What Makes Baby Faces Special, Helps Those With Alzheimers

Aug 06, 2008 – The topic of Charles Osgood’s file recently was "Why do baby faces make us smile?"

Most people, including those with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, feel "instinctively" that babies faces are cute.

Researchers at Oxford University have done a study to find out why we react in such a positive way to babies.

Because babies are quite a lot of trouble, Oxford researchers Morton Kringelbach and Alan Stein thought that this response must be instinctual. They used imaging scans to measure brain activity in volunteers being shown images of unfamiliar adult and infant faces.

Prof. Alan Stein of Oxford University says, "In response to baby faces, but not in response to adult faces, these volunteers showed very specific activation of the brain."

Prof. Alan Stein says, "In an area called the orbitofrontal cortex, which is very much an emotional part of the brain where the reward-based stimuli seem to be based."

Is this just a momentary thing? Or does it last a while?

Stein says "These baby faces are selectively tagged by the brain for further activation."
In other words, that cute baby face is setting you up for duty.

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