Love can help your child’s brain grow

New research suggests that love can actually make your child's brain larger.

We all know that good parenting helps to produce happy, healthy and well-adjusted kids. But a new study hints at the science behind that phenomenon, suggesting that nurturing from mom and dad helps children develop a part of the brain that combats depression and stress.

"It's now clear that a caregiver's nurturing is not only good for the development of the child, but it actually physically changes the brain," Joan Luby, the study's lead researcher, told LiveScience.com.

The study began several years ago, when child psychiatrists at Washington University in St. Louis studied how 92 children between the ages of three and six interacted with their parents. They videotaped the parents—mostly moms—while they juggled filling out a survey while preventing their kids from opening a temptingly-wrapped present and rated the amount of support the mothers gave to their children.

[See also: Are French parents the best parents?]

Four years later, the researchers examined brain-images of those children, now aged seven to 10. They found that a region of the brain called the hippocampus was up to 10 per cent larger in children with especially nurturing mothers, compared to those whose mothers were average or poor nurturers.

"Having small hippocampi increases the risk for all sorts of mental disorders," writes Charles Raison, a mental health columnist at CNNhealth and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona. "Other things being equal, having small hippocampi increases your risk for all sorts of troubles, from depression and post traumatic stress disorder to Alzheimer's disease."

Research has also shown that the hippocampus also plays a critical role in learning and memory.

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