A mother’s scent can have profound effects on her baby - but can it teach them to develop
certain fears?
Hey guys, Tara here for Dnews - and we’ve long been taught that smell is the most powerful
sense we have.
We associate memories with it, we use it subconsciously when picking mates, and now, science suggests,
it may play a role in how we develop fears.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that
babies have an innate ability to acquire fears from their mothers, just by smelling them
in times of distress.
Which answers the age-old question, of how a mother’s traumatic experiences can affect
her child, even if those experiences occurred BEFORE the child was born.
For this study, researchers trained a group of female rats to fear the smell of peppermint,
by exposing them to mild electric shocks whenever they smelled it.
They then allowed the rats to mate, and after they gave birth, they exposed them to the
smell again - without the shock this time - in order to provoke the fear response.
In one experiment, they had the pups of the rats there with the mom as they were exposed
to scent, and they found the pups also feared the smell of peppermint, despite never having
learned to associate it with fear.
Now one could argue that the pups were only scared because they saw that their mothers
were scared - so they repeated the same experiment with another group of rats.
But this time, the mothers were not present.
Instead, researchers piped in the odor of the mother reacting to the scent, and still
- the pups continued to fear the smell of peppermint.
What’s even more fascinating, is that the pups they used for this experiment, were too
young to have even developed the natural ability to learn fears.
So how does something like this happen?
Well, to figure that out - researchers used special brain imaging, and zeroed in on the
lateral amygdala.
This is the part of our brains that helps us detect and respond to threats later in
life - but the results of this study, shows that it’s also key in helping our brains
develop fears.
Sure enough, when they repeated the experiment with that part of the brain blocked, the pups
failed to acquire the fear of peppermint from their mothers.
According to the author of the study, rats are immune to learning information about environmental
dangers during their early stages of infancy.
But, if their mother is the SOURCE of that threat information, then it’s possible for
them to learn from her - and those memories that do develop, are long-lasting.
Of course with most studies done on rats, it’s hard to say exactly how these behaviors
translate to humans - but remember that part of the reason we use rats for experiments
like this, is because we share many of the same genetics and behaviors.
And the phenomenon of acquiring fears from your parents - isn’t unheard of in humans.
One example the author gives, are children of Holocaust survivors - who frequently experience
nightmares, avoidance instincts, and even flashbacks of traumatic events that they themselves
never actually experienced.
Cases like that, are what makes this study all the more exciting.
Being able to identify - and possibly prevent - the mechanism by which this happens, can
have very real effects for people living with anxieties and phobias.
What do you guys think?
Do you have any irrational fears, and if so - where do you think acquired them?
Let us know in the comments below - and as always, thank you guys for watching!