When you lock eyes with a baby, it’s hard to look
away. For one thing, babies are fun to look at.
They’re so tiny and cute and interesting. For
another, babies love to stare back. I remember my
babies staring at me so hard, with their eyebrows
raised and unblinking eyes wide open.

They would have killed in a staring contest.
This mutual adoration of staring may be for a good
reason. When a baby and an adult make eye contact,
their brain waves fall in sync , too, a new study finds.
And those shared patterns of brain activity may
actually pave the way for better communication
between baby and adult: Babies make more sweet,
little sounds when their eyes are locked onto an adult
who is looking back.

The scientists report the results
online November 28 in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences .

Psychologist Victoria Leong of the University of
Cambridge and Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore and colleagues invited infants into the lab
for two experiments. In the first, the team outfitted 17
8-month-old babies with EEG caps, headwear
covered with electrodes that measure the collective
behavior of nerve cells across the brain.

The infants
watched a video in which an experimenter, also
outfitted in an EEG cap, sung a nursery rhyme while
looking either straight ahead at the baby, at the baby
but with her head turned at a 20-degree angle, or
away from the baby and with her head turned at a 20-
degree angle.

https://go2pedia..co.ke/2017/12/staring-into-babys-eyes-puts-her-brain.html?m=1