Why do we almost instinctively treat babies as special, protecting them and enabling them to survive? Darwin originally pointed out that there is something about infants which prompts adults to respond to and care for them which allows our species to survive. Nobel-Prize-winning zoologist Konrad Lorenz proposed that it is the specific structure of the infant face, including a relatively large head and forehead, large and low lying eyes and bulging cheek region, that serves to elicit these parental responses. But the biological basis for this has until now, remained elusive. A possible brain basis for parental instinct has been discovered. Researchers showed that a region of the human brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex is specifically active within a seventh of a second in response to (unfamiliar) infant faces but not to adult faces.