According to research, babies can feel their mother’s fears just by smelling her scent in situations of stress and panic.
Until recently it was believed that children’s fears were transmitted through education and bonding between parents and children. However, a recent study suggests that babies learn to fear because of the smell emitted by their mothers in situations of fear and stress.
Research goes further. A child can not only detect “natural” fears but also recognize those that his mother has experienced before pregnancy.
In the first direct observation of this type of fear transmission, a team from the University of Michigan School of Medicine and the University of New York ( United States ) studied mother rats that had learned to fear the smell of mint and showed the way they “teach” this fear to their babies in their first days of life through the smell of alarm they release during distress.
Traumatic experiences that are transmitted
In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team recounts how they identified the specific area of the brain where this fear transmission occurs in the first days of life. Her results in animals may help explain a phenomenon that has puzzled mental health experts: how mothers’ traumatic experience can profoundly affect their children, even when it happens long before they are born. “During the first days of life, a baby rat is immune to learning information about environmental hazards. But if its mother is the source of the threat information, they can learn from it and produce lasting memories,” says the director of the investigation, Jacek Debiec, psychiatrist and neuroscientist at UM.
“Our research shows that pups can learn from the maternal expression of fear very early in life. Even before they can have their own experiences, they basically acquire experiences from their mothers. More importantly, these maternally transmitted memories are long-lasting, while other types of childhood learning, if not repeated, are quickly forgotten. “
Scientists also hope that their work will lead to a better understanding of why not all babies of traumatized mothers or mothers with large phobias or other anxiety disorders or major depression experience the same effects.