'Eye contact with baby helps synchronise your brainwaves'

Making eye contact with babies syncs their brainwaves with adults and could help them to learn and communicate more easily, according to a Cambridge study.
When a parent and infant interact, various aspects of their behaviour can synchronise, including their gaze, emotions and heart-rate, but little is known about whether their brain activity also synchronises.
Brainwaves reflect the group-level activity of millions of neurons and are involved in information transfer between brain regions.
Previous studies have shown that when two adults are talking to each other, communication is more successful if their brainwaves are in synchrony.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK carried out a study to explore whether infants can synchronise their brainwaves to adults too - and whether eye contact might influence this.

The study, published in the journal PNAS, examined the brainwave patterns of 36 infants (17 in the first experiment and 19 in the second) using electroencephalography (EEG), which measures patterns of brain electrical activity via electrodes in a skull cap worn by the participants.

They compared the infants' brain activity to that of the adult who was singing nursery rhymes to the infant.
In the first of two experiments, the infant watched a video of an adult as she sang nursery rhymes.
First, the adult - whose brainwave patterns had already been recorded - was looking directly at the infant.

Then, she turned her head to avert her gaze, while still singing nursery rhymes. Finally, she turned her head away, but her eyes looked directly back at the infant.
The researchers found that infants' brainwaves were more synchronised to the adults' when the adult's gaze met the infant's, as compared to when her gaze was averted.
The greatest synchronising effect occurred when the adults' head was turned away but her eyes still looked directly at the infant.
The researchers say this may be because such a gaze appears highly deliberate, and so provides a stronger signal to the infant that the adult intends to communicate with her.

In the second experiment, a real adult replaced the video. She only looked either directly at the infant or averted her gaze while singing nursery rhymes.
However, her brainwaves could be monitored live to see whether her brainwave patterns were being influenced by the infants as well as the other way round.
This time, both infants and adults became more synchronised to each other's brain activity when mutual eye contact was established, researchers said.
This occurred even though the adult could see the infant at all times, and infants were equally interested in looking at the adult even when she looked away, they said.

The researchers say that this shows that brainwave synchronisation is not just due to seeing a face or finding something interesting, but about sharing an intention to communicate.