How Baby's Laughter Affects Our Brains

A good friend recently had his first child, a son, allowing my friend to join the growing number of my peers who now call themselves. I’m always astounded at how sudden and profound the transition is from pre-baby to parent. One day you go to expecting to wake three snoozes into your alarm, and 20 hours of labor later, you go to sleep expecting to wake up whenever this tiny new creature beckons. Then, you have to be ready to feed, soothe, or rock the little guy back to quiet slumber. With so many things to learn—immediately—to care for a baby, it seems like evolution must have given our brains a few tools to ease the shift into the newfound role as parent, just as a bird shifts to its nesting instinct.  That’s why, when I saw a recent study looking at how affects our brain’s response to babies, I grew curious.
Compared to placebo, oxytocin changes the way the brain responds to a baby’s laughter. When hearing a baby’s laughter, oxytocin led to reduced activation in the amygdala, a brain region involved in processing fear, threats, and anxiety. Oxytocin also enhanced the connections between the amygdala and other regions of the brain, such as the orbitofrontal cortex, the region just above your eyes, and the anterior cingulate, a frontal region right in the groove between the two hemispheres of the brain. The orbitofrontal cortex, or OFC, and the anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC, help process emotions and relay that information to other parts of the brain.