New Delhi (THP) The immediate bond that newborns build with their mothers is sheer magic at work. Mothers forget the labour pain and the first cry or a gentle smile from the newborn is enough to build a life-long bond.
Now researchers say there is science behind the ‘magic’. New studies have shown that mothers emit unique pheromones that newborns recognise and immediately latch on to create the strong bonds that shape their development and social instincts.
According to a new study in 2021 by Guillaume Dumas, a medical professor at Université de Montréal and neuroscientist at its affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine children’s hospital research centre.
A mother’s body odours are important signals for a child’s sense of security and social recognition, said the study that was done in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya, in Israel.
However, the role of these pheromones in the social maturation of the human brain is largely unknown, the researchers admitted. But the researchers postulated that maternal pheromones could be isolated and used as sprays to modulate social motivation in children.
“By studying brain activity, we looked at how a mother’s smell affects how babies interact, both with their moms and with other adults who may or may not have that maternal scent,” explained Dumas, an assistant professor at UdeM’s Department of Psychiatry and Addiction.
“During mom-baby interactions, there’s a strong connection in brain activity – more than when a baby interacts with a stranger,” he added. “Surprisingly, even when the mother is not around, the presence of her scent increases this brain connection during interactions with strangers. This leads to better social responsiveness, positive engagement, and a sense of security and closeness in the baby.”
Thus, olfactory chemical cues may support the transfer of the immature mother-infant socialisation to that of life within social groups, Dumas added.
For social mammals, a key function of the mother-infant bond is to adapt the infant’s brain to live in a community and to create mechanisms for detecting safety and danger.
Our distant cousins, the primates, depend on the help of “allomaternal care” to raise their young. Females must pass on this external control function to other adults in the social group and imbue them with familiarity and security.
Body odours are thus ancient chemical signals of Homo sapiens that trigger complex neuronal changes whose functions are to strengthen social bonds with relatives, increase the importance of contextual cues, and signify the mother and the habitat. Odours are the only sensory cues that can represent the mother in her absence.
“Our results confirm that inter-cerebral mechanisms are linked to the development of the child’s social brain and that maternal pheromones can transfer this immature social instinct from the mother-infant bond to other social contexts, thus paving the way toward new neurochemical interventions in developmental disorders with social impairments such as autism,” said Dumas.
He added: “We are continuing our research to elucidate the biological mechanisms of these inter-brain synchronises, including recording the electrical activity of the infant’s brain in the presence of more than two people, such as both parents and the clinician.”
(Source: The Health Presso)
