Mothers, reward, and baby

The first Jiwasa before the word

Before entering the article, we can return to the body for a moment.

Breathing.

Chest.

Arms.

Gaze.

Skin.

Tiredness.

Now, imagine a mother looking at a photo of her own baby.

It is not just an image.

It is a call.

A small face.

An expression.

A sleepless night.

A remembered smell.

A concern.

A love still learning how to fit inside the body.

Before the word, there is bond.

Before explanation, there is presence.

Before any verbal language, there is a mother-baby field that already regulates, calls, exhausts, rewards, worries, and organizes world.

This is exactly where the article “Associations Between New Mothers’ Neural Reward Response and Perceptions of Their Own Infant”, by Kaylin E. Hill, Julia Garon-Bissonnette, McKenzie N. Greene, Emilia F. Cárdenas, Maya Jackson, Sarah Pegg, Kathryn L. Humphreys, and Autumn Kujawa, becomes so important.

The study investigated whether new mothers’ neural reward response, measured with EEG through reward positivity, or RewP, is related to how they perceive their own infants in the early postpartum period. The sample included 91 mothers, on average 9.23 weeks postpartum, who completed two reward tasks while EEG was recorded and then described their infants’ personalities.

The question opened by this article is decisive:

how does a mother’s brain-body transform the baby into reward, belonging, and world?

The original question of the article

The central question can be formulated like this:

is new mothers’ neural reward response, both to monetary reward and to personally meaningful social reward, associated with their perceptions of their own infants?

This question moves the mother-baby bond away from an abstract idea of “maternal love” and toward a neuropsychophysiological, social, and relational process.

Caring for a baby is not only deciding to care.

It is being called by the baby.

It is feeling something before the face.

It is having the motivational system reorganized.

It is perceiving the baby not as an object, but as someone who summons body, attention, and future.

In the study, one task was monetary. The other was social and personally meaningful: when the mother “won,” she could see a photo of her own baby. RewP was measured in response to social and monetary reward feedback. The results indicated that both social RewP and monetary RewP were positively associated with maternal perceptions of the baby.

In direct language:

mothers with greater neural reward response tended to perceive their babies more positively.

But this must be said carefully.

The article does not reduce love to EEG.

It shows that neural motivational systems can relate to how the mother perceives the child.

And this matters because perception, bond, and care do not live separately.

The strength of the article

The strength of the article lies in measuring a delicate dimension of care: the relationship between neural reward and maternal perception.

The mother does not encounter only “a baby.”

She encounters this baby.

Her baby.

With face, smell, sleep, cry, expression, history, birth, expectation, and future.

When the social task allows the mother to see a photo of her own baby as reward, the research approaches something personally meaningful. It is not only a generic face. It is a social reward linked to a real bond.

This is the most powerful point:

the baby is not a neutral stimulus.

The baby is territory.

A call.

A presence that reorganizes the mother.

A field of reward, responsibility, fear, tenderness, exhaustion, and belonging.

Living baby, photo, and abstraction of abstraction

Here there is a fundamental difference.

Looking at the living baby is not the same as looking at a photo of the baby or an image on a screen.

When the mother looks at the living baby, she is before a multisensory presence.

The baby breathes.

Moves.

Looks.

Cries.

Changes the face.

Has smell.

Has temperature.

Has weight.

Has rhythm.

Has unpredictability.

Even so, perception is never “pure reality.” The body always transduces stimuli and builds an internal representation. Looking at the living baby is already an abstractive stage: living presence entering the body and becoming a record in the body-territory.

But when the mother looks at a photo or screen, there is another layer.

The photo is already a previous abstraction of the baby.

The living baby was captured through lens, framing, light, pixels, digital compression, or photographic chemistry. That image is no longer the baby. It is a transduction of the baby into visual elements.

Then this image enters the mother’s body again.

Through the eyes.

Through the imagetic.

Through memory.

Through affect.

Through imagination.

Through the Weichö of each DNA.

So the photo is an abstraction of abstraction.

This does not invalidate the experiment. The image allows control, repetition, comparison, and EEG measurement.

