Scientifically proven: Grannies are good for your health

The love and care given by grandmothers is something not every child receives, but those who do have their grannies around should feel lucky.

A recent study conducted by the researchers at Emory University in the southern US state of Georgia has proven that grandmothers are hard-wired to care deeply about their grandchildren.

Scientists scanned the brains of 50 grandmothers with functional magnetic resonance imaging as grandmothers viewed pictures of their grandchild, who were between three and 12 years old.

They were shown pictures of an unknown child, the same-sex parent of the grandchild, and an unknown adult as a control.

"They recruited areas of the brain that are involved with emotional empathy, and also areas of the brain that are involved in movement and motor simulation and preparation," said James Rilling, an anthropologist and neuroscientist who led the study.

"When they're viewing these pictures of their grandchild, they're really feeling what the grandchild is feeling. So when the child is expressing joy, they're feeling that joy.”

“When the children are expressing distress, they're feeling that distress."

‘Baby schema’

The same motor-related regions of the brain also light up in mothers' brains and are thought to be related to the instinct to pick up a child or approach and interact with them.

By contrast, when the grandmothers viewed images of their adult children, there was a stronger activation of brain regions linked to cognitive empathy, trying to understand what a person is thinking or feeling and why, without as much emotional engagement.

This might be linked to children' s cute appearance, scientifically known as "baby schema," which the young of many species share in order to evoke a caregiving response, said Rilling.

‘First look at grand maternal brain’

Unlike other primates, humans are "cooperative breeders," which means mothers get help in rearing offspring.

Rilling, who had previously conducted similar research on fathers, had wanted to turn his attention toward grandmothers in order to explore a theory in anthropology known as the "grandmother hypothesis."

This holds that human females tend to live long lives, well beyond their own reproductive years, to provide benefits to their grown offspring and grandchildren.

"This is really the first look at the grand maternal brain," said Rilling, explaining that brain scan studies on the elderly normally focus on studying conditions like Alzheimer's disease.

The grandmothers, who were drawn from the Atlanta, Georgia area and came from a cross-section of economic and racial backgrounds, also completed questionnaires to measure their degree of involvement with and attachment to their grandchild.

Grandmothers who reported a greater desire to be involved with caring had greater activity in brain regions of interest.

‘Emotional empathy may be a key’

Finally, when comparing the new study with the results from his earlier work on fathers, Rilling found that overall, grandmothers more strongly activated regions involved with emotional empathy and motivation.

But he stressed that this finding was only an average and doesn't necessarily apply to any given individual.

Rilling also interviewed each of his subjects to get a sense about the challenges and rewards of being a grandparent.

"Consistently, the challenge that came up the most was the differences of opinion they would have with the parents in terms of how the grandchildren should be raised, their values, and the constant struggle to step back from that," he said.

On the other hand, "We joked about it, but a lot of them talked about how you can give the grandchildren back, it's not a full time job," he said.

Many grandmothers felt they could be more present now that they were free of the time and financial pressure they experienced when raising their own children.

"So a lot of them reported actually enjoying being a grandmother more than they enjoyed being a mother," he said.