Do you remember just how your grandmother’s smile lit up whenever you came over to visit? The warm hugs, knitted sweaters, and their soft loving voice are just some of the things you look forward to. Recently, one study revealed how grandmother’s brain reacts to the sight of their grandchildren.
In a research conducted at Emory University, they scanned the brains of the grandmothers as they look at their grandchildren’s photos. James Rilling, the lead author of the study examining grandmaternal function, said that areas of the grandmother’s brain associated with emotional empathy were activated as observed.
“That suggests that grandmothers are geared toward feeling what their grandchildren are feeling when they interact with them. If their grandchild is smiling, they’re feeling the child’s joy. And if their grandchild is crying, they’re feeling the child’s pain and distress,” says Rilling.
On another side, they also gave the grandmothers photos of their adult children and it showed different results. This time, the part of the brain activated is associated with cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes so you gain a better understanding of their perspective. This is probably the reason they are closer to their grandchildren, as they have difficulties understanding their adult children.
“Young children have likely evolved traits to be able to manipulate not just the maternal brain, but the grand maternal brain,” Rilling says. “An adult child doesn’t have the same cute ‘factor,’ so they may not elicit the same emotional response.”
A former Emory research specialist, Amber Gonzalez, together with Minwoo Lee, a Ph.D. candidate in Emory’s Department of Anthropology, co-authored the study of how grandmother’s brain reacts to the sight of their grandchildren.
Lee explained how he could personally relate to their research as he spent a lot of time with his grandmothers. “I still remember warmly the moments I had with them. They were always so welcoming and happy to see me. As a child, I didn’t really understand why,” Lee says.
In fact, studies about the older human brain not yet been affected by dementia and other aging disorders are rare. In this research, they focused on grandmothers’ brain functions that could contribute to people’s social lives and development in the future. “It’s an important aspect of the human experience that has been largely left out of the field of neuroscience,” Lee added.
Rilling’s studies are focused on the neural basis of human social cognition and behavior. As other neuroscientists focus on studying motherhood, he made a name for his research on fatherhood.
Studies about grandmothers’ brain functions and how they interact with their grandchildren are relatively new. Rilling also emphasized that there could be a global, parenting system in the human brain. And so they decided that grandmothers are the perfect subjects for this research.
In a typical family, the mother is the primary caregiver of a child. However, family members also play a great role in raising children – especially the grandmothers.
Rilling stated that it’s not always the fathers who come next to mothers as the primary caregivers. More often than not, the grandmothers serve as the primary helper.
In the 1960s, researchers found out that when grandmothers contributed greatly to taking care of their grandchildren, it then enables the mothers to produce more offspring. If they have more grandchildren around, they also reap more benefits from it such as increased fitness and happiness, thus a greater chance of longer life. This genetic makeup for longer living will then be passed on to the next generations allowing them to live longer and possibly have more grandchildren as well. This is what they called the “grandmother hypothesis”.
One piece of evidence for this hypothesis was gathered by Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Utah. She studied a group of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania where grandmothers foraged for food and helped improve their grandchildren’s nutrition while also allowing the mothers to have more children. However, Hawkes also explained that the evolutionary benefits of living longer might disappear if a grandmother’s ability deteriorates with age or if there are no presence of grandkids to take care of.
Another study was conducted by Simon Chapman, a Ph.D. student at the University of Turku in Finland. In his database, the presence of a grandmother boosted a daughter’s number of offspring. And similar to Hawke’s evidence, the evolutionary value of living longer decreases as soon as the grandmother’s help is not as needed as before when grandkids start to grow older.
Evidence suggests that the presence of grandmothers poses benefits on a societal and cultural level. Positively engaged grandmothers are associated with grandchildren who perform better in academics, have better behavior and social skills, as well as improved physical health.
For this study, 50 healthy grandmothers participated in answering questionnaires about their experiences with their grandchildren. Some questions include how much time they spend with them, what activities they do together, and how they feel towards their grandkids.
The study also involved functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe their brain activity as they look at pictures of their grandchild, an unknown child, the same-sex parent of the grandchild, and an unknown adult.
The results showed that most participants while viewing pictures of their grandchildren, activated the part of their brain responsible for emotional empathy. Those who had activated part of their brain involved in cognitive empathy reported that they want more involvement in taking care of their grandchild.
“Our results add to the evidence that there does seem to be a global parenting caregiving system in the brain, and that grandmothers’ responses to their grandchildren map onto it,” Rilling says.
A grandmother’s role in a family is much greater than we could ever imagine. For the most part, grandmothers are our source of unconditional love, warm hugs, and lullabies. Whether they carry the longevity genes or a bowl of cookies, it is our duty to make them feel appreciated just for being there.
What is your best memory with your grandmother? Share this article and don’t forget to tell your grandma how much you love her!
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