But it requires conceptual precision.

The neural response to the baby’s photo is not automatically the same as the response to the living baby in the mother’s arms, looking, crying, breathing, and regulating the mother in real time.

The photo may carry qualia that distort reality.

It may hijack attention toward a specific reference inside the mother’s lived world.

A smiling photo may activate tenderness.

A photo taken in the hospital may activate fear.

A sleeping photo may activate peace or exhaustion.

A beautiful image may hide overload.

A difficult image may intensify anguish.

The image does not enter neutrally.

It enters crossed by the living history of that body: memories, pains, desires, losses, bonds, and expectations.

That is why, whenever possible, researchers need to state when they are studying living presence and when they are studying the image of presence.

The abstraction of abstraction can be useful.

But it can also introduce perceptual bias.

5D Body-Territory: 3D is not a visual metaphor

In the 5D Body-Territory model, perception is an abstraction represented inside a body-territory in five dimensions: 3D, movement, and qualia.

But this must be clear:

3D is not a visual metaphor.

3D does not mean only “imagining the baby’s face somewhere in the mind.”

3D means that the external stimulus enters the body-territory and leaves material, functional, and anatomical traces.

When the mother perceives the baby — living, in a photo, or on a screen — that stimulus can modify the body.

It can alter neural activity.

Reorganize attention.

Modulate muscular tensions.

Change breathing.

Activate memory.

Form new traces.

Alter posture.

Produce approach, alert, tenderness, concern, or avoidance.

It can leave functional materiality that will later be reactivated as memory, care, fear, exhaustion, belonging, or desire to protect.

So when we say that “the baby’s face occupies space,” we are not using only a poetic image.

We are saying that the baby leaves traces in the body-territory.

These traces can be investigated through available technologies: EEG, fNIRS/NIRS, EMG, HRV/RMSSD, GSR, eye-tracking, video, behavioral analysis, performance, and phenomenological reports.

The living baby leaves broader traces because the baby enters as a multisensory presence: gaze, sound, smell, weight, temperature, cry, touch, and rhythm.

The photo also produces 3D in the body-territory.

But that materiality is mediated by an already cropped image.

Therefore, in research, photo and living presence should not be treated as equivalent.

APUS and Tekoha in care

APUS is extended proprioception.

It is the body positioning itself before the stimuli it receives.

In the mother-baby bond, APUS appears in the way the mother holds the baby, brings her face closer, supports the baby’s head, responds to crying, tilts her torso, changes distance, rocks, touches, waits, withdraws, or approaches.

The baby reorganizes the mother’s field of action.

The weight in the arm changes posture.

The cry changes direction.

The gaze calls for approach.

The baby’s sleep asks for silence.

Feeding reorganizes time, gesture, and space.

Tekoha is extended interoception.

It is territory entering the internal states of the body.

In the postpartum period, maternal Tekoha is decisive.

A mother does not perceive her baby in emptiness.

She perceives from sleep, pain, support, fear, money, home, family, work, health, birth, breastfeeding, racism, class, State, and culture.

Here, APUS and Tekoha feed back into each other.

The body positions itself before the baby.

That positioning changes the internal state.

And the internal state changes the next form of positioning.

An exhausted mother may perceive the same cry differently.

A supported mother may sustain the response better.

A mother in Zone 3 may have a narrowed field of action.

A mother in Zone 2 may find more pathways of care.

3D records the material traces of this relationship.

Movement is the reorganization of these traces.

Qualia is the sensitive intensity that can harmonize or hijack attention.

The first Jiwasa before the word

Jiwasa is the collective field that emerges when body-territories enter into relation.

At the beginning of life, before the word, the first Jiwasa is often the caregiver-baby field.

It is not only mother.

It is not only baby.

It is the between.

The gaze that responds.

The lap that adjusts.

The cry that summons.

The chest that tightens.

The hand that rocks.

The face that calms.

The exhaustion that weighs.

The smile that rewards.

This field does not yet depend on verbal explanation.

But it is already deeply intelligent.

It regulates sleep.

Hunger.

Safety.

