Infants can Sense Mothers’ Fear and Anxiety from Body Odor: Study

Babies' olfactory abilities can detect fears of mothers, finds a study.

Various researches have confirmed an innate biological connect between mothers and their offspring much before birth. Experts from the University of Michigan Medical School and New York University found growing fetuses can sense a mother's distress and anxiety during pregnancy from their body odor.

Their study involved female rates that were trained to react with fear to the smell of peppermint. It was observed fear caused mother rats' body to emit an odor which was immediately perceived by baby rats. The researchers looked at blood cortisol levels and used brain imaging scans to identify genetic activity and regions associated with recognizing fear in baby rats. They discovered lateral amygdala was the area related to learning fear.

When this region was suppressed, the baby rats became unaware of mother's fear of  peppermint fragrance.

"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," said Jacek Debiec, lead researcher and a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan, reports the Financial Express.

"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," he adds, reports the Belfast Telegraph.

The study also confirmed baby rats responded to fear even in the absence of mothers. These findings enable in understanding irrational fear and phobia in mothers and developing methods to minimize its long-term implications on mental health in children.

More information is available online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.