Most parents have experienced frustration when their infants cry excessively and refuse to sleep. Scientists have found that the best strategy to calm them down is by holding and walking with them for five minutes.

This evidence-based soothing strategy is presented in a paper published September 13 in the journal Current Biology.

“Many parents suffer from babies’ nighttime crying,” says corresponding author Kumi Kuroda of the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan. “That’s such a big issue, especially for inexperienced parents, that can lead to parental stress and even to infant maltreatment in a small number of cases,” she says.

Kuroda and her colleagues have been studying the transport response, an innate reaction seen in many altricial mammals—those whose young are immature and unable to care for themselves—such as mice, dogs, monkeys, and humans. They observed that when these animals pick up their infants and start walking, the bodies of their young tend to become docile and their heart rates slow. Kuroda’s team wanted to compare the effects of the transport response, the relaxed reaction while being carried, with other conditions such as motionless maternal holding or rocking and also examine if the effects persist with longer carrying in human infants. ...continue reading