they're crawling around in the world? [babbling excitedly]

One of the great puzzles is, what's it like to be a baby?

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