Eye Contact With Your Baby Helps Synchronise Your Brainwaves and Improve Communication

It’s probably something that parents instinctively know and already act on. Now the University of Cambridge has proved it past our anecdata. Eye contact with our babies helps to synchronise brainwaves and aid communication.

It was already known that when a parent and baby interacted with each other that emotions and gaze would synchronise, even the heartrate of each. But now research findings prove that the interaction also affects the brainwaves of both as well.

The research from Baby-LINC Lab at the University of Cambridge has just published the findings in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

To come to their conclusions, the team of researchers studied the brainwave patterns of 36 babies using electroencephalography (EEG) throughout a series of experiments using both video and live contact. Records were taken of the babies’ and adults’ brainwaves throughout. Findings showed that eye contact provides a strong signal to the baby that the adult wanted to communicate, even when the head is turned.

Lead author on the study, Dr Victoria Leong said: “When the adult and infant are looking at each other, they are signalling their availability and intention to communicate with each other. We found that both adult and infant brains respond to a gaze signal by becoming more in sync with their partner. This mechanism could prepare parents and babies to communicate, by synchronising when to speak and when to listen, which would also make learning more effective.”