When parents play with their babies, their brains show bursts of high-frequency similar to their babies brains, which helps the baby to sustain attention for long.

‘When parents are more responsive, the children can sustain attention for long and help them learn things.’

"We know that, when an adult plays jointly together with a child, this helps the child to sustain attention to things," he continued. "But until now we haven't really understood why this is. Our findings suggested that, when a baby pays attention to things, the adult's brain tracks and responds to her infant's looking behavior - as if her infants' actions are echoed in the parent's brain activity. And we also found that, where the parent's brain is more responsive to the child, the child sustains their attention for longer." 




Dr Leong, senior author on the study, said, "Our project asks more questions than it answers. We don't know, for example, whether some parents are more responsive to their babies than others - and if so, why. And our study just looked at mums, so we don't know whether mums and dads may be different in how they respond neurally to their babies. Our findings are exciting, but there is a lot more to investigate about how, exactly, this type of neural responsiveness by parents may help young children to learn."
Source-Eurekalert