Love, the Foundation of Life │ How Love Makes Us Human with Dr Anna Machin
The nature of our lifelong relationships has its foundation in our very first love: that between us and our carers.
Anthropologist Anna Machin explains which aspects of love and attraction are hard-wired into our brains by nature, and why we can blame (some of) our misbehaviour in relationships on biology.
She also gives us a glimpse of what the future of love might look like.
More on the science behind this video:
Dr Anna Machin’s website https://annamachin.com/
Dr Anna Machin’s blog https://annamachin.com/blog/
This series was produced with our partner Pint of Science! Find out more: www.pintofscience.com
Do children who feel loved turn out to be emotionally and socially smarter?
The nature of our lifelong relationships has its foundation in our very first love, that between us and our carers. Due to our large brains, we undergo a period of rapid post-birth brain growth and this means that the environment of care has a major influence on how we develop, particularly in the prefrontal cortex where your social and emotional cognition sit.
We know from studies that the connectivity of three key areas of the parental brain, that's the amount of grey and white matter, in the limbic areas - related to nurturing, the empathetic areas - the ability to tell the emotional state of your child, and the mentalising areas - that's the ability to know what they need, predict the emotional regulation, socialisation and baseline oxytocin of a preschool child. It's almost as if the architecture of the parental brain has been reflected in that of their child. And we know that there's a link between the nature of attachment to that carer and the socio and emotional development of the child.
So, if the child has a secure attachment to their carer, that means that the carer is appropriately sensitive and able to calm their fear so that they can go out and explore the world, safe in the knowledge they can come back for comfort, then we see increased brain connectivity, that means bigger areas of grey and white matter. We see higher levels of baseline neuro chemistry associated with social relationships, so, oxytocin, dopamine and beta-endorphin, meaning those children are set up to have better social skills. We know they have enhanced pro-social skills, those are those skills of sharing, caring and helping that make the world go around. And they have enhanced executive function, these are cognitive skills that enable us to operate in our very complicated social world. So, they have better behavioural and emotional regulation, they have good working memory, they're good with their attention and are able to plan ahead.
Insecure attachment and neglect lead to different outcomes. We see decreased connectivity in the child's brain, that's less grey and white matter, particularly in the prefrontal cortex where your social skills sit. And we see active neuronal death. Children who live in difficult environments as they're developing have enlarged amygdalas. Remember that's the bit in your brain that detects risk and feels fear. And because the environment is so hard, this is constantly active. We see increased methylation of the oxytocin receptor gene, which means those children have difficulty with empathising and emotional recognition. And we also know that later in life they will have relationship issues, including insecure attachment.
Stay tuned for our next episode on how quality relationships help improve our health,
happiness and satisfaction with life.
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