The power of Mother’s Love

Love is something abstract.  We can’t measure love. Love is something did not have any unit. Some people relate love with Einstein’s relativity theory. But first what are relativity theory is? According to the theory, energy and matter are relative and light is constant.

Giving an example, the 2 cars, Car A moving in 60 km/h and Car B moving 80 km/h. Doesn’t care about the direction of the both cars, 2 of them are relatively moving in 20 km/h difference.  One spotlight from a building is focusing to both cars. The light moving to both cars is constant. Thus, same with love, love is constant. We love every one that we love constantly. No more or no less. That is how they relate the love with the physics.

It’s enough to elaborate love in scientific way.  Let’s discuss about the topic, the power of mother’s love. Some people believe, when some teenager’s suicide cases because of stress, failure, and many more reasons because of they did not have enough love from parent or the parental ignorance. But how this believe support by scientific evidence. I would like to say in the genetics’ point of view.

In 2004, Szyf and Meaney published a paper in Nature Neuroscience that helped launch the behavioral epigenetics revolution. It remains one of the most cited papers that journal has ever published. The paper built on more than a decade of research in Meaney’s  lab on rodent mothering styles.

Meaney had found that the type of mothering a rat receives as a pup calibrates how its brain responds to stress throughout its life. Rats raised by less-nurturing mothers are more sensitive to stress when they grow up. When confined to a Plexiglas tube that restricts their movement, for example, they exhibit a greater surge in corticosterone, a hormone pumped out by the adrenal glands in times of stress. The likely cause is reduced numbers of a receptor for steroid hormones in the brain. This so- called glucocorticoid receptor is part of a negative feedback loop that dials down the volume on communication between the brain and adrenal glands, thereby reducing reactivity to stress.

The Nature Neuroscience paper linked this reduction in glucocorticoid receptors to DNA methylation. Rats raised by less nurturing moms tended to have more methyl groups attached to the promoter region, the “on” switch, of the glucocorticoid receptor gene. These methyl groups block access by the transcription factors that turn the gene on. As a result, fewer receptors are produced. Subsequent experiments showed that enzymes that reverse DNA methylation of the glucocorticoid receptor gene also reverse the effects of unenthusiastic mothering on the offspring’s hormonal and behavioral responses to stress.

Several of Meaney’s students have carried on with this work and extended it in new directions. Frances Champagne, a co-author of the 2004 paper, went on to show that female rats raised by nurturing mothers are more nurturing mothers themselves. She also found that pups raised by less-nurturing moms exhibit greater methylation—and reduced expression—of the gene for a particular estrogen receptor in the hypothalamus, a brain region involved with reproductive behavior. This receptor amplifies signaling by oxytocin, a hormone that promotes mother-infant bonding.

Summarize from their finding, rat raised by less nurturing mother (not enough love) likely to sensitive to stress because of reduction the glucocorticoid gene activity that reducing reactivity of stress— more DNA methylation that repress the transcription of the gene.

The scientific evidence support that the important of mother’s love. But don’t blame to their mother if have suicide cases. A lot of factors that causing stress. The important point is the finding gives us a guidance to care more about our children and never ignore them. Happy families can build a happy society that lead to the peace.