Belonging.

The mother’s body.

The baby’s body.

The perception of the baby, then, is not only mental representation.

It is emerging Jiwasa.

A field of belonging before the word.

Zone 2 and Zone 3 in care

Caring for a baby requires Zone 2.

Zone 2 is the state in which the body can sustain challenge without collapsing.

There is effort.

Alertness.

Responsiveness.

But there is still enough safety to continue.

In the postpartum period, Zone 2 allows the mother to hear the cry without panic, make mistakes without self-destruction, ask for help, feel tenderness, rest when possible, and learn the baby’s rhythm.

Zone 3 appears when care becomes threat.

The cry feels unbearable.

The body does not sleep.

Guilt grows.

The house tightens.

The baby stops appearing as relation and begins to appear as an infinite demand.

The question is:

when can the baby’s social reward sustain Zone 2?

And when does Tekoha overload push the mother into Zone 3, reducing the body’s availability to feel presence, reward, and bond?

RewP is a window, not the whole bond

RewP is a temporal window into neural responsiveness to reward.

In the article, it was used to measure responses to monetary rewards and to a personally meaningful social reward: seeing a photo of one’s own baby.

But we need epistemological care:

RewP is not love.

EEG is not the whole bond.

A photo is not the complete relationship.

The measure is precious because it shows part of the neural dynamics of reward.

But the mother-baby bond is larger.

It includes body.

History.

Sleep.

Touch.

Smell.

Network.

Culture.

Tekoha.

Jiwasa.

And it also includes the difference between living presence and image.

The metric must be a signal, not a sentence.

fNIRS hyperscanning: measuring the between

From this article, a future possibility would be to study the mother-baby field in real time with fNIRS hyperscanning.

The question would stop being only:

how does the mother respond to the baby’s image?

And would become:

what happens in the living encounter?

Eye to eye.

Voice.

Cry.

Smile.

Lap.

Play.

Dysregulation.

Repair.

In this proposal, we would not measure only “the mother” or “the baby.”

We would measure the between.

The field.

The Jiwasa.

This would help differentiate three levels:

living baby in interaction,
image of the baby as abstraction,
image perceived as abstraction of abstraction.

This distinction is not a methodological detail.

It changes the interpretation of the data.

DANA: religare DNA in the mother-baby bond

DANA is not only data ethics.

DANA is religare DNA.

It is a religiosity, a politics, and a society that respects the Weichö — the singular power of world-creation that DNA Intelligence allows in each body-territory.

In the mother-baby bond, DANA asks:

does this research help mother and baby create world together?

Or does it transform the bond into performance?

Surveillance?

Guilt?

Metric?

Diagnosis?

Comparison?

Capture?

DANA protects the mother’s Weichö, so she is not reduced to a neural response.

It protects the baby’s Weichö, so the baby is not reduced to a stimulus.

It protects the Jiwasa between them, so science does not confuse bond with performance.

Bond data are delicate: photos, EEG, fNIRS, video, cry, smile, maternal reports, depressive symptoms, and descriptions of the baby’s personality.

But the larger question is not only who accesses these data.

The larger question is:

do these data reconnect life to DNA Intelligence, or do they capture life for external systems?

DANA requires science to enter barefoot.

Not to diminish measurement.

But to remember that every measurement touches a living world.

DNA Intelligence and technology

DNA Intelligence is information lived in the body.

At the beginning of life, it appears before the word.

The baby does not explain.

Cries.

Looks.

Moves.

Searches.

Calms.

Disorganizes.

The mother does not respond only with concept.

She responds with chest, arm, voice, skin, sleep, care, attention, fear, and memory.

Technology can help organize data on sleep, crying, mood, risk, postpartum depression, interaction, and physiological patterns.

But it does not feel the baby’s weight at three in the morning.

It does not feel guilt.

It does not smell.

It does not feel relief when the crying stops.

Technology organizes traces.

DNA Intelligence lives the bond.

The question is:

how can we use technology to sustain the mother-baby Jiwasa without turning motherhood into performance surveillance?

Expanded Jiwasa

Even when we speak about mother-baby, the field is never only two.

