On Wednesday 18 Aug 2010 11:28:56 am Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote: > On 18 August 2010 11:12, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > > I recall having a discussion with Shiv on this topic when my daughter > > was born. Intuitively, it feels true given my experiences over the > > past 5 years. Any thoughts from others? > > I remember having this conversation with Shiv before my son, now 10, > was born. It most certainly is true, at least in my case. > > Ram > This is another one of those weird threads in which the first message did not reach my inbox for some reason.
In fact my original converstion with Udhay and ram were based partly on my own intuitive experience, that of some friends and some guesswork based on reading. I am guessing this is hormonally mediated. It is likely that someone will discover that the feel, sight and smell of a baby over a few days spark off chemical changes in the body that affect the brain. It is known that the hormone Oxytocin, that is released in the brain itself (specifically the pituitary) gets secreted by the sight and touch of a baby in a lactating mother and in fact the hormone causes jets of milk to shoot out of the ducts in the breast. I recall reading recently that the same hormone is released in men under similar circumstances. Having said that - you can be dead sure that modern science has not figured out even 10% of the complex chemistry that goes into biological systems. So we have a long way to go before we can even begin to understand things that we know intuitively. shiv
