This is my brain on grandchildren.
What my brain does at the sight of my grandchildren, according to research.
I’m a grandmother. Yikes! That makes me sound old, which I’m most certainly not, thank you very much. Actually, I prefer to be called “GiGi,” which seems a younger version of the matronly old lady my mind pictures when I think “grandmother.” But the point of this report isn’t how I look…it’s what happens to my brain in response to the sight of my grandchildren and children.
Researchers Rilling, Gonzalez, and Lee recruited 50 grandmothers to measure their brain function with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMIR) as they viewed pictures of their grandchild. It is the first study to examine grandmaternal brain function, and it was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B by researchers from Emory University.
Brain function was measured with fMRI as grandmothers viewed pictures of their grandchild, an unknown child, the same-sex parent of the grandchild, and an unknown adult. Grandmothers also completed questionnaires to measure their degree of involvement with and attachment to their grandchild.
