In a study of the brains of infants in response to various stimuli, it was found that babies experience increased brain activity when making eye contact with an adult. The results, published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, help scientist understand more development of social perception and suggest that a part of the brain is specifically programmed to process eye gaze even at a very early age.
Researchers measured “increased early evoked gamma activity at occipital channels indicating enhanced neural processing during the earliest steps of face encoding” when babies looked at pictures of women whose gazes were directed at them. Pictures of women with their faces tilted downward or who were looking away from the viewer did not elicit the same response, “confirming that the gamma band oscillations observed in response to gaze direction are specific to upright faces.”
So, look deep into those baby blues and help the development of next baby you meet!
Source: Medscape Today