University of Michigan Original Study
Anxious mother rats give off an odor that teaches their newborn babies to be afraid.
Researchers studied mother rats who had learned to fear the smell of peppermint and saw them teach this fear to their babies in their first days of life by using an alarm odor that is released during distress.
The scientists pinpointed the specific area of the brain where this fear transmission takes root in the earliest days of life. Their findings in animals may help explain a phenomenon that has puzzled mental health experts for generations: how a mother’s traumatic experience can affect her children in profound ways, even when an event happened long before the children were born.
The researchers say they hope their work will lead to a better understanding of why all children of traumatized mothers, or of mothers with major phobias, other anxiety disorders, or major depression, don’t experience the same effects.
MOTHERS’ MEMORIES
“During the early days of an infant rat’s life, they are immune to learning information about environmental dangers. But if their mother is the source of threat information, we have shown they can learn from her and produce lasting memories,” says Jacek Debiec, assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry.
“Our research demonstrates that infants can learn from maternal expression of fear, very early in life. Before they can even make their own experiences, they basically acquire their mothers’ experiences. Most importantly, these maternally-transmitted memories are long-lived, whereas other types of infant learning, if not repeated, rapidly perish.”
http://www.futurity.org/mom-ra...s-smell-fear-739292/
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