Nurturing Moms May Help Their Child's Brain Develop

MONDAY, Jan. 30 (HealthDay News) -- Preschool children whose moms are loving and nurturing have a larger hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in learning, memory and stress response, when they reach school age, a new study finds.

"It is to our knowledge the first study that links early maternal nurturance to the structural development of a key brain region," said study author Dr. Joan Luby, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "It provides very powerful evidence of the importance of early nurturing for healthy brain development and has tremendous public health implications."

Mothers who offered reassurance and support that helped their child regulate their emotions and control their impulses were rated as being nurturing. Mothers who either ignored the child or harshly scolded the child were rated otherwise.

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