Adult Brains Wired to Go Ga-Ga Over Babies

Adults suffering from depression, however, may experience a malfunctioning of the baby love brain center, since another part of the brain that's been linked to depression is near the baby processing region. Mothers, in particular, can suffer from postnatal depression, which occurs in 13 percent of all new moms.

"Our study would not lead to better treatments, but it may help to identify those at risk much earlier and thus offer potential treatments," Kringelbach said.

Kent Berridge, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, told Discovery News that he was impressed by the way the new study "cleverly confirms Darwin's prediction that human brains are wired to respond with special emotional reactions to infant faces in a basic and immediate way."

"The beauty of Kringelbach and colleagues' paper is its use of new baby faces that the adults hadn't seen before, to rule out alternative explanations based solely on learning of social attachment," Berridge said.

In the future, Kringelbach and his team hope to address whether or not men or women show different brain responses to babies, and if infants from other species, such as puppies and kittens, also stimulate the human baby love center of the brain.

Related Links:

Jennifer Viegas' blog: Born Animal

Morten Kringelbach's Emotion, Learning and Reading Page

Kent Berridge's Lab