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Scientists have uncovered the most effective technique to a crying baby. An experiment involving 21 infants aged less than 7 months found they were more likely to stop crying and fall asleep when their mother walked with them, compared with when they were held by their mother in a chair or in a cot. “This finding makes sense because when most people pick up a crying baby, they rarely just stand still with them, they walk around,” says Harriet Hiscock at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. Scientists became interested in how babies respond to motion after studying the “transport response” in other mammals, in which infants become passive and develop slower heart rates when their mothers carry them. To test the effect in people, the team monitored 21 crying babies in Japan and Italy while their mothers tried four methods to them: holding their baby while walking, moving them back and forth in a pram or rocking cot, holding them while seated and laying them down in a cot.