There are other bodies and institutions there.

Father.

Grandmother.

Support network.

Health team.

Daycare.

Work.

State.

Leave.

Money.

Housing.

Culture.

Internet.

Algorithm.

Advice.

Judgment.

Loneliness.

The mother perceives the baby inside this expanded Jiwasa.

Supporting the bond is not simply telling the mother to “enjoy it more.”

It is creating conditions so the body can perceive the baby without being crushed.

Parental leave is social neuroscience.

A support network is social neuroscience.

Careful prenatal care is social neuroscience.

Non-humiliating care is social neuroscience.

A State that protects postpartum life is social neuroscience.

Generous decolonial critique

The article is strong because it brings neural reward and maternal perception of the baby together in a careful and measurable way.

The decolonial critique does not diminish that strength.

It asks:

which maternities fit inside this model?

Poor mothers.

Black mothers.

Indigenous mothers.

Adolescent mothers.

Migrant mothers.

Single mothers.

Mothers in grief.

Mothers with depression.

Mothers with hospitalized babies.

Mothers without leave.

Mothers who return to work early.

Mothers who love and are exhausted.

Mothers who do not feel reward as expected and need care, not judgment.

The baby’s social reward does not live outside territory.

It can be protected.

Or wounded.

Expanded.

Or captured.

And when measured through photo or screen, it can also be filtered through idealized images of motherhood, birth memories, guilt, social comparison, and cultural expectations.

The question is:

what kind of society allows the baby to be lived as bond, and not only as demand?

Experimental proposal

From this article, we could propose a study:

how does the mother-baby Jiwasa reorganize reward, bodily regulation, and belonging in early postpartum life?

Possible measures:

• maternal EEG for RewP in social and monetary reward tasks;

• mother-baby fNIRS hyperscanning during naturalistic interaction;

• HRV/RMSSD of the mother and, when possible, the baby;

• maternal breathing;

• GSR for alert;

• facial EMG for smile, tension, and affective response;

• microanalytic video of gaze, touch, rhythm, and repair;

• comparison between photo, video, and living interaction;

• maternal phenomenological report about the baby’s qualia;

• analysis of domestic Tekoha;

• analysis of Jiwasa: family network, health, work, State, and culture.

The question would not be only:

which mother responds more to the baby?

The question would be:

what field allows the baby’s reward to become living care without crushing the mother’s body?

And also:

how does the baby’s photo, as abstraction of abstraction, alter the response when compared to the baby’s living presence?

Closing

The article by Hill and colleagues matters because it shows that neural responsiveness to reward, measured by RewP in EEG, is associated with how new mothers perceive their own infants. The study used both monetary reward and a personally meaningful social reward: the possibility of seeing a photo of one’s own baby.

This article opens an essential path:

the first Jiwasa begins before the word.

It begins in the gaze.

In the cry.

In the lap.

In reward.

In exhaustion.

In perception.

In skin.

In the baby’s face leaving traces in the mother’s body.

But it also demands a new precision:

looking at a baby’s photo is not the same as encountering the living baby.

The photo is abstraction of abstraction.

It can activate belonging.

Open tenderness.

Call for care.

But it can also distort, crop, idealize, intensify, or hijack attention toward specific references from the mother’s lived world.

Mothers do not care only with intention.

They care with nervous system, history, territory, network, and belonging.

Babies are not only dependent.

They are relational forces that reorganize world.

The question that remains is:

how can we create territories where the baby can be a living reward without the mother being captured by loneliness, guilt, exhaustion, or the idealized image of motherhood?

This is a scientific question.

Clinical.

Political.

Decolonial.

And deeply bodily.

Highlighted reference

Commented article:
Hill, K. E., Garon‐Bissonnette, J., Greene, M. N., Cárdenas, E. F., Jackson, M., Pegg, S., Humphreys, K. L., & Kujawa, A. (2026).
Associations Between New Mothers’ Neural Reward Response and Perceptions of Their Own Infant.
Developmental Psychobiology, 68(3).
DOI: 10.1002/dev.70164.