Early parenting intervention enhances children's brain responses to mothers' faces

What is it about?

Parent training programs for caregivers of infants have been shown to lead to improvements in children's self-control skills, among other benefits. In this paper, we tested the long-term effects of such a training program on children's brain functioning. We found that children of parents who received training when the children were infants had stronger brain responses to photographs of their mothers. We also found that these stronger brain responses explained improvements in children's behavior.

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Photo by Alexander Dummer on Unsplash

Photo by Alexander Dummer on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our findings show that improving parenting skills of infant caregivers can have long-lasting benefits for children's brain functioning and behavior.