Scientists have claimed that the benefits that premature infants gain from skin-to-skin contact with their mothers is measurable even 10 years after birth.
In a new study, Dr. Ruth Feldman, a Professor at Bar-Ilan University, and her team studied the impact of different levels of physical contact on prematurely born infants.
Specifically, the researchers compared standard incubator care to a novel intervention called "Kangaroo Care" (KC), which uses the mother's body heat to keep their babies warm.
They asked 73 mothers to provide skin-to-skin contact (KC) to their premature infants in the neonatal unit for one hour daily for 14 consecutive days.
For comparison, the researchers also assessed 73 premature infants who received standard incubator care. Children were then followed seven times across the first ten years of life.
They found that during the first half-year of life, mothers in the KC group were more sensitive and expressed more maternal behavior toward their infants. Children in the KC group showed better cognitive skills and executive abilities in repeated testing from six months to ten years.
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At ten years of age, children who received maternal contact as infants showed more organized seep, better neuroendocrine response to stress, more mature functioning of the autonomic nervous system, and better cognitive control.
The study has been published in Biological Psychiatry.