YOU know that special bond your mother seems to have with your kids? The one she doesn't seem to have with anyone else — even you?

You’re not just imagining it, according to a new study.

Unlike other primates, humans rely on one another to help raise their children, and often those offspring do better when they have other adults, like their grandmothers, involved in their lives, said lead study author James Rilling, a professor of anthropology and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University in Atlanta, the United States. The importance of grandmothers can be traced neurologically, this study suggests. Researchers found that grandmothers shown images of their biological grandchildren had a neurological response in the areas of their brain that are important for emotional empathy and motivation.

The study, published by the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, worked with 50 grandmothers who reported having positive relationships with their grandchildren and high levels of involvement with them.

The women underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures changes in blood flow that happen with brain activity, while being shown images of their grandchild, another child they didn't know, an adult they didn't know, and the same-sex parent of their grandchild. For some that was their own biological child, and for others it was their daughter- or son-in-law.

“This work points to the fact that there are important brain changes in members of a ‘village’ that raise a child,” said Jodi Pawluski, a neuroscientist and therapist based in France who was not associated with the study. (SD-Agencies)