A study carried out at the Baylor College of Medicine, the Texas Children’s Hospital and the University College London found out that reward centers in the brain of a mother that is shown a picture of her baby smiling light up on a MRI scan.

According to medical experts, when a region of the brain lights up on a MRI scan, it means that the region has an increased blood flow, which is a sign of activity in that area. This means that mothers have their reward center, the same centers that are affected by nicotine and drug use, activated when seeing their babies’ smile.

The study might be very useful in explaining the neural mechanism that is at the core of the mother-baby bound. It is hoped that the findings will be able to explain why this doesn’t happen in some cases, resulting in mothers neglecting and even abusing their infants.

The study was carried out on 28 young women that were mothers for the first time and that had babies whose ages varied between 5 and 10 month. The mothers’ brains were scanned using and MRI device, while they were shown pictures of their babies, as well as of other babies. The babies had facial expressions varying from happy to sad.

The study observed that dopamine reward centers were activated only when the mothers were shown a picture with their baby being happy. In all other cases, the results of the scan found no other strong reactions.

Even though the scientists expected that the mothers will have a strong reaction when shown a picture of their babies crying, this didn’t happen.