In this era of social distancing and depressing news, we could all do with a good hug. Now scientists have analyzed what makes the perfect cuddle — do not squeeze too tight.
A team from Japan’s Toho University measured the calming effect on infants of hugs of different pressures, and when given by strangers compared with from parents.
By monitoring the heart rate of the infant and using pressure sensors on the adult’s hand, the researchers assessed the baby’s reaction to just being held, a hug with medium pressure and what they called a “tight hug.”
Photo: AP
The results, published in the journal Cell, showed that babies were soothed more by a medium-pressure hug than just being held, but the calming effect decreased during a “tight” hug.
The researchers kept the length of the hug to 20 seconds, as “it was almost impossible to avoid infant’s bad mood during a one-minute or longer hold or hug,” the study said.
For infants older than 125 days, the calming effect was greater when receiving a hug from a parent than from a female stranger.
So, the perfect hug is considered to be medium pressure from a parent, the scientists said.
Infants are not the only ones who feel the benefits of a comforting hug, the research showed.
Parents also exhibited significant signs of calmness while hugging their child.
It is known that a hormone called oxytocin, sometimes known as the “love hormone,” is released during close physical contact, but the researchers said the time period of their hug experiment was too short for this to play a role.
The scientists believe their research is the first time the physiological impact of hugging infants has been measured, and say their work should advance knowledge of parent-child bonding and child psychology.
There could also be an application in the early detection of autism, researcher Hiromasa Funato said.
The research centers on the various sensory inputs received during a hug — this is what alters the heart rate, Funato said.
“Children with autism spectrum disorder [ASD] have difficulties in sensory integration and social recognition,” he said.
“Therefore, our simple hug experiment might be utilized in the early screening of the autonomic function [that regulates unconscious bodily processes], sensory integration and development of social recognition in infants with high familial risk for ASD,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
RSS